Below are the rules which relate to the addition of ii-V sequences to existing chord charts. By adding ii-Vs, chord sequences can be made more interesting - the original chord sequence can even stay the same. The ii-Vs need not replace anything - they can just be input as additions.
1) A ii-V sequence can be added anywhere if the target chord is a major chord. Eg, if the target chord is a Gmaj, Am-D7 can be added before the Gmaj.
2) If there are multiple 4-5 sequences in a single line/passage, introduce a ii-V in the key of the 5. Eg. in the key of D - if there's a G-A sequence, add an Em after the G leading into the A, leading to a G-Em-A sequence.
3) Alternatively, replace the G with an Em, changing G-A into Em-A.
4) If there's a 1-4 (eg. F-Bb in the key of F), add a minor ii-v in the key of the 4. Eg. F-Bb will become F-Adim7-D7b9 - Bb. NOTE: DO NOT USE THIS MORE THAN ONCE IN A SINGLE VERSE/CHORUS OR IF THE MELODY FALLS WITHIN A SEMI-TONE ON EITHER SIDE OF THE GUIDE TONES OF THE ADDED CHORDS
5) Any dominant7 chord can have the minor seventh chord a fourth below placed before it. Eg. A7 can have Em7 before it, or a Dm7 can be placed before a G7, etc.
6) Any minor 7 chord can have the dominant seventh chord a fourth above it placed after it, for example B7 can be placed after any F#m7 chord, etc...
7) A ii-V can be added in the key above a target ii-V sequence. Eg, if the target chord is Cmaj and the ii-V preceding it is Dm-G7, Em-A7 can be played prior to the Dm-G7 ii-V.
Below is a narrowed down version of the ruleset. In this post we'll be looking at rules relating to chord extensions. Rules from previous iterations have been removed and edited. A finalised version will be posted later.
These rules exist to "spice" up existing chords. There's little reharmonisation involved in these chords. Some tunes can be reharmonised using these rules alone.
RULES
1) If chord is a simple triad, add the seventh relating to the key. Eg. in key of C, C major can be come Cmaj7. E minor can become Em7, G major can become G7, etc...
2) In most cases, simple triads can have the extended variations of their chords attached to them. Eg. C major triad - add Maj 7, Maj 6, Maj 9, etc.
3) Major chords can be replaced with the relative minor chords: for example, Gmaj7 can become Em7, etc.
4) If the melody note does not fall on the fifth or perfect fourth, a flattened fifth can be added to a minor chord to create diminished colour.
TENSION NOTES - A list of notes that can be added sporadically to chords for colour: ONLY ADD IF THE MELODY NOTE DOES NOT FALL ON A NOTE A SEMI-TONE APART FROM THE ALTERED NOTE
Major 6th - Add 9
Minor 6th - Add 9
Minor 7th - Add 9 or #11
Minor Major 7th - Add 9
Dominant 7th - add 9 OR b9, 11, #11, 13, b13
Minor 7th - add 9, 11
Minor 7th (lowered fifth) - 9, b13
Diminished 7th - Any note a whole step above a basic chord tone.
The rule set has grown greatly since I first started it. I'm going to have to cut them down and contextualise them properly before ending up with a finalised product.
Here is how the rule set exists in its current form as of March the 19th, taken directly from a document in my iPad where they're all kept for easy access:
DRAUGHT RULES:
MAJOR TRIAD
-If major triad chord replace with Maj6 (add9)
-Major triad can be replaced with relative minor triad (Mostly bass line - if G triad play G/E)
-One chord can be made a major 7 - major 7 can be replaced by the mIII or mVI (eg. Cmaj7 may become Em7 or Am7
-Add the flattened fifth to a minor triad to make it half diminished
1-4-5 AND ii-V
-If there exists more than one 4-5 introduce a ii-V in thief key of the 5 chord every second time
-1-4 add minor ii-v in relative minor key of 4. Eg. F-Bb play F- Adim7-D7b9 - Bb
-If V-I add ii before V OR VII9
-Root chords that do not start or resolve a line can be replaced with vi
-The vi can then include ii-V afterwards
-The ii chord can be substituted for a ii#9 b5 (if going to a ii-V)
-If a one begins a chorus, add V7 before it
BACKCYCLING
-If going to a V7, on each beat of the preceding bar backcycle into it (if G7 play
| B7 Bb7 A7 Ab7 | G7)
-Can cycle down the circle of fifths to target chord (Eg. If aiming for Cmaj7, precede it with a G7, then Precede G7 with a D7, A7, etc
VI7 CHORD-
-Minor vi chord can be replaced by VI7 (B7 instead of Bm7 D)
-VI7 can be placed in front of ii of key (eg. B7 to Em on key of D)
-If 4-1 replace 1 with VI7 (Bb to D7 in key of F)
MISC
-Minor 7 chord - add dominant seventh chord who's root is a fourth below (or 5th above) before chord
-Dominant 7th chord - add minor 7th chord who's root is a fourth below (or 5th above) before chord
The basis of most of my reharmonisations can be found in the well known ii-V-I sequence. I've explained this in a previous post.
One thing I've started to notice as I've began to develop and reharmonise existing tunes for my portfolio is that I'm using the same rules over and over: the rules that extend vanilla chords into deeper chords (eg. a A major triad into a Cmaj7 or an A minor triad into an A minor 7). I'm then using other rules to turn those extended chords into ii-V-Is, then simply reharmonising the ii-V-Is using tritone substitution or other rules. By using this simple method (and adjusting to fit the melody), I can make most contemporary tunes sound reasonably smooth-jazzy.
I'm using rules on rules on rules. By doing this I'm ignoring a large number of the rules I've created, but it seems to work a lot of the time. Perhaps this is me unintentionally whittling away at the draught ruleset I've created. As the weeks go by I'll post smaller and smaller rulesets until there's only a few core rules remaining.
Using and abusing ii-V-Is like this may seem like a cheap method, but for what I'm trying to accomplish, it seems to be working wonders. There are still songs like jingle bells and amazing grace that I'm struggling to apply these rules to. I'm not sure why, but those songs seem to require a little more work. Rules that work for many other tunes simply do not work on these ones.
I'll try to investigate why this is and post my findings later.
Below are two photos of the working sheets I wrote while working on Amazing Grace. The first image shows the original chord sequence on top, followed by a reharmonised version using the rules. The second image shows two more reharmonised versions of the same verse. This is to show the diversity of the ruleset. Note that this is different to the version of Amazing Grace I linked earlier - that was an early version. This is a newer version I made. There is yet no recording of this version, though one will be uploaded soon.
Rules used here include substitution rules (eg. Exchange major for minor, exchange minor vi for minor ii), including ii-V based rules where ii-V sequences have been implemented and substituted for their tritone counterparts.
This song was one of the harder songs to reharmonises as traditional substituting didn't work. In some cases I struggled to make it sound smooth-jazzy enough using simple substitution, so you can see in the final reharmonisation during the second line a part where I implemented back cycling, going chromatically down in dominant seventh chords in order to reach my target chord of A7. This clashes with the melody, but they can sound okay if played quickly and they are voiced properly.
Note this exists purely as evidence of ongoing work.
As a part of my plan to get feedback and input from as many musicians as possible, I took to an online forum full of keyboard players to ask for opinions from the fine folks there.
The forums on musicplayer.com's keyboard corner are full to the brim with useful information on a variety of subjects. Many of the guys there are jazz players, and there's a whole thread tens of pages long based on reharmonisation alone.
I posed the question "What makes a good reharmonisation" and was met with various responses. Here are a few that stick out:
"The only cardinal rule I know is that the reharmonization can't require changing the melody to fit the new chords. At that point you're not reharmonizing as much as rewriting. Unless that's what you're trying to do, of course... "
"Not overdoing it-that's a good reharmonization. If you change the hole song it might get an A+ from your harmony teacher, but it's not the song any more. On the contrary adding some coloring here and there gives surprise, and i think this is the purpose of it IMHO." "If it sounds good, it IS good." "
I posted two followup questions asking:
1) When playing through a tune or improvising, how do you choose when to reharmonise and when to stick with the original chord sequence ?(if it's not completely automated)
2) How do you pick what chords/passages you substitute the original chords with? The responses varied:
- First, reharmonization, like composition or arranging, can be an art in itself if done well. There are no rules, except knowing your harmony inside out in order to have a large vocabulary of possibilities in your head.
It's really the same as asking what makes good music. The only difference with reharm is to express an existing song that you hear in a different way - possibly to emphasize a different groove or to bring out a subtle harmonic character that's already in the song. It's like changing the lighting on a song, so you see different aspects of it.
A 'good reharm' would be when reharm choices reflect your musical tastes or intent, not just for the academic freedom to change it... or because you 'can'.
"As an older musician who lived through ( endured ) the questioning of all traditional ideas... I am pleased and at the same time shocked to hear you ask the "good bad.. age old question, as well as the evil "judge" word.
Tradition says things like: 'One man's good is another woman's bad'. "One mans food is another's poison". Those are general truths ( generalizations have in the past half century been under heavy attack ) from the past. I believe generalizations serve a useful purpose, and the above quote is quite true. That is why only you can decide of a "rearm" is good." The full thread and its contents can be found here.
I've found a fantastic resource with a wealth of information to help me write my dissertation.
The journal of jazz studies was shown to me by Kenny, and it's full of useful essays, journals and documents. While the hard part will be selecting which parts are relevant for going in the write up, it's nice to know that I've got a good source of reliable information at my hands.
I was in a meeting with Kenny the other day and he asked me on the spot what tritone substitution was.
The answer I gave from the top of my head was something like this:
Tritone substitution is a method of chord substitution, mostly used in jazz harmony. It can work in two ways: 1) substituting the notes of a dominant seventh chord with the major triad of the related tritone to the root chord (eg. replacing a G7 with a Db7 in the right hand while keeping the G in the left hand on the piano) or 2) replacing the bass/root note of a chord with the bass/root note of the tritone relevant to that key (eg. G7 would become G7/Db). The former method is the one more commonly used.
Tritone substitution can be very dissonant and must be used in the correct context in order for it to sound good. However, it works because tritone dominant 7th chords share the guide tones (3rd and 7th) - only they're flipped around. So for example, G7 has B as its 3rd and F as it's 7th. Db has F as its 3rd and B as it's 7th. This means the only notes that change are the fifth and root. If you have a G7 chord and replace the G triad with a Db7 triad, the fifth becomes flattened, along with the 9th, altering the chord. Again, this can sound horrible if not within the right context - it almost always works in a ii-V-I setting. Why? Because in a ii-V-I setting, the tritone substitution is implying a chromatic run down. If you have a ii-V-I in the key of C, you have Dm7-G7-Cmaj7. Tritone sub the G7 for Db and you have Dm7-Db7-Cmaj7. The chord moves down chromatically from D to C, giving a sense of harmonic movement and purpose. There is tension, but it's instantly released as the guide tones of the substituted chord move down to resolve into the C.
Phew!
Tritone substitution is a very important part of the ruleset. I'll soon be uploading a section of the rules based on chord substitution - the tritone based rules can be found there.
This is a quick post detailing some work I did last night. I didn't plan on doing this as a part of my portfolio but I was playing around on the piano and heard this song come on. I decided to try and reharmonises it on the spot using my ruleset. I was pleasantly surprised by the results.
I haven't recorded any of this yet and I'm unsure if I want to record it, but by looking at the work sheet (or by trying to, I apologise for my messy notes, I didn't think I'd be posting it here when I began working on it) you can kind of get an idea of my reharmonisation techniques, and of how the ruleset works in practice.
This was the first time I attempted to use back-cycling in a reharmonisation. At first I thought it wouldn't work, but since I resolved on a strong melody note, it worked surprisingly well.( Jazz reharmonisation purists may disagree, but for the basic purposes of this project, it worked well!)
The original chord sequence can be found in its numeric form on the left hand side of the page. The bottom section of the sequence represents the verses, and the right hand side represents the reharmonised chorus'. There are less chorus' parts because I struggled with them more. This was just an on the cuff reharm I did, and it exists purely as 1) evidence of work and 2) an example of the draught ruleset in practice.
I'm finding many ways to create new rules. Some come directly from listening to songs - others come from reading theory books, and others come from looking at jazz guide books. Below is an example photo where reharmonisation "rules" have already been clearly lain out. I simply simplified the rules and added them into the ruleset list.
By reading books like this, I'm able to find rules that are proven to 'work' in certain contexts. Whether they work in the smooth-jazz context remains to be seen. However, due to the wide variety of rules that exist, and the different types of chord sequences that I'm working with, some of these may work in specific contexts. That's the fun of the project - trying things out at the piano and seeing what works and what doesn't work!
In an effort to further consolidate information I've been gathering, I'm writing a series of posts on key topics relating to jazz harmony, where a short summary paragraph of the topic at hand will be written, simply so that I'm able to describe it.
For this post, I'll be posting about the ii-V-I progression, a vital part of many of the rules I've created for the ruleset.
The ii-V-I
The ii-V-I progression takes its name from the name of the chord relating to the tonic or root chord. ii means the second chord, V means the fifth, and I means the root. This is based on the major scale the root key is derived from.
For example, the C major scale features the following notes: C D E F G A B C
By using every second note in this scale, we can begin to create chords:
C E G B - C major7 - I
D F A C- D minor7 - ii
E G B D- E minor7 - iii
F A C E - F major7 - IV
G B D F - G7 - V
A C E G - Am7 - vi
B D F A - Bhalfdim7 - VII
Roman numeral characters in lower case are minor chords.
The ii-V-I in the key of C then would be Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7, based on the C major scale. There are various alterations and different versions of the ii-V-I (the minor ii-v) for example, which is taken from other scales) though for the purposes of this post we'll focus on the 2-5-1 in it's most basic form.
The ii-V-I is a very popular progression. It is used widely in pop and jazz music - in jazz especially, the ii-V-I sequence is the most popular chord progression used (though in forms other than its simplest).
To sum up why this progression is so harmonically effective in a single post wouldn't do it much justice - entire essays could be dedicated to the discussion of this chord progression. However, for the sake of this blog post and the portfolio, I'll sum it up very briefly.
The ii-V is effective due to the relation between the two chords guide tones. A guide tone is simply the tone that guides the chords tonality. In G7 for example, the guide tones are G (the root) B ( the third) and F (the seventh). These are the guide tones because they guide the tonality of the chord - the G signifies the root, the third signifies the major tonality, and the seventh signifies the dominant seventh.
Let's look at the notes of Dm7 and G7-
Dm7 - D F A C
G7 - G B D F
Let's now look at the guide tones of those two chords.
Dm7 - F C
G7 - B F
We can see that they share a common note - F. In Dm7, the F is the third. In G7 the F is the seventh. The C and B are also semitones apart - in order to reach the B of the G7 from the C of the Dm7, one simply has to drop the seventh by a semi-tone. The seventh of the Dm7 drops to become the third and the third stays the same but becomes the seventh.
Due to the simplicity of this change, a clear sense of progression can be heard when played.
The V-I is effective as it invokes a perfect cadence. A perfect cadence is 'perfect' because it sounds as if the chord has resolved completely. Again, this could be explained os much more in depth, but for the purposes of this project and the blog, I've kept it simple.
Lets look at the guide tones in the V and I chord:
V - G7 - B F
I - Cmaj7 - E B
See something similar? The B (the third of the G) is the same as the seventh of the C - just like the relationship with the ii and the V. The F (seventh) of the G drops a semi tone to become the third of the C - again, just like the ii-V progression did. ii-V and V-I are exact mirrors of each other, ending with a perfect cadence. In the simplest terms possible, this is why the ii-V-I works so well. The sense of progression and voice-led harmonic movement creates a chord sequence which is very pleasing to the those who's ears are used to westernised harmony, based on resolution.
While this was a brief overview, it shows how the ii-V-I progression has become so monumentally important whilst creating my reharmonisation ruleset. Next we'll look at how to reharmonises the ii-V-I itself to create more colour within the reharmonisations.
For now, take a look at this YouTube video which shows the ii-V-I in use.
I've been browsing youtube and have found a handful of videos that have helped me write more rules.
This one in particular mentions dominant seventh chords replacing other dominant seventh chords, while going on to talk about how dominant seventh chords can replace target chords that would otherwise resolve a line.
A couple of rules found here include:
-REPLACE MINOR SEVENTH CHORD WITH A DIMINISHED SEVENTH CHORD A MINOR THIRD BELOW
-REPLACE A TARGET RESOLVING CHORD WITH A DOMINANT SEVENTH CHORD A FIFTH UP
There are more rules that can be found within this video (in the video the presenter creates rules that he uses himself), and they'll be introduced later on as I develop the ruleset.
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