I will discuss what is happening with the diminished chord later. Remember that you can always substitute the dominant a tritone away from any dominant chord.Īfter returning to F7 at the start of bar 6, I step up to F#dim7. In the second four bars, I used a few tritone substitutions.

These are all natural and planned movements. So, after moving to the minor iv, I stepped down twice and then moved around the circle of fifths. Remember that chords like to step in either direction and movement around the circle always sounds good. I then just stepped down to Cmin and did a ii7-V7-I progression to finish out those 4 bars. Here I resolved it to the iii chord (Dmin7) in bar 3. I chose this chord because of where it typically wants to resolve–either the I or iii chord. My first chord change is Ebmin which is the minor iv chord. What I am actually thinking here is that I know I need to end those four measures on a Bb but I can choose any number of paths to get there. This is a very common way to reharmonize. I have replaced those chords with a progression that starts and ends on Bb. Let’s take the first four measures first. If you want to get past the most basic chord substitutions (such as iii for I), you have to start thinking this way.Ģ) Practically ANY chord you choose will work in a given situation if it logically relates to the chords around it and it works with the melody note (which it will more often than you think). I am actually looking at how to change entire progressions. Before we do, let me remind you of a few guidelines:ġ) I am not looking at this as substituting chords. Now, let’s walk through what I have done. The song for the day is “Silent Night.” Here is the harmony for the first line as you would find it in a hymnal. So I have already started dabbling in it.

However, I just couldn’t turn this one down, and now I need to learn some Christmas music. A few weeks ago, a great church asked me to come do a Christmas concert, which I usually don’t do. Yes, I am going to do another Christmas song in this post. I was looking at my stats today and noticed that one of my most read blog posts lately was this one about harmony in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” So I thought I would do a similar post today.

Silent night chords b flat