Reharmonization - Love Me Tender

Love Me Tender, famously sung by Elvis Presley in 1956, is a song based on an 1861 song Aura Lee written by George Poulton. The changes below were taken from the Elvis version and transposed into the key of A. (The original Elvis key is in D.)

And, these are the reharmonized changes.

Let's look at the first 4 bars from the original Elvis changes.

In Roman-numerals analysis, the first chord - A - is a I chord, followed by B7 which is II7. The next is E7, which is V7, and the last one is A which is, again, I. The changes are therefore I - II7 - V7 - I.

Below is the same 4bars, reharmonized with more embellished chords.

The first bar's A became A6. In a major key, the first-hand alternatives for I chords are Imaj7, I6 and I add9. Aadd9 works fine here, too. Meanwhile, Amaj7 is not a very good choice because the major 7th note, G#, interferes with the A note in the melody.

The second bar's B7 was replaced by B9. This is a simple addition of an available tension. If I were to add another tension, the chord be B13. Sus4 can be used as well, making B7sus, B9sus and B13sus available.

The third bar's E7 was: (1) replaced by E9 and (2) intercepted by Bm7. First, the addition of tension 9 is a pretty simple, common practice for a V7 chord. Then the E9 invites Bm7 to form a II-V pattern. This is also a fairy common technique when V7 is present without its related IIm7. Same can be done for secondary dominants and extended dominants.

At the fourth bar is a newly installed chord, C/D (pronounced C on D). This is a C triad accompanied by a D note as the bass. Another way to call this chord would be D9sus. Although it lacks the 5th in order to be perfectly called D9sus, it still sounds very much like it since the 5th in a chord is often a note which can be omitted. (The reason for this is the inclusion of the perfect 5th in the overtone series.)

Let's call this C/D chord D9sus for the sake of analysis - it'll make it easier that way. D9sus is, essentially, D7, which is IV7 in this song's key - key of A major. IV7 is frequently used in major keys in order to produce somewhat bluesy, minor-ish mood. IV7 chord belongs to Dorian mode which is a minor mode. When a chord is imported from one mode to another, like in this example, that technique is called Modal Interchange.

Let's move on to the second line. Here are the original Elvis changes, which is the same as the first line.

And here's the reharmonized version.

The previous approaches are carried on here too, except at the end, where there's a new chord called Dm/E. Again, for the sake of analysis, let's rename this chord as "E something". We can call this chord E7sus(b9): F is the flat 9, D is the 7th, and A is the sus. Like C/D, this chord also lacks the 5th in order to fully constitute E7sus(b9), but the 5th (B) is strongly present in E's overtone and it can be omitted.

The third line. That's the chorus part of the song. Here's the original chord progression.

Before discussing the reharmonization technique to be applied to this part, let's have a good understanding of this original progression. Since there's a lot going on here, already.

Here's the roman-numerals analysis for this part.

Notice that there's an asterisk on the second chord, V7/VI. I put it to indicate that this chord is a Secondary Dominant chord, and special analysis must be applied to it. V7/VI is pronounced "five 7 of six", and it's a dominant seventh chord acting as if it's the V7 chord in the (hypothetic) key of VI. And the meaning of slash (/) here is completely different from the meaning of slash in the standard chord signatures such as C#7/G#.

C#7/G# is pronounced "C sharp 7 on G sharp", and it means "C#7, but have the G# note as the bass". So, the slash in the V7/VI is pronounced of, and the slash in the C#7/G# is pronounced on. And they have different meanings. Even though V7/VI and C#7/G# represent the same chord, the two signatures come from different analytical method and therefore the use of slash is different too.

Now, let's focus on what a Secondary Dominant does in the chord changes. I've said the V7/VI is a secondary dominant chord, and the V7/VI is the same as the C#7/G#. So what does C#7/G# do that's so special? Well, in the key of A, the chords based on C# would normally be C#m or C#m7, and not C#7. But we can change the C#m or C#m7 into C#7 to intensify the gravity of the chord towards the next one, F#m, whose root (F#) is a perfect 5th below C#. Thus, changing C#m7 into C#7 creates a dominant cadence.

There are two more cool things I want to point out in the original changes. I'll begin with the use of Counterpoint. Let's look at the original changes again.

The melody stays at C# for the first two bars. And the chord progression offers a descending bassline, to create counterpoint between the melody and the bass. On the first chord, A, the interval between them is major 3rd, and on the second chord the interval widens to become perfect 4th. It keeps widening to become perfect 5th on F#m, major 6th on A/E, and major 7th on D.

And the other thing to mention is the use of Modal Interchange in the third bar. It borrows the Dm chord from the key of A minor, the parallel minor of A major.

Now let's look at the reharmonized version.

This reharmonization takes the same contrapuntal approach as the original, only, it goes out of the diatonic border a bit more aggressively. The first chord, Amaj7, is a simple addition of the major 7th to the A chord. But the second chord is based on G, which is non-diatonic to the key. This G7(b5) is analyzed as a Sub V chord to the following F#m7. Sub V is a dominant 7th chord which resolves to the next chord, with the root motion descending by a half-step. "Sub" stands for "substitute", meaning it's a tritone-substitution chord for the original V chord. In this case, the G7 is a tritone substitution for C#7 which is a V chord for the following F#m.

The next chord, F#m7 is again a simple, diatonic addition of the 7th note. And the following F+7 is, just like the G7(b5), a Sub V for the E7 which comes after. F+7 is pronounced F augmented 7, and it's an F7 chord with the 5th raised by half-step. The reason why the G7 takes flatted 5th and the F7 takes augmented 5th is because I want them to go along the melody. The melody note, C#, is the b5 against G7 and #5 against F7.

The E7 in the 3rd bar is the V7 chord of the key and supposed to lead us back to A which is the I. But instead, what follows is a series of II-V pattern, Bbm7-Eb9 and Bm7-E9. These II-Vs are called Contiguous II-Vs. Contiguous II-Vs are multiple II-V patterns which are placed one after another, and are vertically away from each other by only a half-step. The Bbm7-Eb9 pattern is a half-step-lowered version of the following Bm7-E9. And the Bm7-E9 is the II-V of the key, which goes back to the I in the next bar. Here I wanted to create a rapid movement after the E7 stayed for the full four beats in the previous bar. And I knew I was going back to Amaj7 in the next bar, so some kind of cadence pattern would be appropriate. Luckily the melody note is C# here, which is the tension 9 against Bbm7 and the 7th against Eb9, so I chose to use these contiguous II-Vs.

Let's look at the last line. Original changes.

In roman numerals.

The second chord, F#7, is another secondary dominant. A purely diatonic chord based on F# in the key of A would be F#m7, but by changing it to F#7 we're creating increased gravity towards the following chord.

Here's the reharmonized version.

Nothing fancy here. Just a couple additions of 7th notes/available tensions, and an insertion of IIm7 before V7. The changing of F#7 into F#+7 in the second bar is in favor of accommodating the melody note a bit more gently. The D note in the melody is the #5 against F#7. But the original F#7 works fine too. The last chord, A69, is there to sort of add more colors. When the melody stays long on the root note, on A in this case, the maj7 chord isn't much of a great choice because it may produce conflict between the major 7th and the melody. The alternatives to A69 would be A6, Aadd9, A(#11) and so on.