Keeping time in a chord melody

**S_R_S5** · 10-12-2011, 02:19 AM

I'v been working on chord melodies alot recently and I have come across something that I can't find an answer for. Should Chord-Melodies be in time or does it not matter? I'v asked a couple people and some say Yes it should be in time and others say no it doesn't matter sense there is no band.

What is your thought? Should I try to keep chord melodies to a rhythm or should I stretch some areas out and make it slower for a special impact?

**Franklin52** · 10-12-2011, 04:18 AM

Other users can doubtless give a better answer but in the mean time this can bring some light in the darkness:

Tempo rubato - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**S_R_S5** · 10-12-2011, 04:24 AM

Thanks brother, I am reading it now.

**keith** · 10-12-2011, 10:09 AM

Frequently ballads are played rubato but many times I'll hear chord melodies where the elements aren't played well despite being in rubato. For example you'll hear the composition start out and none of the elements ( rhythm, harmony, melody etc ) are aligned to the original so the ear doesn't get the chance to establish the base of the tune before modifications occur in improv. I may not be clear here but I think early on it's important to establish the melody so if you're laying down chords to express the melody but your timing doesn't reflect the phrasing well it falls flat. Often a tempo or groove will be set up in the harmony where the melody will deviate a bit which will work once the melody is established but there is some constancy for the ear to latch on to. There may be single line breaks but if you don't keep the tempo steady in your head to some degree it'll sound as if you're lost or wandering especially if you come back into the chords in an odd spot.

You should play your compositions the way you hear them in your head but beware of modifying what you're hearing because your skill set is not up to speed. The ear is looking for some constancy to latch on to whether it be the melody or rhythm etc so work to express this. The tempo is probably the least important issue here so slow it down until you can get the other elements aligned and working. Listen to some of the masters play chord melodies and you'll hear how they change things around and how it is working. I hope this obtuse answer helps!!

**matt.guitarteacher** · 10-12-2011, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by keith

You should play your compositions the way you hear them in your head but beware of modifying what you're hearing because your skill set is not up to speed.

+1. There are way too many people playing CM rubato or completely changing the rhythm of the tune because something's too hard. You learn a lot by learning to really play it in time.

Altering the rhythm, altering the pitches, or playing a tune rubato should be choices you make about the music and not something that "happens to you" because of the difficulty of playing a tune (or phrase).

**JimmyK** · 10-12-2011, 11:20 PM

A great guitar teacher once said to learn to play the notes in the correct time first, and when you've got the melody in your mind as written, start adding in the chords. The notes and my ear, the chords and my ear, and then my ear..in that order. Works for me. Good Luck

**mr. beaumont** · 10-13-2011, 12:04 AM

I have drums playing in my head. Helps me leave space too.

Right now, my head drummer plays like terry clarke.

**S_R_S5** · 10-13-2011, 02:15 AM

Thanks for the useful insight guys! This is very helpful.

**Dazz** · 10-13-2011, 06:36 AM

One exercise that I have used to try to check/fix time is to play the chords of the tune and maybe even the melody in BIAB and try to play the CM over that. It is murder at first. Overall, this has made me nearly give up on CM seeing as my time sucked so much and seeing how hard it was to not keep lagging behind. The melody really has to move along smoothly and in time or it will sound lame except when you explicitly choose to play rubato sections for effect.

**markf** · 10-13-2011, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

+1. There are way too many people playing CM rubato or completely changing the rhythm of the tune because something's too hard. You learn a lot by learning to really play it in time.

Altering the rhythm, altering the pitches, or playing a tune rubato should be choices you make about the music and not something that "happens to you" because of the difficulty of playing a tune (or phrase).

yes this is right,

this is the ugly secret of chord melody.

it's physically difficult, very difficult to get your hands from chords to a single note phrase, especially at a higher tempo, without going out of time.

it is a completely different position for you fingers, hand, wrist, and different muscles.

so you get unintended rubato. there's a lot of that.

that was part of the brilliance of Barney Kessel. he solved this problem

**Dazz** · 10-13-2011, 08:55 AM

Originally Posted by markf

yes this is right,

this is the ugly secret of chord melody.

it's physically difficult, very difficult to get your hands from chords to a single note phrase, especially at a higher tempo, without going out of time.

it is a completely different position for you fingers, hand, wrist, and different muscles.

so you get unintended rubato. there's a lot of that.

that was part of the brilliance of Barney Kessel. he solved this problem

Barney played some great solo stuff (some nice vids on youtube plus his album "Solo"). How did he solve it (unless you just mean from the obvious: practice a lot etc.)?

**matt.guitarteacher** · 10-13-2011, 10:02 AM

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

Right now, my head drummer plays like terry clarke.

That's great. Dude, you're a riot. :-)

**mr. beaumont** · 10-13-2011, 10:15 AM

I'm only kinda kidding...When I play chord melody, I do imagine drums in my head...

**matt.guitarteacher** · 10-13-2011, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by markf

yes this is right,

this is the ugly secret of chord melody.

it's physically difficult, very difficult to get your hands from chords to a single note phrase, especially at a higher tempo, without going out of time.

it is a completely different position for you fingers, hand, wrist, and different muscles.

so you get unintended rubato. there's a lot of that.

that was part of the brilliance of Barney Kessel. he solved this problem

Changing the chords smoothly is a big issue and is why most people fudge on timing/rhythm. One of the hardest things to play is the eighth note on the and of the beat preceding a chord. It's hard to make it swing when you've got less than half a beat to change to a new chord.

Probably the biggest thing that has helped me with this is to always consider that "and" of the beat to be part of the next chord in terms of how I finger it. Even if the "and" note is a chord tone of the preceding chord and is easily fingered that way, a lot of the time you'll leave yourself dry, jumping to the next chord. You also lose any possibility of playing it legato or really swinging into the beat with the chord change.

If you get used to this way of thinking you find yourself being able to play more "arranged" sounding stuff on the fly, off the lead sheet. It also creates the feeling that you have more time and you find yourself doing little slides and legato lines that you wouldn't have considered before.

**fep** · 10-13-2011, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

I'm only kinda kidding...When I play chord melody, I do imagine drums in my head...

Sometimes I'll record a chord melody along with a drum track. Then I just mute the drum track and I have a chord melody recorded with pretty good time. I guess that's not too different than using a metronome.

This kind of thing is used often when recording. They'll often record a scratch track (the instrumentation varies) with good time that all the multi-tracking will be done too. And the intention is the scratch track won't be included in the final mix.

BTW, BIAB is an easy way to create a scratch track that you multi-track over and at the end of the day you don't use the BIAB track at all.

**markf** · 10-13-2011, 03:52 PM

Originally Posted by Dazz

Barney played some great solo stuff (some nice vids on youtube plus his album "Solo"). How did he solve it (unless you just mean from the obvious: practice a lot etc.)?

solve I guess is the wrong word;

Yes, I mean the two obvious things, practising a lot, and, a lot more natural ability than most players have.

**wolflen** · 10-13-2011, 04:32 PM

i sat in awe when ted greene would show me a CM of a standard..from the sheet music..and then show me "his take" and throw in some bach flavored passage with the melody of the tune..and he would bend the tempo and move the voices so you would hear the counter point and do a call and response of the melody with different voices..

it was then i realized that ted was not human..

i can put together a CM now but it takes some time before it becomes second nature and i can move around the fretboard and keep the chords ringing with the melody of top..

but i find that if i play it in as many keys as possible i begin to see more "connections" with the chords..using simple triads sometime make things flow so much easier..

**Jazzaluk** · 10-13-2011, 06:11 PM

One thing I do to bring things up to tempo is to create a "sketch" of the chord melody. After i work something out in slow time, i then reduce the tune to two target chords per bar and practice them in time until it is comfortable (metronome works well here).

Then I flesh it out by threading in the melody , arps and phrases while keeping the pulse of the sketch in mind.

I find it is a good way to keep a reference point in mind while practicing. Over time the sketch is totally replaced and hopefully the pulse remains.

**Billnc** · 10-14-2011, 01:25 AM

The chord melody head isn't so bad for me. When it comes to improvising I can get into some trouble. I've found this helps, play the tune (this is once it is down) for a long periods of time, say half an hour to an hour, I'll throw in some single lines and chord improvisations. This helps me to keep the structure while performing (time and harmonic rhythm).

**tpaysen** · 12-02-2011, 04:30 AM

Listen to some of George VanEps's stuff. He had a way of intermingling chord melody and single string melody elements so that it all sounded just right. I think that it is a matter of listening, and picking and choosing so that the whole thing makes sense.

**artcore** · 12-02-2011, 11:53 AM

With all respect to the great Ted Greene, if you watch his vids you'll see he doesn't keep metronome like time ...at least on the live gigs..The only
CD available is a different story...It doesn't, in my opinion, distract from his truly beautiful CM's.....

**matt.guitarteacher** · 12-03-2011, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by artcore

With all respect to the great Ted Greene, if you watch his vids you'll see he doesn't keep metronome like time ...at least on the live gigs..The only
CD available is a different story...It doesn't, in my opinion, distract from his truly beautiful CM's.....

There's a big difference in what Ted's doing and what the OP was talking about. Some people can't play in time and just chalk it up to playing rubato. There's a difference. If you're playing rubato well, the listener can still "hear" the beat even if the tempo varies or there are fermatas and such. Players like Ted Greene play rubato because that's the sound they hear and they play it. Aurally, there's a very musical "logic" to it.

The question is always this: "Are you purposefully making it rubato as an expression of your art or is 'rubato just happening to you' because you don't have the skill to play it in time?". It's hard to describe, but the listener can certainly tell the difference.

Playing rubato has to be an artistic choice, not just a label to put on music not played in time. It's kind of like looking at abstract art by Picasso as an amateur and saying, "Well, even my 3-yr-old could do that!". Not exactly. Those who know anything about art understand the difference.

**artcore** · 12-04-2011, 03:40 PM

To me if the flow is good the time is right, I'm not counting beats when I listen to a CM....When a guy is playing rubato, it doesn't matter to me if he slows a bit here or speeds up a little there...I don't know if he has a time problem or not..I guess good rubato is good flow?...whats bad rubato?.....

**Hernandinho** · 12-06-2011, 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

Probably the biggest thing that has helped me with this is to always consider that "and" of the beat to be part of the next chord in terms of how I finger it. Even if the "and" note is a chord tone of the preceding chord and is easily fingered that way, a lot of the time you'll leave yourself dry, jumping to the next chord. You also lose any possibility of playing it legato or really swinging into the beat with the chord change.

Hi Matt, I have been trying your method for the last couple of weeks and it has helped with some difficult passages in the CM's I'm working on. Thanks for sharing!

**matt.guitarteacher** · 12-07-2011, 02:11 AM

Originally Posted by Hernandinho

Hi Matt, I have been trying your method for the last couple of weeks and it has helped with some difficult passages in the CM's I'm working on. Thanks for sharing!

Cool. I kind of happened upon this way of playing last year, about this time, while playing through "Christmastime is here". It has similar problems with awkward chord changes (at least for me). When I started fingering those eighths with the next chord in mind, it went from being a frustrating tune to one that I couldn't stop playing. I was kind of mesmerized with it.