If you have multiple singers on your worship team, should they sing harmony?

Question:

For those of you who have multiple singers on stage for praise and worship, do you have them sing harmonies when musically appropriate? If not, why not?

Answer:

The Importance of a Single Lead Vocalist and Harmony Singer

Yes. If I have singers on stage, one of them will sing harmony.

This is something that I learned from Passion. I think I was watching something from their Lift conference; it was like a vocal workshop or something. They said something that stuck with me that made a lot of sense. Because, obviously, Passion Church, they’re a big church. They have a large stage. So they have multiple singers on their stage. But they were talking about how they only ever have one lead vocalist and then one harmony singer.

Reinforcing the Melody for Congregational Singing

And then the other people who are leading on stage vocally, they are just singing the melody because the melody is what the people in the church are singing.

So the harmony is an extra piece to the musical sound. But we don't want people to focus on the harmony. We want them singing the melody. So, we need to reinforce the melody.

And I just thought that that was a really interesting way to promote congregational singing, to reinforce the melody of the song and not have like this amazing four-part harmony, which might sound really cool, but it might also confuse people, and they aren't going to know which part to sing, and so they might not sing at all.

Supporting the Melody with Multiple Singers

And so, we want our people singing in unison. That doesn't mean that we can never have harmony, and people out in your congregation will probably sing harmony a little bit anyway. Some people just naturally do that. But we want to support the melody of the song.

So, if I had, let's say I had four singers, one of them would sing lead - the lead melody - they would lead the song. Another one of them would sing harmony, and then the other ones would sing the melody and reinforce that and probably be a little bit back off the mic, and it would be more just their presence on stage leading whoever is in front of them on Sunday morning.