Reharmonization

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

A chordal instrument is normally responsible for defining the harmony of the composition. But just as a soloist is free to make chord substitutions as he sees fit, so are you free to alter the harmony. It is not usually necessary to coordinate your changes. Part of the reason one makes a substitution is for the contrast that is created when the soloist and accompanists are playing different yet related harmonies. The sorts of substitutions discussed in the unit on Improvisation can all be used by accompanists as well. For example, consider the following composition:

[EXAMPLE]

You might play a given chorus of this as:

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Some of these substitutions will create some tension against what the soloist is playing if he is using the original changes, but there is no tension that cannot be released.

When an arrangement contains a vamp of one or two chords, you may wish to vary things a bit. A common technique in one chord vamps is to turn them into two chord vamps by alternating the original chord with a dominant seventh chord. If the original chord is a major seventh chord, you would normally use the V chord of that key and play the vamp like this:

[EXAMPLE]

If the original chord is a minor seventh chord, you might play either a V or a IV chord:

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If the original chord is a dominant seventh chord, you might use the dominant seventh a fourth below, or the chord a half step above:

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The second example is a tritone substitution of the first, and it also creates a sideslipping effect that can be powerful.

You can also create other vamps as you see fit. For example, given the following original progression:

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You might instead play a vamp like this:

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The basic feel of the vamp is preserved, even though the chords differ, and most soloists will hear and welcome the change.

Sometimes, you may wish to make more fundamental changes to the harmonic structure of a piece. For instance, consider the following composition:

[EXAMPLE]

To make the harmony richer and more interesting, you might reharmonize it as follows:

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In cases like this, you would be wise to work out the changes with the soloist beforehand. A solo based on the original chords would be almost entirely dissonant over this accompaniment, and that may not be the intended effect here:

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The new progression itself is quite tonal, and a soloist could exploit these changes:

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Reharmonization is a device that is normally considered an arranging technique, but the line between arrangement and accompaniment is not always clear. When accompanying yourself, of course, you can make reharmonizations like this without deciding upon it beforehand. Presumably, your right hand will know what your left is doing:

[EXAMPLE]

There are several different techniques for reharmonization. One popular method uses the original melody of the composition to generate new chords. For each note of the melody you wish to reharmonize, try out all the chords you can think of that do not clash with the melody note. Then choose chords that seem to flow well together. In practice, you need only choose a few key chords, and then you can fill in some of the rest of the chords using common patterns like ii-V-I progressions. For example, consider the following familiar melody:

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Some chords that harmonize the key melody notes are:

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The following chords seem to flow well:

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Part of the trick here is in getting the original harmony out of your mind, to open your ears to new possibilities. Another technique that forces you to think in new ways about the harmony is to use slash chords. Harmonize each melody note with a simple triad, then choose a bass note that is not in that triad. The effect sounds complex and modern:

[EXAMPLE]

I would not necessarily recommend soloing over this type of progression, however, as there is no particular logic to it besides the fact that it fits the original melody. It might be used to harmonize the head, or, when accompanying yourself, to harmonize a melody you improvise. On the other hand, the progression created above is no more unusual in itself than many modal tunes, so if you come up with a progression you particularly like, by all means, keep it.

An alternative approach to reharmonization ignores the original melody but keeps key points of the original form. For instance, in reharmonizing an AABA song form, you might preserve the first and last chords of each section, and perhaps interesting modulations as well, but fill in new chords between these points. For example, consider the following piece:

[EXAMPLE]

Here, we might take the following as the key points to preserve:

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A reharmonized progression can be created that uses those chords along with some new ones:

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In this type of reharmonization, the new chords are not chosen to fit any particular melody, but because they sound good together. Such reharmonizations make more sense for the solo section of an arrangement than the head.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Reharmonization