Harmony Requires Honesty

Back in high school I played drums and sang in a few different bands. One of the bands played mostly Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Cream… you get the idea.

One day we were jamming when Jim, our lead guitarist, started playing Happy Together by the Turtles. It was funny at first… but then we all joined in and something clicked. While it was outside our genre, something about this song resonated with us. In fact, our version of Happy Together not only sounded great… it was fun to play. So now what? How do you transition from Black Dog and Iron Man to Happy Together? We weren’t certain, but we had an upcoming gig and decided to find out.

It was the night before our gig and we had been practicing hard all week. Since we hadn’t performed Happy Together publicly, we decided to go over it a few more times. Jim was/is a talented musician and he had figured out all the harmonies, including a great three-part harmony for the “Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba” part. (If you’ve never heard this song, I apologize… but you should do so.)

Oh yes, there’s something I neglected to mention… it was for good reason that our bass guitar player rarely sang. He was notoriously off-key and pitchy (I’m being polite). Perhaps that’s what amazed Jim and me the most about us playing Happy Together… he actually sang one of the harmony parts.

Back to practice… I was singing lead and Jim was singing background harmony when we reached this part of the song…

Me and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together

Then we all jumped in…
Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba

Before we could hit the second, Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba, Jim stopped playing, turned and looked directly at me. Accept for the ring in our ears, the room was silent.

“What are you doing?” Jim asked looking confused. “You’re completely off-key… maybe we aren’t ready to perform this yet!”

I was irritated, embarrassed and somewhat dumbfounded… but not totally surprised. I didn’t respond at first. I respected Jim. More importantly, I knew he was right. In an effort to compensate for the bass guitarist, I was compromising my part. I was singing off tune to try to get us in harmony. I had been doing so all week… just not to this degree. That night during practice, my extra effort crossed the line and Jim called me on it. Explaining my actions meant telling the truth… the truth we all knew, but didn’t want to talk about. When the facts are on the table, you’re able to address the situation and make progress. That’s what we did. We made some modifications to the harmonies… and Happy Together was back on track and well received by the audience.

That night at practice I learned some valuable lessons about harmony… and not only about music, but life, too. It’s easy to slip into denial or to try and fix what’s wrong by overcompensating for someone who isn’t doing his or her part. And sometimes, to a degree, it may be okay or even necessary. But in the long run, it doesn’t work. Honesty truly is still the best policy.

I’m glad Jim was honest about my performance. I think most people prefer knowing the truth. We want to honestly know how we’re performing. I know I do. It’s hard to improve and find yourself when you don’t know where you stand. Ironically, even with the best of intentions, when we bend reality in an effort to create “harmony”… we accomplish just the opposite. Twisting the truth creates confusion… and that leads to disharmony. By turning a blind eye (or deaf ear) or compromising our part (not doing what we know is right), more times than not, we’re creating disharmony. True harmony requires that we each do our part… open and honestly.

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