When I talk about my Contrafact Studies, people usually ask me what a contrafact is. Here is my explanation. Contrafactum is a term used to describe a process in vocal composition when a new text is substituted for an old text. This was common during the Renaissance era, when religious texts were set to secular music. (When new words are set to existing music for a humorous effect, the term parody is usually used.) The term contrafact was used in the twentieth century to describe a process in jazz composition in which a composer writes a new melody over an existing chord progression from another song. George Gershwin’s song I Got Rhythm was used for many contrafacts by composers such as Charlie Parker. I adapted this idea when writing my Contrafact Studies by taking the chords from songs from the American Songbook/jazz standards, and creating short guitar pieces with them. There are three basic approaches one can take when composing a contrafact: 1. keep the original chord progression without making any changes, 2. make some slight changes to the original chord progression, and 3. change the chords so much that the original chord progression is not longer recognizable. I took the first and second options for the Contrafact Studies. Below is a video about contrafacts by George Colligan on his jazztruth YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VcWGOdBco8