In the previous post we looked at the jazzadvice.com and looked at it's views on reharmonisation. One of the examples that website provided was a reharmonisation of a basic pop song - a reharmonisation which turned it into a jazz style.
Funnily enough, the band that reharmonised the songs is one of my favourite artists, and a band I planned to study once the main bulk of the project was underway. The band was known as "Dirty Loops", and they gained popularity for their extreme reharmonised versions of well known pop songs. In order to discover more about what reharmonisation is, we'll look at an example of one of these bands.
Above is "Rolling in the Deep", a popular song by British artist Adele. The song is in the key of D minor and has a basic chord sequence, typical of a modern pop song. Compare that to the version of the same song below as performed by Dirty Loops:
Quite a contrast! While the instrumentation and style is different, the melody mostly stays the same (apart from ad-libed vocal melodies) but the chord sequence is vastly different. While not typical of the smooth jazz style that the project is looking to imitate, this is a clear example of jazz reharmonisation in action. The chords have been completely changed.
Through practical examples like this, we can see 1) what reharmonisation is, and 2) it's importance within music. By reharmonising basic pop songs in this style, Dirty Loops have gone from a Youtube based group to an act who are currently touring the world, selling out venues all over.
From their success we can clearly see that the ability to reharmonise basic pop songs at any level - an ability which this project seeks to give people - is one which would be appealing to many musicians and laypersons alike.
J
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