How to rhythmically interpret "straight" melodies?

[matt.guitarteacher]

I've noticed a peculiar pattern the last few months: many players seem to be much freer/loose /everything when they are IMPROVISING their own lines versus playing an original melody. Very often the case, even if they're playing someone ELSE'S solo etc., versus their own.

I have my own thoughts on some of this, but I'd be interested in other's takes as well. I know that we always say you have to go to the recordings and copy the way they play a melody etc., but isn't that just inspiration/getting fresh ideas? At a certain level, shouldn't we be able to improvise a known (or read) melody just as freely as we improvise our own lines?

[mr. beaumont]

Yes...and no.

Certain tunes should be played as written, or "originally" played. There aren't too many of these, but some bop heads definitely would fall into this category.

Other tunes, particularly those with lots of space in the melodic rhythm, are begging to be "interpreted." These are usually tunes with words...you can play 'em like a singer would. Jazz is about syncopation, really...so I see a melody written with lots of straight quarters and halfs and yeah...I ain't gonna play it that way.

I guess the tough part is knowing the difference. Involves plenty of listening, make assumptions from there.

[ragman1]

many players seem to be much freer/loose /everything when they are IMPROVISING their own lines versus playing an original melody.

Fingers lag behind the brain behind the thought.

At a certain level, shouldn't we be able to improvise a known (or read) melody just as freely as we improvise our own lines?

I don't say read unless it's simple! But playing a melody that one knows inside out is usually itself somewhat of an improvisation unless one wants to sound like a machine. Besides, most written heads are fairly vanilla, and deliberately so.

[whiskey02]

I've given some to this subject myself, random, non sequential thoughts below:

Bop heads require as Mr B states a pretty straight reading through.
Pat Metheny- Steve Swallow type heads also should be played mostly as written.
While many older songs (20's- 40's) benefit from "jazzing up" their long caravan of quarter notes into something that swings a bit, I have to admit I generally prefer a fairly straight ahead reading of a tune.
My view being ....you're going to solo for a couple choruses followed any other melodic instrument you might be playing with, there's lots of time to interpret, reinvent the melody. I want to hear the basic framework that you're building all that from.
If you screw with the initial statement of the melody so much that I can't identify the tune, or A TUNE as the case may be, well then I don't really know how your sole relates to the song.
If you've ever studied classical music (especially before jazz) where there is no guesswork of where to place notes, just the milliseconds and flair that make it your interpretation, I think it is something you really have to work at because it is so ingrained into you to respect the composition. You don't fuck with Bach.

[christianm77]

I thought I'd add my tuppence here.

If I had to identify one thing that I'd like to work on rhythmically at the moment it would be this.

Soloing wise, I want to get better at syncopating quarter notes at high tempos.

Hal Galper regards bebop style eighth note improv as being an embellishment of an underlying quarter or half note melody, either original or invented. This makes a lot of sense to me.

[matt.guitarteacher]

To me, it sounds like many players who struggle with this are trying very hard to play variations of "straight", whereas I tend to the greats playing something more like "variations of a triplet version" of the melody - quarter note and eighth note triplets subbing - in place of quarters and eighths. It's almost like the variations are disguising that triplet approach, as opposed to an attempt to disguise the original/straight version.

Anyway, you can always sub triplets, because they take up less space. You're playing ahead and behind by default, and you're starting from a different place organizationally. You're starting from basic subtle syncopation framework and tweaking it here and there for interest, rather than trying to come up with something fresh for every single moment of an old straight tune.

[rpjazzguitar]

Not sure I understand the question, but I've had some related experience.

I can think of a couple of people who complained when I interpreted a melody. The complaint was something to the effect that it was presumptuous of me to think I could improve on the composer's work, and therefore disrespectful.

OTOH, I can think of a track, Trio Corrente's version of Girl From Ipanema, which barely states the melody. Since everybody who is going to listen to that group has heard the melody a zillion times, this works well. They put in just enough so you realize what tune it is. And they twist the time in knots.

I usually like to interpret melody, particularly if I'm not reading and probably don't remember it accurately. The people who complained don't call me for gigs anyway.

And, for some music, a metronomically accurate reading doesn't swing/groove properly.

[grahambop]

If you learn the tunes primarily by listening to great players rather than off a page, I think you will automatically pick up a feel for how to creatively make the tunes sound more 'jazzy' if I can put it that way.

Example, there is a rather boring bit in How Deep Is The Ocean (about bar 9 I think) where the melody as written really plods, all on quarter notes. But I first learned it by listening to Chet Baker. He instinctively syncopated those notes which I think sounds better. When I read the melody from the fakebook later, I was surprised to see how it actually went!

[christianm77]

Not sure I understand the question, but I've had some related experience.

OK I'd like to unpack this post a little bit because you say a few things that I kind of disagree with a bit.

When I make these comments I am relating them to my own experience, and my own shortcomings as a player and what I am learning and trying to do in order to overcome as well as things I have notice in my peers and students. I have literally no idea how you play, so please don't take them as a criticism of you or your playing. (I should really have this as a disclaimer before every post haha.)

I can think of a couple of people who complained when I interpreted a melody. The complaint was something to the effect that it was presumptuous of me to think I could improve on the composer's work, and therefore disrespectful.

The original conception of jazz was a variation of the melody not a solo on changes. As Peter Bernstein puts it 'jazz is a decorative art.' So by saying varying the melody you are disrespecting the changes betrays a profound ignorance of the history. I can only hope that those people weren't jazz musicians.

The other side to this (and this maybe obvious) is that the repertoire we are likely to want to interpret are not jazz compositions. This certainly wasn't immediately obvious to me as I was coming out the post Real Book generation. So I was surprised to find that my mum, who knows nothing about jazz, knows many of these tunes.

They were not written by jazz musicians. They were written by professional songwriters usually for Broadway shows, movies or the popular charts. Some of these composer may have been ambivalent or even hostile towards jazz versions of their songs.

Jazz musicians in general do not write jazz standards, they don't have the chops to do that, they are not songwriters. What they do is arrange, improvise on and recompose these songs according to their whims. As a result I find the notion of 'respect for the composer' here a little risible....

BUT - you do have to respect the soul of the song. What you should ask yourself when practicing a melody is - does this addition add anything to the song or is it mere ego?

OTOH, I can think of a track, Trio Corrente's version of Girl From Ipanema, which barely states the melody. Since everybody who is going to listen to that group has heard the melody a zillion times, this works well. They put in just enough so you realize what tune it is. And they twist the time in knots.

I usually like to interpret melody, particularly if I'm not reading and probably don't remember it accurately. The people who complained don't call me for gigs anyway.

Sounds like a familiar story. I often waffle because I've forgotten how a bit goes. This is not IMO the same as actual interpretation. It's papering over the cracks.

The thing I realised when I started playing trio with bass and drums is how bad I was at melodies. Then I listened to other guitarists and realised that at least I wasn't alone. And then every so often I will hear a guitarist who is REALLY good at playing melodies, and that reminds me that I shouldn't be content to be mediocre in this area.

The reason why guitarists suck at it is obvious. We don't do it that often. Horn players do it all the time, and are better at it.

One thing I think is something to watch out for is the rhythmic hesitancy or inaccuracy of rhythm. A lot of guitarists sound (as matt points out) rhythmically undefined and weak when playing melodies. This is probably because it's not a string of 8th notes like we practice 90% of the time.

If you ask yourself how much time you spend practicing the melodies of songs, and how much you spend playing strings of improvised 8th notes on changes, you will quickly get an impression of how good you are at playing melodies.

And, for some music, a metronomically accurate reading doesn't swing/groove properly.

I'm going to leave the ticking box of confusion out of this, and I am by no means sure this is what you are saying, but one thing that I want to kibbosh is the concept that rhythmic inaccuracy or looseness has anything to do with swing. Swing is relaxed accuracy, but accuracy nonetheless.

If someone plays 'behind the beat' they do so by a certain amount. It's not just because they are super cool jazz musicians who have smoked too much weed that day - this may be the case of course, but it is not the reason why they play behind the beat! The do so because it is the correct technique to play the music.

This popular image of the jazz musician as a free spirited natural is still extremely prevalent among people who know better. The thing is this notion seems to exclude the Western aspects of but there is still a sense that rhythm eludes logical analysis that it is inherent and intuitive. In fact the study rhythm, just like pitch choices combines mathematical and intuitive aspects. Just ask any drummer.

Swing is based around a polyrhythmic sense that often eludes notation, but where I differ with some others is that it is my educated (hopefully) belief that swing is based on rhythms that could be notated - it's just that it would be a complete pain in the bum to do so and would result in unreadable charts. The key rhythms are as matt describes them - swung upbeats, quarter note triplets and so on. These must be mastered on a natural level... But then so do arpeggios and scales.

I say this with some justification (I hope) because my study of rhythm, both mathematical and intuitive. People here have described my playing as 'laid back' - great! But this is an effect, not a cause. I have studied that type of feel in a very non-laid back, exacting way. It has to be laid back in the right way to stop it from simply dragging.

Anyway this is not to poo-poo Graham's suggestion that you can develop this type of phrasing by listening to people play melodies and matching their phrasing. That's great too. But this is also exacting, specific study. Nothing left to chance.

Personally, I like to combine these approaches.

Anyway, sorry to bang on, and none of this is in specific response to you .... I find I personally enjoy a combination of approaches. Playing a mathematical rhythm can open my ears up to things that I hear, for instance.

[destinytot]

Part of the pleasure of playing rhythm guitar while singing - here, in Marty Grosz/Carl Kress tuning - is, for me, having nuanced control of groove. And the pleasure of singing is, for me, in the phrasing.

[matt.guitarteacher]

If you learn the tunes primarily by listening to great players rather than off a page, I think you will automatically pick up a feel for how to creatively make the tunes sound more 'jazzy' if I can put it that way.

Example, there is a rather boring bit in How Deep Is The Ocean (about bar 9 I think) where the melody as written really plods, all on quarter notes. But I first learned it by listening to Chet Baker. He instinctively syncopated those notes which I think sounds better. When I read the melody from the fakebook later, I was surprised to see how it actually went!

I don't really disagree with any of this at all. My main deal is in thinking about the next level and how you arrive at it: being able to interpret things rhythmically yourself, without having to listen to a bunch of reference recordings.

I was challenged on this a few years ago by a serious player. It's cool to be able to hear what someone else does and develop your ears hearing etc. from recordings. But what about hearing with your eyes? Can you look at a simple melody and hear it in various ways from the page or from memory etc.? the listening is probably the most important element, but at a certain point I think it's helpful to have some of the mathematical understanding (really crappy wording for it honestly) as well that Christian's kind of talking about.

I fell into a lot of this accidentally a few years ago when I was working on chord melody stuff , super slow, with fingers. I eventually arrived at really subdividing things down to is no triplets , just really overplaying . But eventually, you're also arrive at the polymetric things, moving things around.

Once you learn to hear things that way, even at a basic level, it gives you a different ear for hearing the great players and what they're actually doing with rhythm. It really becomes about a lot of what they're doing with grace notes, ghost notes and very subtle articulations that imply feels etc. I found that once I was more comfortable inreally working rhythms on my own, withouthaving to seek outside inspiration so much,that I actually became fascinated withreally cheesy straight tunes and what you could do with them.

Hal Leonard real books volume 3 and are really a wastelands of strait cheesy tunes begging to be messed with rhythmically. A deeper understanding of rhythm and how to articulate it basically opened these books up to me, and I found myself enjoying reading through tunes a lot more than I had before. I understood that the problem was more with me then with the chance themselves.

I began to enjoy finding groovesand old gospel tunes, bluegrass tunes and other genres as well.If you subdivide downto lower levels,there's a world of enjoyment to be had in all styles.

Anyway, I find it perplexing that we basically all struggle so much with this is guitarists. I feel like I'm better now at this one simple aspect of playing , and very often have less trouble with it then players who are otherwise much better than me in every other aspect of playing. I think it's a huge hole guitarists need to address generally, just from what I hear listening.

Anyway, to many words. Not all directed at you of course.

[christianm77]

Part of the pleasure of playing rhythm guitar while singing - here, in Marty Grosz/Carl Kress tuning - is, for me, having nuanced control of groove. And the pleasure of singing is, for me, in the phrasing.

This touches on rhythmic independence which is an important part of it imo ...

The better my rhythm gets the better i can play and sing at the same time for instance and vice versa... I find bossa is a particularly good acid test!

Anyway exercise like counting the beat while playing lines or melodies leading into scatting a more complex rhythm will doing it is a great exercise too.... kind of reversing it over?

[christianm77]

I don't really disagree with any of this at all. My main deal is in thinking about the next level and how you arrive at it: being able to interpret things rhythmically yourself, without having to listen to a bunch of reference recordings.

I was challenged on this a few years ago by a serious player. It's cool to be able to hear what someone else does and develop your ears hearing etc. from recordings. But what about hearing with your eyes? Can you look at a simple melody and hear it in various ways from the page or from memory etc.? the listening is probably the most important element, but at a certain point I think it's helpful to have some of the mathematical understanding (really crappy wording for it honestly) as well that Christian's kind of talking about.

I fell into a lot of this accidentally a few years ago when I was working on chord melody stuff , super slow, with fingers. I eventually arrived at really subdividing things down to is no triplets , just really overplaying . But eventually, you're also arrive at the polymetric things, moving things around.

Once you learn to hear things that way, even at a basic level, it gives you a different ear for hearing the great players and what they're actually doing with rhythm. It really becomes about a lot of what they're doing with grace notes, ghost notes and very subtle articulations that imply feels etc. I found that once I was more comfortable inreally working rhythms on my own, withouthaving to seek outside inspiration so much,that I actually became fascinated withreally cheesy straight tunes and what you could do with them.

Hal Leonard real books volume 3 and are really a wastelands of strait cheesy tunes begging to be messed with rhythmically. A deeper understanding of rhythm and how to articulate it basically opened these books up to me, and I found myself enjoying reading through tunes a lot more than I had before. I understood that the problem was more with me then with the chance themselves.

I began to enjoy finding groovesand old gospel tunes, bluegrass tunes and other genres as well.If you subdivide downto lower levels,there's a world of enjoyment to be had in all styles.

Anyway, I find it perplexing that we basically all struggle so much with this is guitarists. I feel like I'm better now at this one simple aspect of playing , and very often have less trouble with it then players who are otherwise much better than me in every other aspect of playing. I think it's a huge hole guitarists need to address generally, just from what I hear listening.

Anyway, to many words. Not all directed at you of course.

Yes. Good section horn players can read with that type of phrasing right away. I think you made he point about the importance of band training elsewhere....

To read jazz requires an understanding of the shorthand used. There are a couple of good books on this actually. I'll look them up when I get back....

[matt.guitarteacher]

To read jazz requires an understanding of the shorthand used. There are a couple of good books on this actually. I'll look them up when I get back....

Cool. Very curious about this.

[jasonc]

I think learning the lyrics is very important. After learning the lyrics to "There Will Never Be Another You" I realized I had been playing the melody in a way that made no sense at all. The phrase that starts with the pickup into bar nine. If you just look at the lead sheet you have six bars of quarter notes. Now there are gazillion ways you could mess with those notes but the lyrics tell you how to phrase it. The words right there go "There will be other songs to sing, another fall, another spring but there will never be another you.". Now instead of having six bars of quarter notes you have three two bar phrases with beat four being the pickup into the next phrase. Once you hear it like that you can't unhear it and it makes it very easy to play with the phrasing in a way that does make sense.

[rpjazzguitar]

I appreciate the detailed response.

The people who complained about interpretation of melody were actually skilled jazz musicians. The notion of stating the composer's melody as original written was something they believed in, to the point of criticizing others when they didn't do it. I'd guess they understood that people have done it since the dawn of jazz and didn't care.

As I mentioned, I still interpret melody, and I do so even if I know the melody accurately. Do people really need to hear three A-sections of a familiar tune played the same exact way? That's why I mentioned Trio Corrente. Their version of GFI relies, I believe, on the familiarity of the tune to the listener.

On the issue of metronomic time, I just took a group lesson with a Brazilian master. At one point he stopped the pianist and told him that reading the chart perfectly was not the goal. Doing it that way didn't swing. There is mathematical proof for a version of this. The typical sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth samba pattern is not played that way by Brazilian masters. Somebody measured it and posted the graph on line. I can probably dig it up if anybody is interested. Could what they actually play be notated? Presumably yes. But I've never even seen anybody try.

If you hear a expert Brazilian percussionist and a non-Brazilian play a sixteenth note (in 2/4) shaker part, they don't sound the same. When the Brazilian does it, you feel like dancing.

<I'm going to leave the ticking box of confusion out of this, and I am by no means sure this is what you are saying, but one thing that I want to kibbosh is the concept that rhythmic inaccuracy or looseness has anything to do with swing. Swing is relaxed accuracy, but accuracy nonetheless.>

No argument there. I wasn't suggesting playing imprecisely. Rather, I was suggesting that playing exactly what is on the page doesn't get the right rhythm (and I was careful to caveat it by saying for "some music"). I think it has to be attained by listening and, even better, playing with people who already have it.

Again, I appreciate the discussion.

[christianm77]

Just riffing on what you were saying before btw...

Oh yeah Brazilian music. *shrugs* don't want to get into that too much... I'm a dabbler in that area, but North American jazz is my focus, and has a different though compatible rhythmic heritage.

In general don't want to downplay the importance of experiential learning. I find a mix of approaches works well for me, and I question the idea that rhythm shouldn't be broken down in a logical way.

It's like anything right? You have to learn the language.... I'm reminded of what Bill Evans was talking about with people approximating things.... but anyway

[destinytot]

That's why I mentioned Trio Corrente. Their version of GFI relies, I believe, on the familiarity of the tune to the listener.

Fabulous musicians - thanks!

[Guitarzen]

The people who complained about interpretation of melody were actually skilled jazz musicians. The notion of stating the composer's melody as original written was something they believed in, to the point of criticizing others when they didn't do it. I'd guess they understood that people have done it since the dawn of jazz and didn't care.

I guess anyone can call themselves a "jazz musician", but obviously these people you played with were not that knowledgeable of jazz, and/or not that advanced in their thinking about jazz or music in general. That's at least one of the differences between amateurs / wannabes and pros.

Trio Corrente - I would pay money to see this group, I wouldn't pay money to see your bandmates. Honestly, when I go to see a jazz group, Trio Corrente is what I want. Not a bunch of stiff un-musical noobs. Who the f#$# wants to hear another jazz head they've already heard a million times played in a straight boring way? (i.e., like when I practice jazz heads....). I say f#$# the head, I am going to hear real musicians and I don't even care about the heads, that's not why I like jazz. I like jazz because of groups like Trio Corrente. One of the reasons I've gotten a bit burnt out on jazz is everyone locally where I live plays jazz in the most boring possible way (and yes I'm guilty of this too). You could literally have Band in a Box play a tune, and then have some of the local "jazz" musicians play the same tune, and not be able to tell them apart. They'll both play the head in the same boring straight way. Yes even the solos will sound like the Band in a Box auto-soloist algorithm. The bass lines will all be the same walking bass line used in Band in a Box, the drum beats will be the exact same drum beats used by the Band in a Box drummer.....etc...That's why jazz is dead. Because the average "jazz musician" plays with no creativity at all. And at the local level, nobody really wants to hear it because it's always the same exact boring sound.

[rpjazzguitar]

I'm glad you liked Trio Corrente. Some background may be of interest. They played with Chico Pinheiro, which is how I first encountered them. Afterward, they won a grammy in the Latin category for an album with Paquito D' Rivera (sp?). A week or two ago they were gigging in Paris. Not sure where they are right now. They have a couple of albums out as Trio Corrente, and each has some solo project CDs as well.

I've had an opportunity to study a bit with Edu Ribeiro, the drummer, who, like many Brazilian musicians, plays guitar. He may play other instruments as well. Paulo, the bassist, plays an electric bass which is fretless up to the 12th fret. He also plays acoustic bass. They're all amazing and, most of all, for their ability to tie time in knots while grooving hard.

On the subject of the players who believed that a melody should be stated as the composer wrote it -- in my opinion they are very good players, but I don't hire them or invite them to jams because I'm uncomfortable with the feeling of being judged. That's another thread, but, briefly, my experience is that some players make me comfortable when we play and some don't -- and it doesn't correlate with skill level.

[destinytot]

The ease with which Trio Corrente improvise lines within an exotic time signature is impressive, and I definitely want to hear more - preferably to enjoy on CD
- loud... and in short, focused listening sessions. (I think I'd need to do some Maths homework before I could appreciate it live.)

But I also think what they're doing is almost the reverse of a process I seem to have noticed in the phrasing of my favourite bop guitarists.

What the latter seem to have in common with Trio Corrente is effective use of multi-rhythms for syncopation. Where they seem to differ is in the complexity of the constituent parts.

What seems significant is that the musical effect - on me as listener - is most powerful when I have a fully internalised feel/sense of the groove over which another rhythm is being overlaid.

And in the playing of my favourite bop guitarists, the underlying groove is typically a straightforward count of four, whereas what gets superimposed is a long syncopated line of notes grouped in odd counts - some strikingly extreme.

Moreover, the same simple line (lick?) can be used to different effect when started at a different place in the bar.

My favourite form of rhythmic displacement applied to the interpretation of 'straight melodies' is pre-phrasing (especially as I hear it in my heroes Uncle João, Billie, Peggy and Chet - though not so keen on the way Todd Rundgren does it).

I think, for me, pre-phrasing of melody may be a way to create an impressionistic canvas on 'jazz' guitar - 'work in progress'.