Question: What makes a good reharmonisation?

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.