I find it beautiful and fascinating how a melody can be changed or enhanced by an artistic choice of the underlying chords. As a study in chord choice, I spent an afternoon reharmonizing Ode to Joy. Here’s my finished product.

Even though it’s really short, this was a lot of fun to work on. It was really satisfying to see how adding sevenths to chords made the progression feel jazzier, and how throwing in unusual chords like major thirds and sixths made it feel more tangy and colorful, and how bringing it back to the tonic at the end makes it feel like you’ve wandered afield and come back home. I really had no feel for chord progressions before starting to teach myself music theory some two years ago, but playing around with different ideas and listening very closely to the results in this and known songs and a lot of improvisation has really helped. It’s wonderful to see that there are deeper ideas in music besides the notes, behind the notes, and the structure there is really magical to see and feel.