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Ok, so I thought this could be fun for beginners thru anybody...
The idea is very simple, just play the melody to a tune. Single notes only. Phrase it your way. The big stipulation? Honor system time-- you need to play the melody for a half hour before you can record.
And hopefully then take a break and play it for another half hour.
Why? The 'zations. Memorization, internalization, personalization. And anything else you think it could be good for. I play by myself so much these days that I realize I very rarely just play a tune without putting in chords and stuff to flesh it out. So this, for me, is a personal challenge-- learn and internalize a bunch of melodies to tunes i "should" know.
I started with "Like Someone in Love." Do any tune you want, as often as you want. Just stick to the 30 minute rule.
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01-03-2025 01:57 PM
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Love this. I’m in.
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Been working on this one for a day or two … this is the original key (Eb, per the Paul Desmond recording, iReal has it in F). I’ve been playing it in positions in the key of C today.
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You are such a radical, Mr. B!
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Not sure I can adhere to your 1/2 hour rule though, since I can usually play a melody the first time I hear it - if it's not really complicated anyway. Then again, one could easily spend more time than that playing around with the phrasing. We shall see....
What would be challenging is taking a really simple melody and making it sound interesting.
Should be add "no special effects," pedals, etc., allowed? Or is that a given?
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No exceptions for extraordinary talent, Mick. Originally Posted by Mick-7
You are such a radical, Mr. B!
Not sure I can adhere to your 1/2 hour rule though, since I can usually play a melody the first time I hear it - if it's not really complicated anyway. Then again, one could easily spend more time than that playing around with the phrasing. We shall see....
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I think it's best if people just use "their voice," be it an acoustic guitar, a nylon string, a plugged in archtop or a distorted superstrat. Originally Posted by Mick-7
You are such a radical, Mr. B!
Not sure I can adhere to your 1/2 hour rule though, since I can usually play a melody the first time I hear it - if it's not really complicated anyway. Then again, one could easily spend more time than that playing around with the phrasing. We shall see....
What would be challenging is taking a really simple melody and making it sound interesting.
Should be add "no special effects," pedals, etc., allowed? Or is that a given?
As far as the 30 minite rule goes, I like it because after 30 minutes I've definitely gotten the melody into my short term memory and tried enough things with it that by the time I hit record, I'm basically "improvising" how i play it. So yeah, for me, it was all about phrasing with this first one...important to note this is a song I've played before, but I've either not been the one taking the melody or ive played it as a solo arrangement (though not in about 15 years!)...so I could sing it already, just hadn't actually put much work into playing it as single notes.
Obviously it'll take a few more trips through over the next few days to get it down the brain hall to long term memory. That's going to be my overall goal here. Try to get as many melodies as I can into long term memory.
Love the idea of taking a very simple melody and making it sing. I'll do Paul Motian's "Mesmer" or "Mumbo Jumbo" at some point to try that.
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I've been working on a chord melody solo for Misty, so this was a good exercise.
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That guitar sounds nice, was it plugged in? Originally Posted by alpop
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Yes, Straight into the interface and recorded on my phone through my monitor speakers along with a BIAB track. It is a sweet sounding guitar. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Be-bop melodies are a real challenge...definitely impossible to master in 30 minutes.
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I suppose I ought to do something. The thing is that single notes aren't a big deal for me, it's all I do. Anyway, there's this. Giant Steps it's not
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Ragman,
I can listen to it and it's very good.
If there is no improvisation, it's ok.
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Mr. B, truly lovely. What are you using for a backing track? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
("Mr. B." reminds me of an old TV show, Hazel, in which Shirley Booth, playing Hazel, the Baxter's housekeeper, always calls the nominal head of the household that. Shirley Booth, who became a star after Come Back, Little Sheba, a success on Broadway and cinema, always got a kick out of the media calling her an "overnight success." She would say, "It took me 35 years to become an overnight success!")
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One if my favorites Originally Posted by Mick-7
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No, it's not about mastering in 30 minutes. It's just about playing the melody, once you know it, for 30 minutes prior to recording. Originally Posted by kris
Be-bop melodies are a real challenge...definitely impossible to master in 30 minutes.
Bebop melodies won't be great for this experiment, as they're not really open to as much interpretation, they are to be played "correctly" much of the time.
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So it's about the interpretation of the melody? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
or is it more about ear training?
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Bye Bye Blackbird
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Yes, surely 'Bye Bye Blackbird' is so easy, I grabbed my guitar pressed record and started playing.
But, no, plenty of Clams.
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You didn’t take the thirty minutes so Mr B hexed you and the clams are your punishment Originally Posted by GuyBoden
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So even if you know it are you saying it's a sort of warm-up period? I'm not quite sure of the purpose of the requirement (not that getting in gear first isn't a good idea). Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I don't think I have the attention span to play the 'Bye Bye Blackbird' melody for 30mins. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Okay so how about this:
What is the most important part of the song?
The melody.
It’s the part of the song that people know, and when you’re improvising, your use of the melody is what tells people you’re playing Sonnymoon for Two and not C Jam Blues. Or using bits of Sonnymoon or C Jam while you’re playing Sandu or something is often a basis for the most direct dialogue you’re having with other musicians.
Are you playing Have You Met Miss Jones or are you playing a series of slow turnaround in F, with a brief interlude of Giant Steps changes? Hopefully the former.
Now compare that importance to the amount of time you spend on the melodies to the songs you play, as opposed to the arpeggios for the changes, the licks you’ll use, the line building, etc.
Speaking for myself and most other people I know, we don’t practice the melody in proportion to how important the melody is.
Is it easy to play most of these melodies? Yes.
Is it easy to be so fluent with them that you can play the convincingly, use them freely in your improvising, and employ them in other contexts? No.
So call it an experiment in bringing the work you put into a melody into balance with the importance the melody has when you play the tune.
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I often tell students to sit for like … several days and just play the first four bars of a tune or the middle four or whatever, and they usually think that’s excessive. They are always wrong.
In the past, I have often thought that playing a simple melody for that long is excessive too, and I’m fairly certain I was wrong about that too.
So why not actually put the time in and see what happens when you do.
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