"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

i thought we'd look at a holiday tune that has some very nice chords, and great opportunities for re-harmonization. we'll start by analyzing the form, and looking at some of the chord progressions we have all heard accompanying the melody. we will spend some time re-harmonizing this piece using chords that are open and simple enough for *all* of us to play on the piano. we will look at several examples of chord substitutions for the bridge, and try and identify those, as well as identify some endings.

minor changes

we'll look at some minor progressions and talk about how they differ from major progressions. we will also spend some pointing out similarities between major and minor. as a review, take a look at this blog post on basic diatonic theory i posted on my theory blog. we will look at the following progression...

Dmin7 G7 Cmaj7 Bmin7(b5) E7(alt) Amin7

we will discuss how this progression moves from major to its relative minor, and how it is a 2-5-1 progression in C major followed by the same progression in A minor.

we will also work on 'there is no greater love'

no moon at all

this saturday, we will look at the standard 'no moon at all' credited to (Evans / Mann) Lita Roza 1957. here are a couple of youtube videos:





with these 2 versions, we should find very different treatments of this nice simple melody. we will be looking at the first few phrases, and talking about how they start with the same note, and what that means for motivic development. we will see how to apply this style of development to our own ideas over different chord structures (such as the blues).