Reharmonisation Part 6: "Butter Notes"

One strategy of reharmonisation is to place key moments of the melody into a "special" harmonic context and take this as a starting point for the rest of the reharmonisation.

What do I mean by "special harmonic context"? I don't think there is a official term for these harmonic situations but I like to call them "butter notes". These are the key moments in a melody that you long for and ideally send a shiver down your spine or cause you to tear up. Ideally a melody has several of such moments but a well placed single moment like this can also be extremely effective.

The usual approach for "butter notes" is to place them at strategic functions higher up in the chord structure. If you are not familiar with extended harmony or tension notes, you should probably start exploring that first. In a nutshell, if you keep stacking thirds beyond the fifth of the regular triad, you get into the higher functions of a chord with sevenths, ninths, 11s and 13s, creating a richer harmony and generally sounding harmonically more "sophisticated".

This is not always desirable but when used at the right moment, it can create fantastic harmonic situations from anything between tear jerking and bone-chilling.

Basically, any note from that upper structure can become such a "butter note" but there are some that are generally prefered to work particularly well. In major, these would be the major7, 9 and #11, in minor respectively the 7, 9 and 11. If you aim to place specific notes of your melody as these functions on top of their underlaying chords, you can create these special moments of musical joy.

This strategy works both ways: You can place the chords underneath an existing melody so that they create these harmonic relationship or you can target to write your melody on top of chords to reach such notes.

Let me demonstrate what I mean at a simple example. As it is easier to compare, let's take the approach where the harmony is fixed and the melody note changes.

The following example is the same chord progression C-F-C where the melody targets a different peak note (orange) in every version, from maj7(e), 1(f), 9(g), 3(a) to #11(b). I tried to keep the melodic gesture as similar as possible but as a disclaimer the increasing leap of course increases the drama of that melody as well, but nevertheless, let's focus on these different notes and how some sound relatively pedestrian and others harmonically (and emotionally) rich:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/reharm-f/s-Di6qCPI5S0p

The power of these "butter notes" should not be underestimated.

Here's one of the most well known "butter notes":

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/reharmonisation-f-major/s-yYlQQLHWh7B

The octave leap into the add9 is one of the strongest melodical gestures James Horner could have come up with and the success of that theme and song proves him right.

I think now that the principle behind this strategy is clear there are a few more things to say about this approach:

Personally, I constantly think about what function the melody takes over the harmony and try to target key notes to hit these butter notes. This of course requires to always think parallel between melody and harmony as there is no point in placing a random melody note into a great place over the chord but compromising the melodic quality of the surrounding notes. So it takes quite a bit of practice to think these two levels in parallel. I also use these approaches when coming up with side lines for melodies that don't hit these notes.

In general, when you go down the path of using these harmonic extensions, you need to be relatively consequent about it. A melody that keeps moving over root, third and fifth that suddenly jumps to a #11 and then goes back to the basic fundamentals will feel relatively awkward and disconnected. The add9 in the example from Titanic above is one of the few exceptions where a singular extension works well but in most cases, it is a better choice to stay in this world of extended harmony. In a way, using just one instance of extended harmony feels like holding a speech in plain language and using one very fancy word in it. So setting up a general harmonic language is desirable over singular moments of different harmonic colour.

Reharmonizing existing melodies with this strategy is relatively challenging, especially when they are rooted in a clear scale with lots of melodic motion over that scale. In a nutshell, every new note in a melody narrows down the reharm possibilities and theoretically the best melody to reharmonize consist of a single note. If you manage to place a key note at a "butter note" in a chord but the surrounding notes heavily contradict that chord, you will have no luck in trying to get this reharmonisation to work.

This example shows what I mean:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/unsuccessful-reharm/s-EtO053fcOeO

In the second harmonisation, the F becomes the 9 over the Eb chord but the surrounding e's (the one before and especially the one after that rings on top of the Eb) contradicts this decision. This also shows the problem that oftentimes there is not just one note to harmonize but a series of notes (depending on how often you change chord) which all need to fit in that chord.

So a tasteful and effective reharmonisaton of a melody is quite tricky in spite of the technical knowledge of what to do. 

A consequence can also quite often be a shift of key. If your melody opens with an arpeggio of C, E and G, you could of course harmonize that with a C major chord where the notes will become root, third and 5th, but if you push that higher into the chord structure it could become the 3, 5 and 7 of an Am7 or the 5, maj7 and 9 of an Fmaj9. If that C major chord however was your tonal center, depending on what the melody is doing after that, the reharmonisation into higher chord functions could cause a shift of key center which will cause other consequences.

So taking this path for an existing melody is usually a big challenge and oftentimes a big puzzle game. If however done well, it can create incredible variants of known melodies. If you haven't stumbled across the several Youtube videos dissecting this version of the Star Spangled Banner, you should definitely give a listen to Whitney Houston's version from the 1991 Super Bowl.

Besides the otherworldy singing performance, the arrangement and reharmonisation is exquisite. Again, with a strong tendency for "butter notes", just pay attention to the climax at 2:10 which settles the melody note at the 9th of a beefy Dbmaj9 chord (instead of the fifth that it would be in the original chords)

The comparatively easier approach is if the melody is "flexible" and you can shape it on top of the chords that you're going for. In such instances, it definitely is worth trying out different options for the melody and checking whether there is a variant possible that creates a greater emotional/harmonic impact (or ideally already anticipating these on inception of the melody).

As a strategy for learning I would advise making notes on every melody note marking what function it has in the chord and then trying out and getting a feel for the moments when a "butter note" might be worth going for.