This post provides a few tips and tricks for advance reharmonization techniques on Charlie Parker’s Confirmation with music sheet.
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:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op6XLLeR3ks]
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….. ๐
For further reading on reharmonization techniques, check out these posts:
I Love You Porgy Advance Reharmonization Technique
8 Comments
ALFREDISIMO
December 24, 2007The second chord is F13, no F7#9
rewsnat
December 24, 2007oops.. sori about the mistake. the 7(#9) occurs after the tritone substitution. So i’m viewing it actually as a B7(#9)..
thanx a lot alfredisimo.. will edit it… ๐
Charles
January 17, 2008Check out Coltrane’s ’26-2′, his take on Confirmation with Coltrane substitutions. Absolutely mindboggling.
rewsnat
January 29, 2008Hello Charles, is there a video of if posted on youtube?? or is there anywhere I can hear it??
Charles
January 29, 2008it’s on coltrane’s cd called ‘coltrane’s sound’
off the top of my head, this guy has a recording of it on his myspace
http://www.myspace.com/bobreynolds
Gigi Ng
February 19, 2008Hey… check out http://www.rebirth.sg
Cheerios,
Gigi
Yusuf
March 10, 2011I really really appreciate your work what an effort!
Keep up the good work this is very inspiring.
/Anonymous Bass player
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