You’re Thinking About Reharmonization All Wrong

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Most pianists learn reharmonization by starting with chords.

And while that’s completely natural, it often leads to arrangements that sound interesting, but don’t feel cohesive, stylistic, or musical.

In this video, I show a style-first approach to reharmonization by playing Silent Night five different ways, using the same melody to demonstrate how style, harmony, rhythm, and interpretation work together when arranging music.

You’ll hear how reharmonization changes when:
✅ harmony is used to highlight a single phrase
✅ straight-ahead jazz harmony reshapes the tune
✅ complex jazz chords don’t fit a New Orleans–style march
✅ modern jazz (ECM-style) harmony invites greater harmonic possibilities

Rather than treating reharmonization as a collection of chord substitutions, this video shows how starting with style gives you direction, helping you make clearer musical decisions at the piano.

This is especially helpful if:
❌ reharmonization feels random or confusing
❌ your arrangements sound “busy” but not musical
❌ you want to play arrange songs with more confidence

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0:00 Why pianists misunderstand reharmonization
1:12 Partial reharmonization
3:38 Changing style with reharmonization (Straight-Ahead jazz)
7:14 Simplifying chords for style (New Orleans March)
11:12 Complex reharmonization (ECM)
14:06 Why you should start with style when learning to reharmonize