How to Harmonise a Hymn in Four Parts with Solfa: 3 Chords

You have a lovely hymn tune, a choir with altos, tenors and basses who want something better than singing the melody in unison, and no printed harmony that suits your voices. Writing your own parts feels like something only trained composers do. It is not.

Here is how to harmonise a hymn in four parts with solfa: find doh, then under each melody note choose one of three chords, the doh chord, the fah chord or the soh chord. Put the bass on the chord's root, then give the alto and tenor the remaining chord notes, moving each by the smallest step possible.

In this post I will walk through the opening of Blest Be the Tie That Binds, to the tune Dennis, bar by bar. You will see which chord goes where, what each voice sings, how high and low each part can comfortably go, and the mistakes I check for every time I write harmony for my own choir.

Start with the melody and find doh

You cannot harmonise a tune you cannot read accurately, so begin with a clean melody line. Here are the first five bars of Dennis as it appears on our Blest Be the Tie That Binds (Dennis) page:

Doh is G3/4

mBlest-

mbe-d_-mthe-

rtie-t,_-rthat-

dbinds---dOur-

dhearts-l,_-din-

It is in G major, so doh is G, and it is in 3/4. Bar 1 is the pickup, a single me before the first full bar. Notice how small the range is: the tune never goes above me or below low lah in these bars. That is one reason Dennis is such a good first tune to harmonise. There are no leaps to dodge and no chromatic notes, just steps and a few thirds.

If you are working from a recording rather than a book, get the melody into solfa first and check it by ear. Everything that follows depends on those melody notes being right.

Got a recording? Get it in solfa →

Which chords do you use to harmonise a hymn?

You use the three primary chords: the chords built on doh, fah and soh. These are the basic chords in tonic solfa, the doh chord most choirs already know from warm-ups plus its two neighbours, and between them they contain every note of the major scale. Many older solfa harmony books simply label them chord D, chord F and chord S.

Doh is G4/4

dG-rA-mB-fC-

sD-lE-tF♯-d'G-

Each chord is built by stacking every other note of the scale, starting from its root:

The working rule is simple: look at the melody note, find which chords contain it, and pick one.

• Doh appears in the doh chord and the fah chord, so you have a choice.
• Soh appears in the doh chord and the soh chord, so again you choose.
• Me appears only in the doh chord.
• Lah and fah appear only in the fah chord.
• Te and ray appear only in the soh chord.

Where you have a choice, let variety and the ending guide you. A phrase that ends on doh usually sounds settled if the soh chord comes just before the doh chord.

How high and low can each voice sing?

Before writing a note, know the boundaries. These are rough comfortable ranges for an ordinary church, school or community choir, not the extremes a trained soloist can reach. If you are unsure which voice your singers belong to, my guide to SATB parts explained covers that in more depth.

In G major that works out well. The bass can sit happily around the G below middle C and the C and D beneath it. The tenor has room around the D and C just above and at middle C. My advice: if a part you write needs a singer to stretch to the very edge of these ranges, change the voicing rather than hope they manage on Sunday.

How to harmonise a hymn in four parts with solfa: Dennis bar by bar

The order I use every time:

1. Write a chord name (D, F or S) above every melody note.
2. Write the bass, mostly on the root of each chord.
3. Write the alto, as close to the soprano as the chord allows.
4. Write the tenor last, filling in whatever chord note is still missing.
5. Sing or play each pair of voices together and check for the mistakes listed in the next section.

Here is the chord plan I chose for the first five bars. Read it alongside the melody block above.

Now the voices, one bar at a time. I lean on letter names here so you can check every note at a keyboard.

Bars 1 and 2: the doh chord with a change to fah

On the pickup the soprano sings me, which is B. The alto takes G just below her. The tenor takes the D just above middle C, and the bass sings the G below middle C. All three notes of the doh chord are present: root, third and fifth.

The second beat of bar 2 is the interesting one. The melody falls to doh, and instead of staying on the doh chord I move to the fah chord for colour. The alto steps down to E. The tenor steps down from D to middle C. The bass drops a fourth to the C below. On the third beat everyone returns to the voicing from the pickup.

That tenor move matters. If the tenor had jumped up to G while the bass went to C, the two voices would move from a fifth apart to another fifth apart, which is exactly the hollow sound the next section warns about. Stepping down to fah avoids it and is easier to sing.

Bar 3: the soh chord and a note that stays put

The whole bar is the soh chord, because the melody uses only ray and te. The bass falls from G to the D below. The alto steps down a semitone to F sharp, which is te, on the first beat. When the soprano drops to F sharp herself on the second beat, the alto must get out of the way, so she moves down to D and returns to F sharp on the third beat.

The tenor does the easiest job in the bar: he stays where he is. Soh belongs to both the doh chord and the soh chord, so he simply holds the same D he sang in bar 2. Look for these shared notes every time the chord changes. Holding a common note is the single quickest way to make an inner part easy to learn.

Bars 4 and 5: home, then fah, then home

Bar 4 returns to the doh chord. The alto's F sharp rises to G, because te is the leading note and wants to go up. The tenor steps down from D to B, giving the chord its third. The bass rises from D back to G.

In bar 5 the melody's low lah forces the fah chord, and I use it for the beat before as well. The alto starts on E, drops to middle C under the soprano's low note, and finishes on D for the closing doh chord. The tenor starts on middle C, drops to the G below for the second beat, then rises to B. The bass holds the low C for two beats and rises to G on the last.

Write those five bars out, sing each line on its own, and you have a complete four-part opening.

What mistakes should you avoid when writing alto, tenor and bass parts in solfa?

The most common mistake is two voices moving in parallel fifths or octaves. These are the checks I run on every bar, in this order.

1. Parallel fifths and octaves. If any two voices are a fifth apart and both move to another fifth (or an octave to another octave), the parts lose their independence and sound empty. Compare every pair: soprano with bass, alto with tenor, tenor with bass, and so on.
2. A missing third. A chord without its third sounds bare. Root and third are essential; the fifth can be left out if you double the root, as I did in bar 4.
3. Doubling te. Never give te to two voices in the soh chord. Double soh instead.
4. Te that does not rise. In an inner part, te usually moves up to doh. If the alto sings te and then drops, the line feels unfinished.
5. Gaps that are too wide. Keep soprano and alto within an octave of each other, and alto and tenor within an octave. Tenor and bass can be further apart.
6. Crossing parts. The alto should not go above the soprano, and the tenor should not go below the bass. Singers lose their place when parts swap.
7. Awkward leaps in inner voices. Altos and tenors learn stepwise lines quickly and stumble on big jumps. If a leap is wider than a fourth, look for a different chord note. My guide to intervals in Tonic Solfa is useful if you want to know which leaps your singers will find hardest.

If you find one of these, fix it by trying a different note of the same chord in the inner voice before you change the chord itself.

Try your harmony at your next rehearsal

Written harmony only proves itself when people sing it. A short plan that fits into a tight rehearsal:

1. Bass and soprano first. Have just those two sections sing bars 1 to 5. If the outer voices sound good together, most of the harmony will hold.
2. Add the alto. Listen for the moment in bar 3 where she steps aside as the melody arrives on her note.
3. Add the tenor. Point out that he holds the same D from bar 2 into bar 3. Tenors relax when they realise they are not moving.
4. Sing all four on a neutral vowel, then on solfa, then on words.
5. Check comfort. If the tenors struggle with the D or the basses with the low notes, try the whole thing a tone higher or lower. Because solfa is movable, nobody has to relearn a single syllable.

Once your choir is secure in four parts, the sopranos may want something extra for the final verse. That is the moment to look at how to sing a descant, which sits above the harmony you have just written.

A word on what software can and cannot do here: NoteFusion gives you the melody line, the part you need before any harmonising begins. You can hum Dennis or upload a recording and get the tune in movable-doh solfa with staff notation, and play it back slower or looped while you check your chord choices against it. The alto, tenor and bass are written by hand, using the steps above. If the key you settle on is awkward, "Transpose for my choir" moves the doh and shows whether each part sits comfortably.

If you want a clean melody line to start your own harmonisation, you can transcribe a hymn tune in NoteFusion in the browser or on Android, then pick up your pencil and write the other three parts yourself.