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In another thread, there has been a discussion on whether or not there are many songs with changes based on Melodic Minor. I was hoping someone could name a few.
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05-26-2016 08:25 AM
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It's more like chunks of songs or particular harmonies that are built on that kind of sound ...
For example altered dominant chords ... Tunes that go to a minor iv chord often imply a minor/major 7 sound ... Dominant chords built on a flat 7 often get a melodic minor treatment too. Tonic minor 6 chords are another good one. Autumn Leaves is one that gets treated that way often even though the ii-V in the tune wouldn't suggest it. We probably have Miles and Cannonball to thank for that.
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Nica's Dream is probably the best one I can think of for a whole tune but it's not the whole time and it's more the minor vampy thing it has going on (i.e. it uses some of those specific harmonies for long stretches rather than really being written in a melodic minor key)
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Now you have me wondering what constitutes a song that is based on Melodic Minor. I was thinking of it as having chords derived from and diatonic to the Melodic Minor Scale.
This would mean the one chord would have to be Minor Major7, right? I don't recall hearing a song that resolves to that chord, except at the end of the song.
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Alsoran, can I ask why you're looking for entire MM songs? Just curious.
You might look for MM "moments" in tunes by looking for specific MM chords: Maj7#5 chords, minMaj7 etc...
Looking at extensions etc...
From Mark Levine's site:
Jazz Theory: Diatonic Chords in Jazz Harmony
"Examining the jazz theory behind each formulas, chord-by-chord (by relating back to each chord’s own root):C minor 13 (major 7)
- D minor 13 (b9)
- Eb major 13 (#11 #5)
- F13 (#11)
- G11(b13)
- Am11(b13, b5)
- Bm7(b13,b11,b9,b5)"
He has more on each chord at the site.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 05-26-2016 at 10:32 AM.
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Like the famous Henry Mancini chord from some of his soundtrack. Min (Ma7) 9 geez is there a good way to write that chord symbol?
I see melodic minor more as a toolkit you can use parts of for adding color or tension. I've been working on a lesson from my teacher on using melodic minor on rhythm changes and in scanning the internet seeing that is a topic or a lesson others give too. I wasn't too excited at first thinking hokey sounding rhythm changes again, but the melodic minor has turned this into Morpheus giving Neo the Red pill and I've gone down the rabbit hole to a huge world of ideas and sounds.
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last night I was talking with a friend of mine who is in his late 70s and is a tenor player from New York who is pretty well known around this area. But Arty has been around playing jazz since the 50s. He's an old school player
Originally Posted by AlsoRan
so we're talking and I say something about "modes of melodic minor" and Arty is chuckling...he says he never thought about that stuff, as in "ever"
so what I 'm getting at is that these days you'd think modes of melodic minor was really important, but not to the guys where were playing jazz before jazz education came into being
now having said that, I'll start plucking chickens so you fellas can warm up the tar and ride me out of town on a rail properly
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Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
This topic came up on the recent Modal Interchange thread and sparked my musical curiosity. Now, from all that I have read, you just won't find a lot of songs that have a bunch of chords diatonic to melodic minor.
So, to summarize, I probably won't see a song with for instance, Dm13 - G11(b13) - CMinMaj7 going through the cycles of fourths the way I do with diatonic chords from say, the Major Scale.
Thanks for indulging me. I will probably plug this into my BIAB and see if I can play any nice solos over it using the basic melodic minor scale and its (quote/unquote) modes.
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Originally Posted by Nate Miller
last night I was talking with a friend of mine who is in his late 70s and is a tenor player from New York who is pretty well known around this area. But Arty has been around playing jazz since the 50s. He's an old school player
so we're talking and I say something about "modes of melodic minor" and Arty is chuckling...he says he never thought about that stuff, as in "ever"
so what I 'm getting at is that these days you'd think modes of melodic minor was really important, but not to the guys where were playing jazz before jazz education came into being
now having said that, I'll start plucking chickens so you fellas can warm up the tar and ride me out of town on a rail properly
Everything is backwards these days old school even going back the classical master started with the ear. These days and especially since the digital age things start with some theory or "rule" and hopefully lead back to the ear. Nothing wrong with theory as long as it use as a way to learn new sounds NOT learn a new rule.
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Originally Posted by Nate Miller
last night I was talking with a friend of mine who is in his late 70s and is a tenor player from New York who is pretty well known around this area. But Arty has been around playing jazz since the 50s. He's an old school player
so we're talking and I say something about "modes of melodic minor" and Arty is chuckling...he says he never thought about that stuff, as in "ever"
so what I 'm getting at is that these days you'd think modes of melodic minor was really important, but not to the guys where were playing jazz before jazz education came into being
now having said that, I'll start plucking chickens so you fellas can warm up the tar and ride me out of town on a rail properly
Nah, not gonna run you out of town.
But if you guys played a bunch of music from the 50's (and earlier), of course you didn't run across a tune "based on MM harmony."
Generally, if we're thinking functional tunes, I'm not thinking of too many ENTIRELY based in MM...more like trips.
But if you get into stuff written later on, it's there. Always multiple ways to approach it...but sometimes, the MM might be the easiest thing to think about.Last edited by mr. beaumont; 05-26-2016 at 02:48 PM.
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None really.
Well not if you mean standards.
Standards have functional harmony and were written largely by properly trained composers who hadn't been afflicted with jazz college harmony 101. Which hadn't been invented yet because jazz musicians still had actual gigs.
Melodic minor harmony something you do to standards if that's the sort of thing that tickles your rhubarb... I like Invitation as an MM work out. Lots of fun.
I'm sure you can probably think of some jazz compositions of the past 40 or so years that use these sounds.Last edited by christianm77; 05-26-2016 at 02:36 PM.
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Nica's Dream is certainly a good candidate. The melody has that tinge. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
That said, in terms of soloing, the Dorian and the Melodic Minor (as I hear them) are very much part of a pool of resources for static minor chords, and it's been this way since the swing era. The main thing is play the natural 6. The 7 can be flat or natural. Dorian is probably a little more common...
Here is Wes playing the tune, to my ears he moves back and forth between sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ0ybQnhsvcLast edited by christianm77; 05-26-2016 at 03:01 PM.
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I was definitely thinking more along the line of standards. I looked through my real book and did not see any that seemed to qualify. Originally Posted by christianm77
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I'll second "Nica," an awful lot of m/maj7 chords in there. But I suppose that's not really melodic minor "harmony"...
and obviously, not the only way to skin it...
I think if you look at Wayne Shorter's writing, post bop stuff, this is where you're going to see more MM chords and modes...but we're not really looking at functional harmony at that point.
But the HM and MM get borrowed from for chords all the time, and guys were using these sounds earlier, whether they called them that or not. Remember, theory explains, not dictates.
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In response to your original question about "changes based on Melodic Minor" I think you have to look at the melody of the song to understand if the harmony is based/derived from melodic minor or as Christian Miller stated, if "Melodic minor harmony something you do to standards". It's definitely something people often do to standards, but I believe there are clear examples of songs that contain harmony from the melodic minor scale.
The second chord of "Take the A Train" is based on the lydian dominant mode of melodic minor. The D7(#11) is dictated by the G# in the melody of the song. Also check of Strayhorn's "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" as this is another example of melodic minor melody and harmony.
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Hmmmmmm... OK this is where it gets perhaps a little meta/super super nerdy Originally Posted by Chris Whiteman
A clearer example of 'Lydian Dominant' could be Out of Nowhere and Limehouse Blues, because melodically there is #4 and a 5 over a dominant chord in both examples. If the question is did the composer conceive of it that way, the answer is pretty much definitely - no.
Is the Ab7#11 in Cherokee a lydian dominant chord? Sure if you want to be for soloing. For Ray Noble it's just what happens when you have a diatonic melody note on a nice sounding chromatic chord.
The second chord in A Train could equally be whole tone (although not in the shout chorus - that's a chromatic move down from B to G#)....
Did Strayhorn know what a Lydian Dominant was? Dunno. I doubt it personally.
In the case of the G# it resolves up to a A in the next chord, so it's possible, perhaps likely that Strayhorn was thinking of it as a escape tone (is that the right term?) resolving by a half step, and the fact that it makes a super cool chord with the underlying II7 is not necessarily the result of some scalar thinking or other... That's kind of (AFAIK) the classical way to compose....
Hope that doesn't seem too convoluted and pointless.
In a way it doesn't matter what the composer was thinking, because who knows? All we have are the notes they wrote, not their thought process (although I believe there is value in exploring that in so much as it can be known - this book for example, is absolutely fascinating to me.)
If you want to play melodic minor modes on standards, go do that. In terms of soloing, I could take of leave the #11 in the second depending on my fancy - extensions are up for grabs. That said as the #11 chord is part of the tune itself, it does feel nice to reference that with a big fat E triad or something.
Anyway I'm going to check out some period soloist on A train and see what they do.... Thanks for the post!
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OK here Ellington himself is using the whole tone scale on the II7#11 chord in his piano solo. Both times.
To my ears (after a quick listen) Oscar's right hand favours either D dominant/mixolydian, the whole tone scale or just a simple C+ triad... He doesn't seem to be playing any explicit melodic minor/Lydian dominant harmony over the D7 chord, but I haven't listened to the whole thing in great depth.
It's an interesting thing to listen out for anyway.... I reckon whole tone is the default exotic choice on the D7, but I obv. need to listen more.
I'm also interested to hear what people do on Limehouse.
Bearing in mind the m6 over dom7 sub was very widely used in the 30s, people would be playing Gm say, over C7, so I would be amazed if there wasn't a bit of what we'd call Lydian Dom going on. But I'm pretty sure the soloists of the time would be thinking in terms of the minor, which may (or may not!) be melodic...
Interesting (A) train of thought anyway....
EDIT: Actually here's the Hot Club - Lyd Dom on C7 from both Django and Grapelli? It's the 'path of least resistance...'
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05-26-2016, 04:22 PM #18destinytot GuestInvitation, perhaps? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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MM is usually played from the 4th or 5th scale tone over various don7th chords with non-scale-tone roots, and some other places. Check Leavitt's Modern Method Vol.3 for more uses.
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I think during the 60's this type of harmony started getting a lot of attention. Herbie Hancock and Wayne shorter were two prominent composers delving into this area, eg dolphin dance, fe fi fo fum to name two. Composers started to use structures like triad over bass note to express melodic minor harmony and started featuring them in compositions.
cheers
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true so...last night I was talking with a friend of mine who is in his late 70s and is a tenor player from New York who is pretty well known around this area. But Arty has been around playing jazz since the 50s. He's an old school player
so we're talking and I say something about "modes of melodic minor" and Arty is chuckling...he says he never thought about that stuff, as in "ever"
so what I 'm getting at is that these days you'd think modes of melodic minor was really important, but not to the guys where were playing jazz before jazz education came into being
now having said that, I'll start plucking chickens so you fellas can warm up the tar and ride me out of town on a rail properly
but MM is the way to organize playing so to ahieve certain sound
(speaking about altered dom)
And that sound was there those days too...
For example Barry Harris approach comes to the same sound using m6 dim scale... (which enharmonically equal to MM) or even if use relations he derived from dim scale we also come to the same colour of harmony
Or we can use other methods to get it... like implemeting subs or superimpose, mixing triads and all...
What I like about MM scale concept and Barry Harris concept that both are not just local 'tips' but can be derived from and explained through general harmonic concept.. it gives more tools to me/
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By the way I like the sound of MM of the root in major... It gives major7th with blue note
(in the simplest form it would be playing Gm maj7 arpeggio over Gma7 chord)
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The thing is (as I kind of was trying to say in my posts above) using the m6 up a 5th sub isn't the same thing as playing the Lydian Dominant. Originally Posted by Jonah
(Bear in mind this sub was common right from the early days of changes playing.)
If I am soloing using a m6 substitute, I am thinking about the m6 chord or the m triad. I'm not really thinking about extensions of the dominant. The example I gave was the fact that from a very unscientific quick survey of what classic jazz players do on a 7#11, many play using the melodic minor substitute - but critically, few seem to use stress the 7th of the MM as a harmonic tone - mostly it's used as a lower neighbour.
Furthermore, a great deal of the BH material on minor chords is aimed towards outlining the m6 clearly in lines. By making this sub you are no longer thinking of dominant per se. That said, BH added note material can be adapted to accommodate other tonalities, but AFAIK this is not part of the core material, and I don't see it much 'in the wild' for the era of jazz that Barry is interested in.
In the same way jazz musicians have used the Dorian mode since the early days, but not in the same way as a contemporary Gary Burton school player might use it.
So, in summary I kind of feel what we are actually talking about here is a difference between scalar/functional and free modal use of the same scalar material. It's not about what scales you play, but how you play them.
So IMO MM isn't a way to organise sounds at all - the use of freely chosen pitches chosen from scales over chords is an organisational principle, and one that I think is pretty unique to jazz, moreover jazz in past 40-50 years or so. You might disagree.
Of course, if you aim is to play a more contemporary ahistorical approach, this distinction isn't terribly important.Last edited by christianm77; 06-01-2016 at 07:03 AM.
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i was told/read somewhere
that ANY of the mm chords
can function/sub for each other ....
I find that to be true , and quite fruitfull
(although i can only hear the minMaj7 , Lyd dom
and the Alt things at the moment its still quite groovy)
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Chelsea Bridge.
It's piece of cake. Even kids can play thisLast edited by emanresu; 06-30-2016 at 10:12 AM.
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