The Minor Reharm

Reharmonization is a musical term for changing the chords in a song while keeping the melody the same.

Jazz musicians do this a lot. There’s also been recent fashion amongst young singers for slowing down fast songs and reharming them in a minor key. One example that sticks in my mind was a reharmed version of John Travolta and Olivia Newton John’s “You’re the One that I want.” The original song had the happy urgency of teenage longing. The new version, at least to my mind, sounded like an obsessive stalker sitting in his van late at night, waiting for his target to walk by.

The minor reharm can be a lazy way for a musician to pump a bit of emotion into a song. I think it’s a good way to describe the process by which writers invest their stories with fake emotion.

The minor reharm is often evident in TV series and box sets. You notice it when characters’ emotions are magnified to fill screen time. They argue and fall out for no reason other than to provide enough plot to take the episode to the break.

This is not only lazy writing, it’s not even accurate. People don’t fall out so easily in real life. When I was growing up in the ’70s, many of the sit coms revolved around farcical misunderstandings. Many of the TV series I give up watching nowadays depend on the same thing, except without the humour.

Of course, the minor reharm is not exclusive to the TV. You see it all the time in stories by authors who should know better. Rather than give examples it’s probably more instructive to refer to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Here the minor reharm that was the gothic novel is parodied to glorious effect.

If you’ve never read it, give it a try. You’ll be astonished how modern the tone feels.