Vocal Harmonies | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

It might be my TV being funny (though I don't think so), but there's a live version of I Saw Her Standing There on Anthology where Lennon's vocal is turned up much higher in the mix than McCartney's, making his harmonies much easier to work out. I think it's one of the Sweden recordings, 1963 or 64.

Other than that I can't really help. I'd probably try and work them out by recording the basic vocal line, then multitracking it with what I thought were the harmony lines. Trial and error should be quite a learning process. It'd be harder to do with three-part harmonies though.

This is from Mark Lewisohn's wonderful book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, in the entry for 14 June 1966. I thought you might find it interesting.

Paul McCartney had already shown himself extremely adept at writing beautiful ballads, but they don't come any better than this gorgeous piece of music, 'Here, There And Everywhere '. It has long been Paul's own favourite.

The song was perfected in sessions spread over three days, and on this day four takes were recorded. Just one of those – the fourth – was complete and even then it used only two of the four tracks available. But it was the first to feature any vocal work, the result of a drop-in and at least one overdub. Paul had yet to record his lead but here he was joined by John and George for a take of the charming backing vocals, the highly melodic “oohs” and “aahs”. These early takes were faster than the version released on disc, with the vocals speeded up to match.

The great charm of 'Here, There And Everywhere ' was undoubtedly its terrific vocal harmonies, shared by Paul, John and George. But lthough this talent was largely innate it did need promoting, and Geoff Emerick knows where the help came from.

“George's [Martin] real expertise was and still is in vocal harmony work, there's no doubt about that. That is his forte, grooming and working out those great harmonies.”

George himself is more modest, especially about 'Here, “There And Everywhere'. “The harmonies on that are very simple, just basic triads which the boys hummed behind and found very easy to do. There's nothing very clever, no counterpoint, just moving block harmonies. Very simple to do … but very effective.”