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One thing that I love about the playing of Barney Kessel is that he often referenced the block chord before playing a lion derived from it, even sequentially.
I think we can learn from that. It can help us deal with the critical issue how to start a melody and sequencing melodies together in a unitary whole as part of an entire song .
We can leverage the block chords we all know and use one of the notes as a starting point to a melody .
For example: sketch out the cord sequences of a tune, A Section, B section, what have you .
Play the chords in order until you have them under your fingers. Start with the first chord. Play it. Immediately use one of the notes you have fingered in the chord as a starting point to launch a small fragmentary melodic phrase, that has countour and expression ( The line ascends, decesnds, ascends then descends, descends then ascends, utilizes accents, vibrato, slurs , etc--- Real melodies have these ).
Then play the next chord, use one of the notes you have played from the chord and do the exact same thing you did with the first chord -- Play the scalar fragment beginning at that note that has Contour and expression .
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08-11-2017 11:55 PM
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Excellent. Seen that before - review definitely in order.
Originally Posted by WILSON 1
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The power of this approach has I think very little to do with actual "singing" but rather it is a means to force you to pause while you take a breath. If there's no "breath" in a line, it's not natural/human, it's mechanical/ machine. Originally Posted by bako
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Triads
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How about Triads + rhythm Originally Posted by jordanklemons
Triads
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Man, Christian... the ONE time I try and hold to brevity and simplicity, and you gotta go and overcomplicate everything with your British verbosity. Originally Posted by christianm77
Okay fine... rhythm is important too!
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Why not? Originally Posted by guitaroscar
I wouldn't really say that those players played singable melodies. If that were so every improv would become a lovely new tune in its own right. It's not so, it's improv. What makes it interesting is its relation to the song in question.
But why don't you think your solos are melodic enough? Is it because you don't actually feel them very much? If you have the feeling it'll show in what you play. But you have to feel and 'hear' it first.
Most players practice technical stuff. That's necessary but one has to go beyond that. Have the knowledge and technique certainly, but be free to inject creative feel into it too. Otherwise it's all cerebral, all head and no heart.
How do you 'feel' it? I'm not sure. Partly something in you, partly from a lot of listening to things you like. Knowing the basic lyrics, or idea, of a song (if it's a song you're playing) helps.
Play to the spirit of the tune or song. Get the feel of it and move with that. If you're busy struggling just to put the right notes in over the harmonies then it won't leave a lot of room for anything else, so that has to be mastered first.
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The jazz clinic score with the Do Re Mi things appearing twice per measure reminds me of something.
I think it was Hal G that said the ear distinguishes the embellishments, enclosures, half step slurs and all the other ornaments apart from the stream of solo notes and notices what he called the "half note melody"... this is what you get if you strip everything down to two notes per bar... typically important harmonic roles.
The implication is that when you are improvising a solo you can "project" a conceptual half note melody around which you apply various mechanisms and the ear will respond to it nicely, naturally.
For example, in the "Wes Process" thread video, he starts the song something like:
lead in Eb Eb Ab Bb
over 2-5-1 of Bbm7 Eb(9) Ab(69) he plays C C C Bb Ab G where the half note melody sounds like C G
over 2-5-1 of Abm7 Db(9) Gb(69) he plays Bb Db Bb Ab Gb F where the half note melody sounds like Bb F
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This is a succinct way to introduce chord tone embellishment as a way of constructing melodic solos, but it could have been way better if a dozen or so more embellishments were explored. Originally Posted by WILSON 1
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Yeah I like this approach. Originally Posted by pauln
So how do you come up with a strong half note melody line to start with? See comment above from Jordan.
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Musical interval training is key to playing what you are "singing" in your head.
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Originally Posted by pauln
This is more or less the basis of Trombone player Ed Byrne's Linear Jazz ideas---the concept of instead of using the chords and chord-scales as the bases for improv (too much information), the actual tune is studied and the most essential parts of the tune comprise the REDUCED MELODY, which is the tune's most important notes, usually notated as whole or half notes. The most important step is away from the instrument, to be able to sing the reduced melody (again, mainly half and whole notes) and get ingrained, thoroughly).
Then about 8 different ways to chromatically target the reduced melody are done, in line with the tune's essential rhythms.
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I've actually done a good bit of this... with pencil and paper I mean. Originally Posted by christianm77
To write out a guide tone line using half notes on the 1st and 3rd beat of each measure. Then go back and fill in the 3 missing 8th notes that connect them. Yields some really interesting ideas. And it's FANTASTIC for learning to really feel the power and strength of those two beats. You can literally get away with anything (diatonic scales, triads, arpeggios, passing tones, enclosures, chromatic bs, etc) and you'll still hear the chord progression in your lines if you play this way.
Though I don't think I'd have the state of mind to actually think and improvise that way in a real setting... personally. Some might. But the act of writing it out, hearing what it resulted in, and then being able to play it and FEEL those beats with those strong notes on them... it really helped get me to the point of being able to feel internally when an important beat is coming and to be able to get myself to where I want to be for it.
So I guess in that sense I suppose I do improvise that way in real settings... it's just not a matter of composing an entire melody or having a state of mind as much as it is about learning to feel time and rhythm and then just knowing what I want to play over it.
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An idea that I was told traced back to Lee Konitz:
In addition to the extracted important notes of a reduced melody is an upper and lower harmony.
This then presents a 3 tier collection of starting reference melodies linked to the original song that can
then be expanded and mutated according to taste.
I don't believe that it was intended to be so strict that the same notes landed always in their original position
but I am a 3rd hand storyteller in a game of telephone. Also, I was given the impression that determining
what the important skeletal notes of the melody are, is open to personal interpretation, more than one answer
is possible.Last edited by bako; 08-14-2017 at 10:27 AM.
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Bert Ligon is big on this stuff, right? With his book on Connecting Linear Harmony?
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Just to back up with Jordan is saying with my own experience, sometimes composing lines on paper is a great way to come up with things you wouldn't normally play.
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Five simple ways to start:
1. Read the music lesson by Victor Wooten. Reads like a novel. Life changing read about being musical.
2. Learn how to "pitch shift" a simple motif through simple changes like the blues. By rhythmic. Let go of right or wrong notes. Think of contour. Build anticipation going up, and release by going down. Think like a listener. They'll follow if you lead them. And...all's well that ends well.
3. Follow Hal Crook's advice and solo for a bar, lay out for a bar. Try two and two. Comp for yourself in the space.
4. Try to communicate ideas in 4 bar phrases instead of change by change.
4. Do what Jerry Bergonzi suggests below:
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Sheryl Bailey on 4 bar phrasing:
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Here's my suggestion for the OP. Take any initial chord tone and create an ascending or descending line that moves by semitones or tones through the changes. Each pitch could last for either 1, 2 or 4 beats per bar depending on the rate of harmonic change. These pitches may then be elaborated upon both melodically and rhythmically but the underlying voice-leading will lend continuity to your lines (and that sounds like what you're after). This skeletal outline could then (as per bako's comments about Lee Konitz) be set against an alternate line to create a kind of dialogue.
Adam Neely talks about something similar in this video and calls it the 'cantus firmus' method:
It's also a useful process for expansion. Take Bert Ligon's outline templates for instance. They are usually written as short ii-V-Is but one useful exercise might be to take these and reconfigure them as long ii-Vs, retaining all the original pitches:
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Sometimes the inner harmony-center is sleeping so everything is numb. Can follow the harmony, can make a melodic lines but it's not gonna "matter" much. I sometimes play just one note against a chord and focus on the feeling it creates. That helps to wake up something in the mind.
But found that this helps also - take a good sounding backing track for a known thing. Play only long notes, listen it against the comp, focus on the harmony feel. Hold back going for a phrase, just keep listening your long notes. Hm, that worked for me today. Might be helpful for someone else, maybe
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My suggestion is to keep things really simple, take a simple motif, say 6 notes or less, something you made up, a lick or fragment of a melody or a simple rhythmic idea. Practice over a loop, chord progression until you're comfortable, then play around with it - add/take away notes, vary the rhythm, try making question/answer phrases up. When you get lost/in a tangle, go back to the basic idea. Don't get theoretical/technical about it, concentrate on enjoying what you're doing. Two or three simple ideas is enough to get through a chorus of most tunes.
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I haven't read through the thread. Sorry. But a couple of quick notes. Singing is cool. But the melodic note choices tend to be the ones of the chords. Especially the 3rds. Following the 3rd will just sound melodic. Simplicity and space. But also, and a lot of people miss this obvious point: repetition. You can play a bizarre phrase, but if you repeat it, the listener can better understand it. Melodicism is all about the listener being able to easily predict. It might be a motif that is similar to others, or through call and response, repetition becomes understandable and somewhat easier to predict. So rhythmic consistency, or digestible cells, that follow the chord structure will almost always be melodic. As long as it's logical and not too unusual.
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Singing the melody is popular advice here but one point I think is important is to sing the lyrics!
By adding the lyrics you are forcing yourself into the long tones of the melody. Try and play the melody as you hear a singer sing it. It's incredible how trying to play these vocalizations in the melody make it jump out as more than an exercise in sight reading a melody.
Rearrange the lyrics/sentences as you sing it back to yourself on following choruses to change that melody but still keep it melodic. Listen closely to singers and how they vocalize. People's ears will inherently recognize something that is closer to the spoken/sung word than not.
Soon you'll be holding vowels and riffing through consonants!
Just another way to think of melody along with all of the other great advice.
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