Re-harmonizing songs (applied to “Oh When The Saints”)

[Jean-Michel G]

There are several reasons why you may want to re-harmonize a song:
– maybe you want to give it a more jazzy feel,
– or the current harmonization is too simple and boring,
– or maybe you want to make a standalone or chord melody arrangement of that song.

In this post we will only discuss a few approaches to re-harmonization, and we will use an extract of the song “Oh When The Saints” as an example. As you probably noticed, there are very few chords in that song… Perfect for beginners, but maybe a little boring.

Here is the section of the song that we will work on, with its original harmonization in G major.

We will try to increase the harmonic rhythm between the G and D7 chords.
Let’s see how we can do that.

1. Diatonic re-harmonization
Let’s begin with adding diatonic chords only (i.e. chords from the G major key).
In general, we will keep the first and last chords of the section, and we will work backwards.

So in this case, we will keep D7 which harmonizes the note A in the last bar: A is the 5th of this chord.

We now need to find a diatonic chord that has a strong tendency to go to D7. The best candidates are the chords located a perfect 5th or a semitone above it.
In this case there are no diatonic chords a semitone above D7 (this only happens for the chords on the 3rd and 7th scale degrees), so we go for the diatonic chord a fifth above it; that’s Am7: the bass then goes from A to D, which is a strong harmonic movement.
The melody note B is therefore harmonized with Am7, which means that we effectively sound an Am9 (A C E G B): that’s OK, because the 9th is a perfectly valid tension.

For the other chords, we need to find something that logically ties them together. Since the melody note in the last bar is the 5th of the chord, we will use this as a criterion for all the other chords. So the G note is harmonized with Cmaj7, and the B note is harmonized with Em7.
We get this:

Now voice these chords properly, play them and decide if that sounds good to you!
Another possibility would be to have all the chords progress by 5ths, like so:
|Gmaj7 – Bm7 – |Em7 – Am7 – |D7 – – – |…
Maybe you like this better? Maybe you prefer triads instead of four note chords? Or maybe you want to omit one of those new chords? You decide!

2. Using dominant 7th chords
It is always possible to harmonize the melody with a sequence of cascading dom7 chords, or substitutes. Of course, this isn’t diatonic anymore.

Since our last chord is D7, working backwards we will harmonize the B note with A7 (the V7 of D). With the melody note we end up with an A9 chord, which is OK (the 9th is a compatible tension).
The G note would be harmonized with E7 (the V7 of A); however, that doesn’t work because G will clash with the G# of E7, so we use Bb7 which is the subs of E7 (remember that the subs of a dom7 chord is another dom7 chord located a tritone lower). For that Bb7 chord the G note is the 13th so we have Bb13 which is OK.
For the preceding B note we use B7 (the V7 of E), which is obviously OK.
So we end up with the sequence G – B7 – Bb7 – A7 – D7 which contains a nice chromatic descend.

This begins to look and sound very Gospel-like…
Voice it properly, play it, and decide if you like it!

3. Adding ii7 chords
As you know, the ii7 – V7 combination is very effective in suggesting a tonal center. So, starting from the previous re-harmonization, we first displace each V7 or subs one beat to the right. Next, we precede each V7 (or subs) by its relative ii7, like so:

I have also displaced the first G chord (played as Gmaj7) and preceded it with D7.

Again, play this and see if your ears agree! This is admittedly rather jazzy… and a bit crowded too, perhaps. Don’t hesitate to ditch some chords if you find the previous result too busy.

Conclusion
These are only some of the numerous possibilities to re-harmonize songs. Your ear is the ultimate judge, like always in music, but it helps to have some strategies to approach the problem and get started, and that’s what this post is all about.
Good luck!

[Tremelow]

Thanks for this little guide on re-harmonization, Jean-Michel. It comes in very handy for the upcoming challenge. And even if I wasnt – I find it incredibly interesting and helpful. So many questions answered.

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