I emailed Kenny...

...I was on the train and suddenly out of no where my project came to me.  I've been stuck for ideas this past few weeks and haven't done much in regards to studying.  Then suddenly I was on the train going over my past idea and an idea just came to me - an amalgamation of everything I've done up until now.

I quickly wrote my ideas down and sent Kenny an email.  I got a reply back fairly quickly, and the results were positive.

This is what i emailed:

"The subject will be based on reharmonistion. In short I'd be seeking to develop and create a series of musical formulae that could be applied to the chord chart of any tune (modern or old) in order to harmonise it into a specific jazz based style.

For example, I'd have a formula that could reharmonise simple mono tonal hymns into gospel styled hymns, and a formula that could turn modern pop tunes into swing/smooth/fusion jazz sounding pieces or vice/versa, etc...

The songs would be reharmonized at a basic level - the idea is that the formulas would help introduce players who are perhaps unfamiliar with the styles to new forms of harmony.  An intermediate player should be able to apply one of the formulas to any tune he wants and end up sounding like he has a basic grasp over the harmony of whatever style he's playing.

The formulae would focus specifically on harmony and melody - rhythm, technique, etc, would be left out for the player to develop on his own.

Cons and difficulties:

-how do I measure whether or not the formulas are successful in achieving their purpose?
-Creating a formula that will work for anything - there are many different musical contexts to consider in which something might not work.
-Defining what "gospel" or "jazz" means.
-Even in its many sub-genres, how a jazz based piece sounds depends entirely on the player.  How will I decide on which harmonic style to focus on for each formula?

I had a few other thoughts about difficulties but they're currently beyond me. 

In total, I'd be looking to create a total of 3 different formulae, each with a method for turning a chord sequence into a specific style. "

Kenny's reply was encouraging:

"I think this sounds like an interesting idea - so you’d be devising a formal rule system for (re)harmonisation of melodies (or bass lines, similar to figured bass)?

Just in terms of process, I think it might be an idea to start simple, and begin with fairly standard 4-part harmony (a la hymn tunes) before you start to complicate things with extended chords.

In answer to your questions/points:

-how do I measure whether or not the formulas are successful in achieving their purpose?

I would have thought that applying your harmonisation rules to a few different tracks and then analysing the results would be a good way of doing this. That, in turn, though, means that you’ll need to think about how you analyse harmony and what makes for a ‘good’ harmonisation. This, though, is something that you will have to do anyway if you are planning on analysing case studies.

-Creating a formula that will work for anything - there are many different musical contexts to consider in which something might not work.

I’m not sure that you will be able to create a one-size fits all solution, but nor would I worry about that. What you’re effectively trying to do here is build a model of how harmonisation works. All models have their limits. The interesting question is more about what those limits are, and even when you push beyond the limits, your method might throw up interesting (though unconventional) results. These are all things that would make good material for a dissertation.

-Defining what "gospel" or "jazz" means.

Why do you have to? Your harmonisation rules don’t care if the melody is a jazz tune or a gospel tune. Isn’t that sort of the point of a formal rule system like this? It would be enough to identify common chord structures/progressions from jazz or gospel (or wherever) and then use these as part of the grammar of your harmonisation rules.

-Even in its many sub-genres, how a jazz based piece sounds depends entirely on the player.  How will I decide on which harmonic style to focus on for each formula?

See above - I don’t think you can create a universal solution here. What you might want to think about is creating different ‘flavours’ of reharmonisation rules, perhaps which emulate the style of particular players.

You should maybe read a book called ‘Computers and Musical Style’ by David Cope. This is specifically about trying to get computers to analyse the work of composers (he works mainly with Mozart and Scott Joplin as examples), and then compose in their style. Clearly, this is a bit broader than just looking at harmony, but there’s a lot of stuff in there that might be useful.

Have you considered automating all this? It might be a bit of a red-herring if you don’t have any programming experience, but you could use something like Pure Data to load a MIDI file and apply your rules to create a harmonised version and re-output a MIDI file. It would be a nice way of demonstrating your approach if it were possible."

This has given me much food for thought.  I'm glad I finally have something refined that I can begin sharpening up.  This means I can start looking for resources - I can start planning, studying and actually WORKING towards my honours project now.  

The first thing to do will be to get my project proposal done.  I'll need to start looking are more specific resources for my project.  A trip to the library is in order.  My next post will discuss my thoughts about this project and what I could potentially do with it. 

This is good.  I'm starting to make progress.  Finally.

J