So far I've reharmonised love ballads, hymns, christmas tunes, hard rock songs, contemporary pop, and now I'm trying out an orchestral piece - "Somewhere in Time", by John Barry.
The trick is finding a distinguishable melody in a piece, then working out the chords to it.
In this case the chords are based on the C major scale. C, Am, Dm and F are the chords used mostly throughout. There's a part near the end of the "A" section where E7 and B7 are played. I tried to get interesting here with tritone substitution, but it proved tricky.
Below you will find a brief piano recording I made of the "A" section of the piece, repeated twice. The first time features a simpler, 'easier' sounding reharmonisation. The second A section features a wider variety of rules used - based on minor scale and diminished harmony, the second play through is full of tritone substitution, and minor ii-Vs. The result? It works, but I'm not sure if it's exactly "smooth jazz". If anything, it demonstrates the diversity of sound that the ruleset can produce.
As I begin to reharmonise more and more pieces I'm starting to see how this project and the ruleset itself is developing past what I intended. It's gone beyond "can I get this to sound like smooth jazz?" and is now "how far can I let the ruleset take this song?" Perhaps I should reel it in a bit...
(Please note it isn't supposed to be four minutes, I stupidly forgot to crop it when bouncing the file. The A section will repeat twice, with different harmonies. Once that's done the track is over.)
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