Writing a contrafact is the act of taking an existing set of chord changes and writing your own melody to it. This is great for a number of reasons. First, you can cure writers block beautifully with this tactic. Sometimes when we can’t come up with anything new and fresh on our own, it’s valuable to take someone else’s creativity and put our own spin on it. Secondly, this is a great way to practice our own melodic writing using some of the best chord changes from the history of this music.
In this episode, I have written a contrafact over the tune, Ladybird, by Tadd Dameron. We are using this tune because we have taken a look at it previously on the podcast so it should be familiar to us. The final step in getting the most out of a contrafact is taking your new melody and then re harmonizing the chord changes to make a completely original tune! Enjoy the episode!
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Loved this !
This is a proud tradition
A super example that springs to mind is “In walked Bud” from Thelonious Monk , which I think is a new melody over Berlin’s “Blue skies”
Thanks a million
Absolutely correct. In Walked Bud is a contrafact to Blue Skies. Thanks for checking out the show!