Page 10 - August InDesign

on Henley was the first guy I ever saw
play drums and sing at the same time. DON HENLEY’S VOCALS
DAs a drummer, he always appeared tight

and kinda awkward looking. That said, very
tight, very basic and perfect for what the Ea-
gles needed. So my question was whether he is
a drummer who sings or a singer who drums?

Who cares. He’s amazing.

The Eagles are known for their harmonies. The
smooth, husky sound of Henley with the super

high voice of Tim B Schmit along with the others
made for an incredible sound we all know and
love 40 years later. Before their performance,
they would sit in a circle and acoustically sing

all the harmonies together. They affectionately
called it the circle of fear because there was no-
where to hide.

This leads us into this months training. What are
some of the necessary vocal characteristics that
makes for great harmonies?

Firstly, dead on accurate pitch. It’s pretty obvious
of course but once the voice begins to be stacked
with other voices, either your own in the studio
or live with others, it’s super critical to ensure

you’ve worked on getting your tuning sorted.

Secondly, removing all slurring. A common
habit that singers get into is they quickly glide to

the note, especially the first one in the line. This
needs to be removed by imagining the note and
practicing hitting it dead on. Any slurring up to
a note might sound ok as a solo vocal but by the

time you’ve added a dozen of these, the start of
the harmony will just be pure mess.

Thirdly, timing. Super critical to have excellent

and clean vocals. But here’s the catch. For most
of us, we can tend to be ok with timing at the

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