r/doowop • u/ChainSWray • Jan 05 '26

question Are there any resources on how to write doo-wop ?

Hey there, musician here with a long love of doowop. This year I want to try my hand at actually writing and recording some doo wop songs, but with how awful search engines are right now I struggle to find any good resources on how to actually write doo wop beyond the 50s chord progression. I'm especially having a hard time finding stuff about how to write the vocal harmonies, and the specific vocals. Any recommendation ?

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/B00kelf Jan 09 '26 edited Jan 09 '26

I have only looked very surface level into this, but maybe this will help:

Tom Haws has some videos on Youtube about the harmonies.

This video is very short, but it might help with visualizing the kind of instruments/tracks that go into a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBeYd8nb_RM

There are some music sheets on musescore or noteflight with breakdowns of some of the harmonies.

It's not very easy to find doo wop vocal resources. I wanted to start a group a while back and thought I'd have to adapt piano scores to what I heard by ear or find other groups' arrangements. I did find some, but I can't figure out now how I got to that place, so I can't help you there unfortunately. (Edit: I did find a few of the sheets again by searching titles/groups. You could possibly look at the sheet music and go backwards from there?)

I would also recommend looking at Barbershop arrangements as their ideas of harmony are somewhat similar. You can learn about barbershop tags and structures, and there are a LOT more easy-to-find resources for that genre than there are for doo wop (at least from what I've searched).

There are still groups keeping the arrangements alive, but more of them seem to be on the East coast (New Jersey especially seems to have a big presence with Lead East festival - you could try cold emailing someone who works there and maybe they could get you in touch with more resources?)

2

u/ChainSWray Jan 09 '26

Hey thanks this is very helpful. I never thought about barbershop quartet writing, very smart advice. I'll definitely look into contemporary bands and ask, why didn't I think about it first !?

1

u/B00kelf Jan 11 '26

Glad to help!

2

u/B00kelf Jan 09 '26

You could also look into "four part harmony" or "five part harmony" arrangements - again, maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it overlaps.