Chord Progressions -- Part Five

     'Taint so.

     Musicians alter songs all the time. They change the rhythm, they change the phrasing, they change the melody, they change the feeling. In fact, that's what makes music so exciting and makes one artist distinctive from another. I might love the way Ray Charles arranges "Georgia On My Mind" (and I do!), but you might prefer Willie Nelson's version. I might appreciate the way Dave Brubeck improvises on Bach (and I do!), while you prefer your Bach straight from the text.

     That's OK. There's room for differences of taste and expression.

     And what we can do with style, we can also do with chord progressions. Let's take a simple example from a song everybody knows: Silent Night.

The melody of the first phrase of the song goes like this in the key of C:

G A G E G A G E

     If you play the song as it is written, you would stay on the C chord the entire phrase. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but if you are a bit more adventure-prone, you might search around for some chord progressions that would add some interest to the setting, instead of just sitting on the C chord for 4 entire measures.

So how do you start looking for new progressions?

Easy.

All you do is ask yourself this question:

"In what other chord will this melody note fit?"

   For example, the first melody note is G. It "fits" in the C chord, because it is the 5th of the C chord, but it also fits into the Em chord, because G is the 3rd of the Em chord. So I could substitute Em for C as the first chord.

In the next measure the melody is E. E fits in the C chord, OK, because it is the 3rd of the C chord. But it also fits in the Am chord because it is the 5th of the Am chord.

Go to your piano now and try that. Play the entire phrase using Em and Am instead of C. It gives the song an entirely different feel, doesn't it?

Are those the only chords you could use?

No. You could use any number of chords just by asking that one question:

"Into what other chord will this melody note fit?"

In the next phrase of Silent Night, the melody is:

D D B C C G

     So you ask yourself the same question -- "What other chord will D fit into?" -- and the answer could be Dm or Dm7 (since D is the root of the D chord), or Bb or Bb7 (since D is the 3rd of the Bb chord), or Gm or Gm7 (since D is the 5th of the G chord), and so on.

     I urge you to play all the way through the song, and keep asking the same question over and over. You won't like some of the chords you try. That's fine. Just discard them and keep trying until you find a chord you like the sound of, and use it. And of course it will depend to some degree on how adjacent chords fit together as to what choices you make.

But keep trying, and you'll surprise yourself with the chord progressions that you come up with!

(If you would like to SEE how this works on a wide variety of Christmas Carols, go to:

http://www.playpiano.com/catalog/specials/specialofmonth.htm

and take a look at the Christmas Special we are having right now. You'll be excited when you see all the things you can do with chord progressions!)