Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Nursery Rhymes Revisited: Reharmonization Fun

This thread could be fun as well as educational and focused on making music. Coming out of discussion between Studio Joe (Joe Whitehead) and myself in another thread, I thought it was a great idea to come up with ways of reharmonizing (basically coming up with a different chord progression) for the typical nursery rhymes. Nursery Rhymes are simple so it's within the reach of many here to play.

We will start off here with "Mary had a Little Lamb".

The requirements for this little exercise is that the melody must fit completely in the chord progression and must not be altered. There is no other rule as to what chords to use or rhythmic style. In a way it's like composition. But it's simple stuff.

There is no bar here for playing quality, we're just interested in your creativity.

As background to this nursery rhyhme, it is a typical I-IV-V tune, which in the key of C just uses the chords C, F and G.

This is for entertainment value only (and hopefully educational) so the main goal is to have fun. Feel free to ask us how we came up with the reharmonization although I can't guarantee that we will remember how we did it.

Sounds like fun! I'll be joining in.

I will make the first submission. Although I had some general idea of what to play from noodling around for a few minutes, I have to say that I was just improvising as I went through it so I may not exactly remember what I did. Because I'm known here for being a jazz guy, at least this first try is not too bizarre

I may have cheated slightly in altering the melody. But if you play the same melody throughout, it will still fit, thus staying within the rule. Unfortunately, my "improvising" mentality always causes me to alter the melody.

http://www.box.net/shared/1zls7rx9b9

One of my favorite ABF threads ever - tho not on reharmonizing necessarily:

Mary Had a Little Lamb

I'm looking forward to more.

Cathy

Cool, jazzwee -

Cathy

Darn, Cathy. We're not original. Oh well, this is not limited to "Mary..."

If one breakes the rules of your requirement, will they be ostracized? For example variations on the principal melody? I have some ideas that involve a verse in a minor key which would require changinging ther original melody somewhat, but it would still be recognizable as "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

The original song as I remember it in my head uses only I and V (no IV). But another variation idea I have in mind changes the melody to include the IV chord.

I think requiring that "the melody must not be altered" stifles the creativity for delightful things one can do with this arrangement.


Edit: Oh I see you already broke the rule yourself while I was typing my post. So nevermind.

Ok, here's mine:

http://www.box.net/shared/q5m1zu1mxg

Kinda fun!

Ed

Improvisation is, by definition, original

Cathy

Well Joe, if you open it up to just a recognizable melody we will truly open the doors No problem with me. At least in my first try, I purposely stifled myself by making sure the original melody still fits (though I didn't necessarily play it). It was quite limiting, I'd have to agree.

It's all fun so go for it.

Riddler's is impressive. Can you tell us what the chords are?

Riddler that was great! Pretty original. I'm sure each one of these will have a different feel. Some will be dark, mysterious, and perplexing...:)

This is going to be fun! Keep 'em coming.

Ed, that was cool, too.

These have quite a different flavor so far (all 2 of you) than the earlier thread. I like!

Cathy

But Ed opened the door to jazz versions so now I can do that too

Good Jazzwee and Riddler! Enjoyed 'em.

I'll have to wait for a warmer day to get out to the garage where my recording set-up is, then I'll submit my version. Meanwhile I have a piano in the house to practice on.

This looks like a really fun thread, and I loved the old one that Cathy provided. Those "Mary's" were really cool! But, as a beginner who has been playing from the Alfred Book 1 for over a year, and has never improvised a thing, can you tell me how to get started doing that? I mean, I can sit down and plunk around until I get the melody, but then what do I do next? I'm sure there are other beginners who would love to know that too.

Here's the fun part Mom3gram, at the beginning stages, you can play ANY series of white notes on the LH and it will come out ok! The rest of us who are more advanced venture beyond white notes, but you certainly don't have to.

The melody notes...just plunk away at C, D and E (start at E). Can't be simpler than that.

Now there's a little music theory why this works but you can figure that out later AFTER you give it a try.

TLT,

Here are the chords I used:

C D7 E7 F#7
Bb7 E7 A7 Eb7
F Bb#11
D7 Dbmaj7#11
Cmaj7#11

That #11 ending is a trick I just learned recently. Came in handy!

This thread is a cool idea. There's nothing I like better than finding a simple way to learn something complicated!

Ed

mom3gram, learning to improvise is both the simplest and the most difficult thing to do. It's simple because all you have to do is play whatever comes into mind, it's difficult because conventional learning is all about doing things correctly.

While working your way thru Alfred's, you're using the left side of your brain. That's the rules side. What you've got to do is to access the right side. That's the creative side. Some of your best work will be done away from the piano. Just take a theme or part of a melody and hum or whistle or sing variations on it. For example, "Mary had a little lamb" or "fleece was white as snow." See what comes out when you start to have fun with it. After you've hummed or whistled or sung some variations, return to the piano and try to sound out your variations. (In this context, "variation" can also include "something completely different.")

At first, process is more important than result, so don't judge the results, just sound them out. Continue to do some of that every day. In effect you're teaching yourself to access your subconscious mind. The subconscious does not function in a linear fashion. You may get a lot or nothing at at first. But if you continue, you'll discover that you can access your creative side whenever you want to.

I don't have Level One handy. Does it get into 6th or 7th chords at all? If it doesn't, you might want to skip the reharmonization - or just try some inversions - and concentrate on the melody. A standard jazz form is A1, B, A2. Your improv would be the B. (There is a current jazz vocabulary - you'll see some of it in the responses to this thread - but building large vocabularies won't automatically transform people into writers.)

It may help to recall that Chopin loved to improvise when performing, that Beethoven would have friends over and regale them with his improvising, etc., etc. Actually more than a thousand years before the giants of Western music appeared, the Imperial Chinese wrote down rules for performing at court. Priority was given to the song, within the song priority was given to melody, and the soloist was expected - expected - to improvise. What is now accepted as normal is in fact a response to the exigencies of managing large symphony orchestras. So the content of traditional lessons is, in effect, teaching an aberration in the history of making music.

The whole point of accessing your creative side is to play *you.*

Thanks for those chords, Riddler. In a little while I might be brave enough to try them. For now I've started with something a little more basic, but which should satisfy most 3 year olds:

http://www.box.net/shared/qhz6uur7np

mom3gran - I do hope you will stay and experiment with us. Jazzwee will steer you in the right direction and you will be amazed at what you can achieve without music in front of you. Here I've done as jazzwee suggested - random while notes in the base, and I don't think it sounds all that bad:

http://www.box.net/shared/5t59plxa5u

The first thing I did when I sat at the piano today, I meant to go from a chord of C to F. But I wasn't awake, and my LH went to a G instead. So I accidentally played quite a juicy Gsus. Only thing is, I have no idea what to follow it with!