Somewhere Over the Rainbow

This isn’t an arrangement–it’s a bunch of reharmonizations duct taped together and played consecutively. I just have to point that out up front, it’s hip to pull off maybe one or two of these in a tune, but it’s not hip to reharmonize every single section of a tune, and do it differently every time. (Unless you’re trying to mess up the singer.) Having got that out of the way, these are a dozen variations on the A section of SOTR, plus three different bridges. There’s not really an intro or ending, because this is not an arrangement. Four choruses in all, I just play the melody, no improvisation. I spent about 2-3 hours on writing all this mess down, about two hours recording it, and way too long on editing and annotating the video. I avoided all the pedestrian reharms that you run into all over the place, these are all intended to be a little more obtuse. Some are a lot more obtuse. You may not dig them all. I only bent the melody twice in doing this. I have some doubled thirds here and there that may offend the classically trained among you (deal with it). This is in the usual key of Eb, and interestingly, I start an A section with a chord rooted on each note of the chromatic scale except for F#/Gb. I’m pretty sure I use every chord quality available at some point or other along the way. The final A section is the one I’m happiest with, and I did it first actually. The chromaticaly ascending bass line satisfies some compositional urge in me that I can’t explain. I …

Tagged as: Over, Rainbow, Somewhere