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

Jazzwee, this is exciting trying out new sounds. You know, I am so used to playing this at church in Gospel style that the sounds are very predictable but I need to play like that for people to sing.

I'll try to record something and see what I come up with.

Rosa

Hi Rosa,

I like that line. I would probably play the Bdim7 with F in the bass (as Fdim7 - same notes), although I think calling it Bdim7 more accurately reflects its function.

The F "works" here for this reason:

The Em7 is a tonic-function substitute, IIIm7 for I.

The Bdim7 that precedes it is functioning as an incomplete dominant, G7b9 (V7b9). So the Bdim7 - Em7 has the sound, and function, of V7b9-I (G7b9 - Cmaj7) in the key of C, with Bdim7 substituting for G7b9 and Em7 substituting for Cmaj7.

Preceding that with F makes perfect sense; it is subdominant, IV. So, functionally, what you have here is IV-V7b9-I (although in fact it's IV-VIIdim7-IIIm7). Because you're doing this quick IV-V-I move to a tonic-function chord in C (and immediately continuing the progression by cycle of fifths back to I), you don't get any confusion as to the key ... C, not F. Your ear tells you immediately that you're not in the key of F (also emphasized by the fact that the second melody note is B-natural).

Or at least that's the way I see it.

Cheers,
Mike

Jazzwee.....I came up with this. I've lost my box.net account so I uploaded this onto my server.

http://www.pianotutorials.learnpianowithrosa.com/JoyReharm.mid

I actually did Fm/Bb7 as my starting chord. I combined both of these things.

Then I went onto Dm7 instead of 36251. Because I did that, I could not fit in the A7 at all.

This is my chord progression for the first line:

Bb7b9 Dm13 Em7sus Dm9 G7b9 C6/9 A7b9 D7b9 G7 Db7 C


On the LH, for Dm13 and Em7sus, I played quartals as you suggested.


Let me know what you think,

Rosa

Is Barb around do you know? I remember we used to be in your Autumn Leaves thread playing together.

There are so many ways to interpret this. When I actually played Rosa's changes, I heard it completely differently. To me, the F sounded like Am/F or an inversion of Am6.

The connection to the original chords makes more sense when one plays it. In Bdim7, B of course is the 3rd of G, D is the 5th of G, F is the b7 so that connects it strongly to the original G7, with the only difference being Ab. Thus is really is just an inversion of G7b9 / Bb7b9 / Db7b9 / E7b9

So when I made my version, I kind of took the idea of just making it minor sounding.

Rosa, it sounds great! Reharms are wonderful. Even minor differences just make the familiar music sound fresh again. It's hard to overanalyze this stuff as it doesn't speak of how well it sounds when it is done.

But the analysis does help one to "copy".

Someone was teaching me a comping method by jazzer Kenny Werner. You might think this to be strange but he would comp the melody with any chord and the chords don't follow any rule other than the melody fits in it. So all these interesting ALT chords, and combinations come up. And it actually sounds very good. He's comping for Toots Thielemans if you care to look for the album.

Also, we haven't discussed voicings. Sometimes just a change in voicings makes you think it's a different chord. Like I was thinking of Am/F. Changing the bass root changes the character a lot even without actually reharming.

Another thought is just the vagueness of open voicings (like 3 note spread out voicings). Depending on what's in the root, it could suggest something completely differently yet it's easy to play. If you listen to what I played, it was just playing around with 3 note voicings like that. Easy to do.

BTW Rosa, Barb hasn't posted recently but I have a feeling that she lurks.

Am6 ... F#, not F

Am/F = Fmaj7

Yup. You're right. Good catch.

Rosa, hard to think of this without a piano. It was so obvious what the minor sound was. I should have seen it immediately.

FMaj7 = Dm7(9)

I just saw this thread for the first time today... and I went right to page 1, Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Today I started NOODLING it lol......

There you go! It's very freeing, isn't it? Rules can come a lot later!

If you do this to Christmas songs your audience will be impressed.

lol I started noodling my Christmas carols tonight, then came on line to see your message.
I think this might be addictive - ha ! as if I weren't already hooked on piano!

Casinitaly, there's some little patterns I came up with at the beginning of this thread and I forgot about them already. So I just looked at it again and tried it and frankly, even with random choices or trial and error you could make an Christmas song sound good.

Just write down what you did so you can repeat it

There's actually sophisticated explanations why these work, but in the end, I don't think the theory matters. You've got 12 choices of patterns. It's not an infinite set.

Thanks for the encouragement Jazzwee - I do have some basic theory knowledge, so I do "get" why some combos work,and how to "gestimate" when I'm not quite sure.

I tend to agree though,(especially for the moment) that the theory isn't the priority. For me this is an extra activity to help me get the feel of my piano, and in general just to help me get playing by ear (which I can do with one hand pretty well,but I REALLY want the left hand too!)

We'll see what develops!

I am not sure yet how that was done, but it was very nice the way the melody was woven into the notes that were played. My ears liked the jazz sounds that I clicked
here and played http://www.box.net/shared/1zls7rx9b9

I don't remember what I did! LOL.

Yes, there are. I couldn't have said it better.

Thanks, Kevin. I have copied it and will play it tomorrow when I am less tired. It looks exciting as a beginner and it lets me see what is happening.

Oh my gosh, this thread was made for me but I didn't know it existed until now! Many years ago I put together a nursery rhyme medley with a jazzy flavor; finally recorded it to YouTube a few months ago:

http://youtu.be/boz_uFinr0o

Most of it isn't so much reharmonization as just playing the melodies in an upbeat fashion, but when it gets to Mary Had A Little Lamb at 3:09, I do unleash the jazz chords!

Hopefully better late than never!

-fingerbreaker