Scarborough Fair (Arr)

This is an arrangement of Scarborough Fair I've done for the choir I run, and I'm posting it here for a few opinions on how it looks so far. The descant parts need some work, I know, but the basic idea is there. This was basically a case of "how many different ways can I harmonise a I IV V melody", heh. My favourite verse is the third verse, which starts on chord IV. The pseudo-polyphonic bit on the fourth verse doesn't quite work, yet, so I'm wondering if any of you are willing to suggest a few changes to make it sound a bit nicer, and the same for the descants.

I've run it through Harmony Assistant as well to get a pseudo-sung OGG (not MP3) version which makes it sound a bit less Carousel Music, heh.

Scarborough Fair [3:39]

Scarborough_Fair_2.mid

Hi, here's my humble critique. First of all, it's just from listening to the sound file, so I'd have to actually look at the notes to figure out the awkward spots.

I think overall there ae some really nice moments. There are less awkward moments in the later parts of the piece, like the 2nd half. The following moments stuck out as not working well. I imagine in most of those a simple change of chord quality like minor to major would make it sound better:

:33

:35

:44

the end of the second verse, too much parallel motion in the cadence.

the 3rd verse was really nice, good conterpoint.

at around 2:11 the few chords there are way too non-functional I think. Rework this.

2:39 weird

3:00 change to a dominant 7th chord (I think, I only listened once...)

3:34 also a bit weird

It's a really nice attempt though, just refine some of those progressions. :happy:

Hmm, at 2:09 I was trying to switch to an unrelated key and failed, hehehe. I'm sort of normalifying it a bit right now, but it's hard to come up with something different to the rest that doesn't sound crap.

0:19/3:33 is one of my favourite chords in the entire piece. :/ I think it adds a bit of character to the first and last verses (they're exactly the same).