Harmony Singing By Ear CD1

Confession time. When I bought this CD I had an ulterior motive. I wanted to learn harmony, not to sing, but to improve my fiddle playing when backing up other singers and improvising. What a happy discovery this as been! Susan's teaching style is encouraging and delightful. What impresses me most is that she seems to know exactly what you are going through as you follow her lessons. She sets an ideal pace for presenting new things to try and reinforcing what she has already covered. Her words are concise and clear. The piano backup during the lessons helps me hear the harmony and provides subtle queues to follow. I have sung in choruses in my youth, but learned the harmonies lines only by rote memorization because I could never hear the intervals. I have been practicing with these CDs in my car on the daily commute (with my windows rolled up) and as I do chores around the farm (out of earshot from my family). Now, as if my magic, I am starting to sense the intervals, to the point where I can harmonize with some simple and familiar songs on the radio! Whenever I tried to do that in the past, it was a matter of luck as to whether I'd hit a harmony note, and I never was able to follow the melody line with a parallel harmony, until now. Susan's insight and effectiveness in presenting the lessons shows her experience in teaching many many students as well as an amazing amount of planning and organization that must have gone into creating this CD. She makes the lessons fun to work through and there is no corniness or other aspects that would get tiresome through repeated listening. Instead there is depth in the instructions and with each listening, my understanding and, most importantly, my perception in what I hear and what notes I sing get more precise. I am very thankful I stumbled across this CD and decided to take a chance on it."