video: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
To borrow 7notemode’s term, this is an encyclopedia of reharmonizations for the well-known standard. It’s presented in video form.
Since you’re here, you are undoubtedly interested in this material. So I am making available the charts I played this from. I was going to recopy them nicely, but I think the real charts I sketched on will let you see how my brain is working on the problems a little better.
I actually did not play the first 8 bars as charted. I played the “vanilla” changes instead just to establish the tune firmly, and besides there wasn’t much innovative in my first A section.
As noted in the video description on youtube, I did the last 8 bars first. About 9 months ago in fact. And that’s what I wanted to post, so originally I was going to reharm the rest “lightly” and post. Once I sat down and started charting out reharmonizations, I gathered a lot of momentum, and had three choruses completed before I really realized. I stopped and noticed that I had almost begun on every note of the chromatic scale, and wrote a few more to go after the ones I’d left out.
Here’s the blab I put on youtube:
This isn’t an arrangement–it’s a bunch of reharmonizations duct taped together and played consecutively. I just have to point that out up front, it’s hip to pull off maybe one or two of these in a tune, but it’s not hip to reharmonize every single section of a tune, and do it differently every time. (Unless you’re trying to mess up the singer.)
Having got that out of the way, these are a dozen variations on the A section of SOTR, plus three different bridges. There’s not really an intro or ending, because this is not an arrangement. Four choruses in all, I just play the melody, no improvisation. I spent about 2-3 hours on writing all this mess down, about two hours recording it, and way too long on editing and annotating the video.
I avoided all the pedestrian reharms that you run into all over the place, these are all intended to be a little more obtuse. Some are a lot more obtuse. You may not dig them all. I only bent the melody twice in doing this. I have some doubled thirds here and there that may offend the classically trained among you (deal with it).
This is in the usual key of Eb, and interestingly, I start an A section with a chord rooted on each note of the chromatic scale except for F#/Gb. I’m pretty sure I use every chord quality available at some point or other along the way. The final A section is the one I’m happiest with, and I did it first actually. The chromatically ascending bass line satisfies some compositional urge in me that I can’t explain. I intended to fill out the other two A sections and one bridge and call it done, but I got started and filled up four choruses with different reharmonizations. They mostly are fairly different from one another, not a lot of recycling. The first A section of the fourth chorus is my second favorite. I am fond of upper structure harmony, and pedaling the Eb gives me a chance to break out some of my favorite upper structure tricks.
I give you a four-bar phrase worth of chords at once. That helps reflect the structure of the tune, and keeps the changes from flying by too fast to read. And you can look ahead or behind. Most of the time intersting things are happening within a phrase rather than across phrase boundaries (one or two exceptions).
I don’t consider any of these solutions to be excessively adventurous. Almost all of them cadence somehow or other at the end of a phrase. Just not always how you expect. It’s hard to run so many versions without recycling some devices though. You’ll see a vanilla ii-V all over the place. Second A of the fourth chorus is a shot at an urban contemporary feel (the iv-V-i is typical at least)–since I set up C minor so strongly, I made the fourth bridge belong to C minor as well.
I’d also like to pause and analyze the melody, since I have space here to do it. I consider this melody be Harold Arlen to be extremely strong. It actually makes it really easy to reharmonize since the melody works so well. The structure of this song is the well-worn 32-bar AABA that Tin Pan Alley songwriters adored.
A section is made up of four two-bar phrases.The first three each begin with an ascending leap in half notes. The opening leap of an octave is very unusual and striking. Large upward leaps are usually climactic, so having the opening phrase leap like this is a distinguishing feature. The smaller leaps of a sixth that open the second and third phrases are echoes of the first leap. The second bar of the first and third phrase use the same rhythm, which lends unity. The same rhythm is used to open the fourth phrase. The fourth phrase opening is a sequenced repetition of the prior bar, down a step diatonicaly.
If you mark out the “guide tones” of this A melody, you will see it forms a descending major scale, which is extremely strong. The A melody uses entirely notes from the key signature, no accidentals.
B melody is two four-bar phrases. The rhythm of the B melody begins with repeated eighth notes, a strong contrast with the half notes of the A melody. The third and fourth bars of the B melody return to the half notes though, referencing the A melody. Second phrase of the B melody begins with the eighth note figure again, but introduces the first accidental (A natural, a tritone away from the tonic, and fairly maximally dissonant in this key) into the melody, building tension very effectively toward the coming climax. The eighth bar of the B melody has the climactic F, the highest note this melody reaches. Total compass of the melody is an octave plus a fourth.
If you have ever read anything else I’ve posted here, you know I’m somewhat obsessed with tension and release. The melody, all alone, provides a very cohesive movement through tension and release, with a fine balance of unity and variety, and a clear climax. Arlen excelled at the songwriting craft, this is ample evidence.
Since there’s such a clear-cut movement though tension-release space, it gets interesting to reharmonize. Mostly, reharmonizations that take on the same overall shape as the melody aren’t highly interesting. If you don’t move the tensions and release into different places than the original graph, then the reharm sounds kind of pedestrian (to me at least).
So I found a few “formulas” that resulted in tension being displaced in a way that violates expectations in a pleasing (one hopes) way. First, the dissonant opening chord resolving to the consonant chord. Examples are Emaj7#11 -> Ebmaj7 in the second A of the first chorus, A7b5 ->Abmaj7#11 in the first A of the third, and so on. Those sounds in isolation aren’t a lot more dissonant than other sounds I reach for, but they are more distant for the native tonic, so they read more dissonant. Second, pedal points (where I maintain a bass note for an entire 8 bar phrase) build tension throughout the phrase, and the release is the beginning of the subsequent phrase. B of the second chorus and the first A of the fourth are examples of this device. This gimmick was around in baroque times, so it’s really a well-worn technique, I get no credit here. Third, I exploit displacement to the relative minor, also an old-school technique, as seen in the second A and B of the fourth chorus, and third A of second chorus.
Aside from formulas and well-used devices, I tried to keep root motion fairly stepwise or by fifths. Jumpy bass lines are weak, or root motion based on thirds. I think most of these sound successful for this reason alone.
There’s an extremely cliche sub for the first measure of A that is effective (Am7b5->D7) because it uses roots dissonant in the key of Eb. It’s widely known enough that I just avoided it for this exercise. Typical practice would be to play the vanilla changes and break this sub out for the last A, it does have an arresting effect when it’s deferred like that.
I’d like to point out that my usage of maj7b5 and maj7#11 is to describe entirely different chords. A #11 chord can have a natural 5. So a typical Abmaj7#5 voicing is a Bb major triad over an Ab root–an upper structure sound. The b5 chord is a quartal voicing: I spell Dbmaj7b5 as the notes (G C F) over the root Db.
If you have any more questions, please leave me a comment. I’ll answer as best I can.
Here’s the stereo audio, it sounds a lot better than the youtube version.
