Reharmonising

Since I bought my Washburn guitar a few months ago, I've been playing it exclusively, at the detriment of my Ovation acoustic. Tonight is the Passover Seder, which means that as usual I will be playing a certain song. I seriously considered playing the song on the Washburn along with a little chorus and reverb from my amplifier, but then I realised that the logistics would be too complicated (we'd need an electrical extension cable and an extra microphone) so I decided to play the Ovation as usual.

It was strange for maybe five minutes to play this guitar. The fretboard and strings felt different, not to mention the contoured body (which is more of a hindrance than a help). But after a few minutes, it was back to normal. I should replace the strings on the guitar because they're sounding a bit dull but that can wait. I went over 'the song' a few times to get the fingers working again. This song has a rather jazzy harmonic sequence with an uneven number of chords per bar (sometimes one, sometimes two and sometimes three), making it extremely dense. I originally learnt the song when someone gave me a chord sequence, although I've altered it slightly over the years. Once I heard the song on the radio, which suggested a subtle change as well.

Last night, the singer and I had a short rehearsal. True, we know the song backwards and have been performing it for nearly twenty years but we always like to warm up. Normally she sings in C minor, but this year we're performing the song in A minor, meaning no capo - the open strings can ring out! Thinking of a different introduction to the song, I played the standard samba chord sequence; suddenly I noticed that she could sing the opening line to that sequence instead of the usual one so quickly I reharmonised the first half of the song. Let's hope that I remember what to do.

Leaving her house, I realised that those opening chords are very similar to the opening chords of 'Stairway to heaven'; if it works well, I'm going to play a little musical joke by playing the opening of STH then going into our song. I wonder whether anyone will notice.