Advance Reharmonization Technique on Charlie Parker’s Confirmation

In this post I will demonstrate how I applied some reharmonization techniques to this popular Charlie Parker number, Confirmation. In order for the chords to sit well with the melody, I slowed down the tempo, thus bringing out the “color” of my reharmonization. Charlie Parker’s Confirmation is filled with ii-V-I chord progressions throughout, leaving it wide open for plenty of reharmonization ideas.

Here’s my playing:

REHARMONIZATION TECHNIQUES APPLIED

Chord Substitution (at 0m10s)

The original chord progression here is as shown below

And this was what I did to it

Chord substituting is one of the oldest trick in reharmonization, especially tritone substitution. Here are the steps for this example:
1) Dominant 7th Chord - the first thing I did was to alter the original Cm7 chord into a C dominant 7th. Thus giving me a string of Dominant 7th chords – C7 to F7 to Bb7.
2) Tritone Subsitution – the next step was to apply a tritone substitution to the F7 chord, changing it into a B7 chord. By doing so, I end up with – C7 to B7 to Bb7. Any keen observer would notice that B7 is a semitone down from C7, so is Bb7 a semitone down from B7. This is a big opportunity for parallel chromatic chord movement!!
3) Raised 9th voicings – to make it even more interesting, I changed all the chords into a dominant 7th raised 9th. Giving me a C7(#9) to B7(#9) to Bb7(#9). Notice that I altered all three chords to the same quality in order for my chromatic chord movement to work.

Inside Chord Movement (at 0m41s)

The original chord progression here is as shown below

The Bbmaj7 to Bb6 movement is actually implicitly brought up by the melody in that bar already. Instead of letting my left hand sustaining a chord throughout the whole bar, I created some parallel diatonic inside chord movements.
I know that I want to voice the Bb6 chord as a Bb6(#11), Thus I approached the chord tones by notes one diatonic step above, base on the Bb lydian scale.
Sheet music speaks better than words, this was what I did.

Feel free to drop a note in the comment section of this post, would be very grateful.

Until then, Have fun and Enjoy…..

For further reading on reharmonization techniques, check out these posts:

I Love You Porgy Advance Reharmonization Technique

Round Midnight Advance Reharmonization Technique

Joe Pass Reharmonization on Autumn Leaves Transcription