I can try to answer your questions but if you don’t mind I’ll start a thread in the Theory section. I think it might be more appropriate to deal with it there.
Netgrass Collaboration #2
— Begin quote from "Oldhat"
Mike, I hate to say it brother and I hope I don’t offend you, but there are parts of yours that for lack of better terms need to be done again. I mean they stick out so obvious in being off the note that it’s offensive to the ear. And is that really your voice?
— End quote
Jesse, I appreciate your honesty and no offense taken. Yes that is actually my voice. It’s falsetto, but still my voice nonetheless. If you would, please provide a high harmony part, and I’ll be happy to replace it. If you need a mix without the harmonies in there so you can do yours, let me know and I’ll upload a mix without them.
I sat down and tabbed out (to the best of my ability) both the melody and tenor. I didn’t bother with the baritone since I’m just gonna try to sing what’s left.
Assuming I got it tabbed right, I think there is a problem with the first line. It sounds like the melody starts on A, while the tenor starts on C instead of D.
Here’s the tef. Am I hearing it right?
[attachment=0]You Won’t Ever Forget Me - harmony notes.tef[/attachment]
Oldhat needs some Fiddlewood lessons in the gentle art of constructive criticism 
Mike I am glad I didn’t “p” you off. I am going to wait though before I judge ya finally 
…in some of the mixes it wasn’t that bad and in others it really stuck out to me as colliding with something odd that was either your voice/the note you were on or something else being wrong and appearing to sound as such. I’ll wait and cast a further judgement once we get a decent mix on it…I am guessing it’s just my ear, who knows maybe a lot of the stuff I do is wrong and my little brain tells my ear that it sounds right musically.
Now I am not casting all the blame on you man, it’s just at certain points the harmonies sound good then in certain points there is a clash for a beat or so and it goes sour…your voice was the one that was sticking out as having issues, maybe in the mix it came in louder vs. the lead and made it sound as such…I don’t know…but something is going on…Hell I even tried to listen to it through headphones, external speakers, and through the ones on my laptop thinking it could be a speaker issue but it still stuck out.
And no, I ain’t doing no harmonies on this one, yours is staying dude!
— Begin quote from "ldpayton"
Oldhat needs some Fiddlewood lessons in the gentle art of constructive criticism
— End quote
Yeah, I am sure there is a bass player in another country that said “What the hell is he talking about”…not to name any manes or point any fingers or reference a post!
hahhaha!
One thing I learned with the last group of guys I jammed with and played with some as we all decided to be brutally honest with each other in what we heard the others do and at first it was rocky and feelings hurt but actually after folks learned to not get their feelings hurt we ended up making some really impressive sounding music and we all agreed that it was the product of “brutal honesty”.
If the five of us can’t stand a little criticism, we probably shouldn’t be recording like this, because I’m sure for every one of us, there are another five lurkers thinking, “These guys are lousy.”
It’s the price we pay for recording in this manner. Everyone gets to see the warts.
Larry if your tab is correct then there are problems…but on the first note is not the problem…lead gets to choose where they start and the other sings their part where it is supposed to be on the 3rd above. And “D” is not in an F chord…it should either be an F, A, or C or even an E
And speaking of criticism…I had a guy on Kompoz ask if I would add in some “blues/bluegrass” style lead to his song…I thought “sure I’ll see what I can do”…went over and listened to his song and it was the most horrible piece of music I think I have heard…I wanted to say “Dude I suck at guitar but you are absolutely horrible in composing a song, writing lyrics and in singing”…so I simply did not respond. The guitar sounds decent and harmonica sounds OK but man the lyrics and singing are horrible! Even has flute in there towards the end.
I mean just listen:
http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.project?projectId=33802
And the bad thing about it, there are 100’s if not thousands of these folks roaming the streets of Nashville trying to make it big, took both quarters they had saved up to make the trip in order to become a star! Kind of reminds of the song “Sin City” but put in the context of Nashville…cause it chews even good artists up…which leads into my next one: This guy works at where I work at - back in production and told me that “Nashville is brutal” and he made it pretty far and couldn’t hack it…he actually wrote this song with another guy and performs it here on Prime Time Country…is a great song and he can sing but Nashville ate him alive.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wx8QjNtN68[/video]
Jesse
— Begin quote from "ldpayton"
I sat down and tabbed out (to the best of my ability) both the melody and tenor.
Assuming I got it tabbed right, I think there is a problem with the first line. It sounds like the melody starts on A, while the tenor starts on C instead of D.
— End quote
If the lead note is A in the key of F then the correct tenor note would be C, which is the 3rd above A in the key of F.
Okay, I was confused. I was thinking it should be a fifth above. I’ll get there eventually. I’ll go back and figure out the baritone notes, now.
— Begin quote from "Oldhat"One thing I learned with the last group of guys I jammed with and played with some as we all decided to be brutally honest with each other in what we heard the others do and at first it was rocky and feelings hurt but actually after folks learned to not get their feelings hurt we ended up making some really impressive sounding music and we all agreed that it was the product of “brutal honesty”.[/quote
I don’t see a reason one can’t be honest without being brutish. I find it hard to believe that enhanced performance would be attributed to purposely making all your criticisms of each other into low-brow comments.
— End quote
— Begin quote from "ldpayton"
Okay, I was confused. I was thinking it should be a fifth above. I’ll get there eventually. I’ll go back and figure out the baritone notes, now.
— End quote
5th above the A in key of F would be F. One octave below that F is the baritone note (3rd below).
— Begin quote from "ldpayton"
Here’s the tef. Am I hearing it right?
[attachment=0]You Won’t Ever Forget Me - harmony notes.tef[/attachment]
— End quote
You either miss heard some things or tabbed them wrong. Good practice though huh? 
I don’t see a reason one can’t be honest without being brutish. I find it hard to believe that enhanced performance would be attributed to purposely making all your criticisms of each other into low-brow comments.
Maybe the context of “brutal” was used wrong in my post. Maybe I should have used “absolutely” honest. To me it’s playing a song, hearing a wrong part and stopping and saying “man that’s wrong”…as you are smack dab in the middle of a song and someone stops it…and there are maybe as high as 6 folks playing and everything gets stopped nearly instantly due to 1 individual playing or singing something wrong…If that ain’t at least a brutal situation to be in when you’re the guilty culprit then I don’t know what the term brutal really means. But once it was stopped and the problem identified then we’d fix the problem and play it X amount of time in a row until is was right. We never recorded ourselves but instead tried to generate a good as a live sound as we could make…end product on 20-30 songs was actually pretty damn good.
Oldhat
awe, I’d just call that good rehearsal technique. Every decent band I’ve been in worked that way.
I think I got all three parts tabbed pretty closely. I had two incorrect notes in the tenor first line, so I fixed those, and things sound better. I’m primarily concerned with my baritone part. Does it seem right?
[attachment=0]You Won’t Ever Forget Me - harmony notes.tef[/attachment]
Your tef sounds right to me now Larry.
Well, I’m the cause of the harmony being off then, because I definitely wasn’t singing the baritone like I tabbed it. Dave is right, the baritone is kind of unnatural. I’ll have to practice it a little.
I’m following this “discussion” about harmonies with some fascination as I have never tried it. One question: when you talk about a bass part could that be sung same as the lead melody but an octave lower? If so I’d be happy to give it a crack and if it sounds like crap I will weather the deluge of criticism before you decide to leave it on the cutting room floor.
I’m not the one to advise on harmony singing, but I believe you are correct, ozi. The bass would be an octave below the melody, and I think would be the next most common part to add. Have at it!
From what I know about harmony, which is not a lot, the baritone is sometimes not recognizable as the melody as this part has to sing the notes that the others neglected in order to complete the triad…and you are kind of on your own to take up the slack and sing what notes are needed, not the melody. I know in your baritone part there is still a melody there to follow to some point but has some odd spots or so that doesn’t sound like the melody.
Ozi:
Dave started a thread in our “Theory” category in these forums and I asked the same question about a Bass part being an octave lower…he said that would be “F” and I thought it should be an “A” and sing the melody an octave below his lead to get the bass…have not been back to see if he posted a response, but i suggest we take our “melody studies” over to the theory section where he started a thread…we can use this song and ask questions there, that way other folks for future reference will have it to see verses our discussion being buried in this collab thread…larry I suggest you post your tef files over there also.