Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us – Insight into the harmony

No song on Portraits of Hope is more controversial than “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us.” I am hardly surprised. Even though the song is very laid back and quiet, it utilizes harmony that is a bit unique. While it is hardly cutting edge, that harmony is certainly not commonly found in conservative church music.

Some of the comments have been very positive and some have been very negative. I have heard from a few that the harmony is completely inappropriate for the song. One mentioned the arrangement belongs in a night club. Some have at least admitted that their apprehension was probably due to just not understanding the harmony.

It does not bother me if people don’t like the piece. None of us will ever perform a piece of music that everyone likes. I enjoy the feedback when it is both positive and negative so feel free to send it over.

Today, I want to write about one aspect of the harmony that makes it different that what you may be used to. If you are interested in working through this with me and have not heard the song, download and listen to it here: http://www.greghowlett.com/downloads/savior-shepherd.mp3. If the link does not work, paste it into the address bar of your browser.

Now, if you can, also print out the sheet music. You can download it at http://www.greghowlett.com/downloads/saviorlikeashepherd.pdf.

Notice the measure numbers because I am going to be referencing them as we go. I want you to first notice that I use the same chord progression twice in the introduction (measures 1 and 2) and then start the song with the same progression (measure 5).

The progression is this: Eb – A7(#11) – Abdim. Examine these chords and see if you can understand why I named them this way. Some people would name them differently and that is fine too.

If you hear something in that progression you don’t like, it is almost certainly the #11 in the second chord. This is a modern, dissonant sound that has not yet made its way into church music very much.

The progression here may seem strange for the key of Eb. It is actually quite simple and based on two principles. Here they are:

1) Chords often like to resolve down a fifth or in either direction by steps/half steps.
2) There is often unity between a chord and the chord a tritone (3 whole steps) away. The movement between those chords is often lateral (neither moving toward or away from resolution). By the way, I wrote about this a few weeks ago if you are interested: Tritone substitutions

Now, if you look at the progression again, you see a tritone move between Eb and A and then a half step move. Both of these moves are logical from a functional theory standpoint.

Play the progression again and skip the A7 chord altogether (stay on Eb for the first two beats). Note that it works just fine with the one move down a fifth though it is not quite as interesting.

So, here is what I am doing not only here but throughout the song. When I see a chord resolving down a fifth, I am adding an additional chord into the mix to break up the movement of a fifth into two moves–a tritone move and a half step move.

In this example, rather than moving directly from Eb to Ab (a perfect fifth), I move from Eb to A7 (tritone) and then to Ab (half step).

Doing this creates interesting sounds because you are using chords that really do not belong to the key (A7 does not really fit into the key of Eb). And you also have to make the melody note fit the chord. In the introduction, I am playing Eb as the melody against a A7 chord. Eb is the #11 of a A7 chord, and hence the interesting sound.

If you start looking for this concept, you will see it in other places in the song. For example, look at measures 6 through the first beat of measure 7. The progression is this: Gmin – Cmin – F#7 – Fmin. The F#7 may be hard to see there at the end of measure 6 because I wrote Gb instead of F#. But play it and you will see it is F#7.

This progression would work very well as Gmin – Cmin – Fmin (leaving out F#7). But it wouldn’t be as interesting. The addition of the F#7 turns a movement by a fifth into two movements–a tritone and a half step. It also creates a scenario where the melody note (G) is the flat 9th of the F#7 chord. That is a pretty and more interesting sound.

Very logical, isn’t it? And frankly, not very complicated. If you are interested in learning this better, go through the piece and circle all the places where I do it.

There are other things that I do in this arrangement that I can cover at some other time but they are a bit harder to explain. And if you find this whole lesson to be a little too complex, don’t worry. You can go a long way without using this kind of complexity.