There is a song that my church band sings called “Center”. Can’t think off the top of my head who sings it. Anyway, the band introduced the song a few weeks ago during a time that I was not available to play with them, so I had a chance to mess around with harmonies from the audience. I found a third harmony (the guys had melody and another harmony already) that made the song sound a bit like the band America. At rehearsal a couple days later I dropped in the harmony during practice and everyone really liked the sound. Unfortunately, last week Dave, our regular guitar player (and fellow harmony singer), was unable to play.
At last night’s rehearsal we practiced two new songs and then ran through the songs for this week, including “Center”. As we fell into our three part harmonies on the chorus, Obi (our resident professional musician home from tour for a few weeks) looked over at Dave and said, “Dude, don’t sing that harmony.”
As the song continued, Dave and I looked at each other in confusion. Why would Obi not like the harmony? He was sitting right next to me so as the song continued into the next verse I asked him why he didn’t like the harmony.
“It was the wrong one – he should sing a harmony that is closer to the melody note instead of the lower harmony. The way he did it sounded very cheesy.”
I shrugged, “Well, we like it that way,” which got one of those you obviously don’t know any better looks from Obi (which made me laugh). I said, “It sounds like the band America. Or do you think it sounds more like Donny Osmond?”
“Donny Osmond! Yes! It’s very Donny Osmond!”
Not to be deterred, I plan on telling Dave on Sunday morning to sing his heart out with that harmony we’ve been doing. Because it’s lovely the way we sing it, especially when we just let go and SING as we did in rehearsal last week. Last week we doubled the length of the song during rehearsal because we just really got into it and started to really have a worshipful moment as we sang it together.
So Donny Osmond or no, that harmony stays, Obi.
Let’s just hope everyone’s mics are up and you can hear the harmony. I’ll be listening for it.