# Harmonizing Mary Had a Little Lamb - Some Accidental Notes?



## mozilla2004 (Nov 1, 2020)

I'm trying to learn how to harmonize a melody. A friend sent me an example of Mary Had a Little Lamb which he found online somewhere:










I'm caught off guard by the D7/F# because the IV chord is normally a minor chord iv. Using a dominant seven chord, introduces an F# accidental. I want to know if I am looking at the application of a technique/musical device here and if so, what is it's name?

For example, the E and E7 chords also introduce accidental notes, but I understand they perform the role of a secondary dominant, and they resolve to their tonic the Am chord.

My guitar skills aren't good enough to play the above composition smoothly, so I transcribed it to noteflight.com so I could listen to it:






I thought it sounded "alright". I then tweaked the above composition such that D7/F# becomes Dm7/F , E become Em, and E7 becomes Em7. This way only scale notes are used, and no accidental notes. It sounded like this:






I'm not musically trained, so as a novice, the two sound the same to me. Am I missing something very subtle but important here?


Note: I know some people say, "forget all these theories and rules. If it sounds good, then it sounds good. Just play music." My reply is..yes...but....that doesn't feel like a very satisfying answer to me...so I want to poke around for more "theoretical" perspectives.

Also, I'm new to all this, so I might have used the wrong vernacular for what I'm trying to say, I welcome corrections!


----------



## Grab n Go (May 1, 2013)

The E7 - Am7 - D7/F# seems like a bunch of II-V's. I think the F# in the bass just helps it resolve to the Fmaj7 (normally D7 resolves to G). It's a little bit of jazz to mix it up a bit.

It seems like you prefer to keep it in one key, which is fine. It's really just a matter of taste.

This inspired me to look up what other people have done. This dude is out of control, especially the last arrangement. Some cool approaches.


----------

