Harmonization is when you take something as simple as a single note, one finger melody, and turn it into a song where you are playing more than one finger at a time. Reharmonization is where you take an existing song and play it with completely different chords, perhaps for the purpose of giving it a more soulful, contemporary feel.

If you have any knowledge or experience in reading music, I’m sure you know that the music in a church hymnal played as written is boring and plain. Have you ever been to a church service where the organist or pianist is reading the music from the hymnal, but you know very well that what they are playing is not what is written in the hymnal and have you wondered where the beautiful music they are playing coming? They are re-harmonizing as they play!

The re-harmonization process is something that you will be able to do almost instantly after understanding the process.

Have you ever heard a piece of music you’ve never heard before, but it’s being performed by an artist you’re familiar with, and you were immediately able to identify the artist and say “Hey, that’s Stevie Wonder, or that’s Ray Charles.” You were able to do this because you recognized that artists harmonize. Musicians tend to have favorite harmonizations; the ones you tend to use very often. It is the harmonization of the musicians that defines the musician and who they are. It is the harmonization that defines the style of the artists and gives you the ability to recognize them, even if you have never heard the song.

Traditionally, harmony writing has been summed up in an extensive set of formal rules. However, such harmonized music almost always sounds classical in nature and the chords and chord movements are somewhat predictable. This is because the harmonization process usually follows the traditional rules of harmony.

Music has been harmonized manually for a long time. That is, whether composers enter the notes or chords into a machine, such as a computer, or write them down by hand, they are relying on their knowledge of the rules of harmony or on what they think sounds good to their own ears. . It is a tedious process and it is difficult to simultaneously understand all the rules.

Automatic harmonizers have been a feature of electronic pianos and keyboards for many years. Computer hardware and software are also available to assist in the attunement process; however, the resulting harmonization always sounds very simple. The resulting chords are usually the traditional major, minor, seventh, and diminished chords.

The resulting harmonization almost always sounds classical in nature, and the chord movements are somewhat predictable. This is because the harmonization process follows the traditional rules of harmony.

In post-classical music, it is sometimes necessary to break the rules to achieve a particular effect. By following the traditional rules, you will not get a harmonizing result that is indicative of soul, black gospel, and R&B music genres.

When we look at the genre of gospel and soul, the harmonization of a melody occurs without relying on the traditional formal rules of harmony. The traditional rules of harmony are being broken. You won’t find any formal instructions or written documentation about what’s going on here. It’s the breaking of the rules that results in that sound and those beautiful chord changes.

There are two problems you have to overcome to get that beautiful sound.

1) Stop playing those simple chords (eg major. minor, seventh, faint).
2) Stop following the traditional rules of harmony.

Let us now see a simple example. We are all familiar with the key of (C). This is the key that has all the white keys on the piano and consists of the notes (C), (D), (E), (F), (G), (A), (B) and (C) .

Surely many times you have in your head that when you want to harmonize a song you must use the chords that correspond to the (I), (IV) and (V) of the major scale.

The chord (I) is the chord that corresponds to the 1st note of the scale of the key in which the song is found. So, in the scale (C), the first note is a (C), so it would correspond to a chord (C).

The chord (IV) is the chord that corresponds to the 4th note of the scale of the key in which the song is found. So, in the (C) scale the 4th note is an (F), so this would correspond to an (F) chord.

The chord (V) is the chord that corresponds to the 5th note of the scale of the key in which the song is found. So, in the (C) scale the 5th note is a (G), so this would correspond to a (G) chord.

Therefore, in the key of (C), they are telling you that the chords to use are (C), (F), and (G) to harmonize your music. Let me be the one to tell you that if you use these simple chords, you will sound boring and simple.

In almost every piece of music, you will be able to find a chord movement that moves from chord (V) to chord (I). This is known as the (V)-(I) progression. In the key of (C), this would be a (G) chord moving to a (C) chord.

Here is an example of the chord notes moving:

Chord Name/ Left Hand Notes/ Right Hand Notes
————————————————– —————-
G major/G/GBD
C major/C/EGC
————————————————– —————–
Now that sounds pretty boring and simple.

Now let’s do that same move by breaking some rules.
As an example, the two things we are going to do are:

1) Replace simple chords with more advanced chords.
2) Add chords that aren’t even in the (C) scale between the (G) and (C) chords.

Here’s a new chord move.

Chord Name/ Left Hand Notes/ Right Hand Notes

1. G9sus/G/FACD
2. G7b9 add 6/G/FBE Ab
3. Eb 6.9 b5 / Eb / GCFA
4. Db7#9 / Db / F Ab BE
5.C6.9/C/EADG

We replace the simple major chord (V) (G) with a G9sus, and we replace the major chord (I) (C) with a C6,9. They are both very beautiful chords. We also added an extra chord (V), the G7b9 adds 6. Then we broke the traditional rules and inserted chords based on notes that aren’t even in the scale (C). There is no (Eb), and there is no (Db) in the (C) scale.

We still have a (V) – (I) progression, from (G) to (C), but we’ve added some beautiful chord changes in between.

If you told someone you were going to play chords that weren’t even in the (C) scale, they would probably look at you like you had two heads and think it would sound terrible. I’m sure everyone will agree that the movement above is beautiful. If we wanted to take things a step further and sound really good, we could also play some kind of chord (Gb) and (Ab), even though both notes are not in the (C) scale. This is one of many undocumented key points to get that ‘sound’; play chords based on notes that are not in the scale of the song.

To get that beautiful sound you’re looking for, you’ll have to break the traditional rules of harmony and look at things from a whole new perspective.