Define melodic with regard to guitar playing & music in general.

[DC Cornelius]

To me melodic means you're creating a feeling of wow without having to be too technical/ fast etc

[pamosmusic]

Singable

[joebloggs13]

I think this guy is a great example of melodic playing.

[kris]

yes... listen to Miles Davis and Chet Baker a lot.
Dexter Gordon – I love his melodic phrases.

[CliffR]

And Paul Desmond.

[Tal_175]

I think through-composed form can be melodic without being singable by those who lack considerable technique and determination. But it is a subjective notion obviously.

[pamosmusic]

In my grumpy old age, I think “singable” and “melodic” are essentially the same thing.

Something written well for a singer means that it is memorable on its own, works in steps and simple skips, uses its very few bigger skips for a musical purpose, and keeps a fairly limited range.

I think the best melodies really rely on those things and break those rules in limited but super effective ways.

One that really jumps to mind is I’m Getting Sentimental Over You. Just a gorgeous melody and one that feels huge and sweeping too, but it’s just over an octave (octave and a fourth I think) and all the skips are very triadic.

Something like Cole Porters I Love You has really big skips in it but is super motivic and repetitive.

So singable melodies tend to have a lot of those limitations and tend to pay for limited complexity with simplicity elsewhere

[RyanM]

Jim Hall

[pamosmusic]

Jim Hall

A thread-ender

[Christian Miller]

Jazz musicians are in the difficult situation of inventing new melodies over existing songs. That’s actually quite hard.

You can always do it by paraphrasing the original melody.

The question is not - what are the common features of a good melody which is highly subjective anyway. It’s more like - is melody important to you?

It goes without saying that one of the key features of GASB standards in particular is that they are strong melodies. As much as you hear about jazz being based on the chord structures of the standards, I believe this to be secondary to the melodies, the chord were frequently reharmonised with more jazz friendly changes anyway. But the melody remains the core that we hang everything off, and largely inviolable.

To me Coltrane paraphrasing a ballad melody is supreme melodic playing. Everyone goes to Desmond, of course, maybe JohnnyHodges, Ben Webster etc and the stereotype is that Trane did the sheets of sound thing, but his standards playing is incredible. Wayne shorter was a very melodic composer.

If you are going to talk about purely melodic jazz detached from chords you have to talk about Ornette and Lonely Woman for instance is an amazing melody. Many people might not think Ornette is melodic but his music was nothing but melody.

There also an in my opinion lazy assumption you encounter that slow playing is more melodic than fast. I think Bird is incredibly melodic at all tempos. A lot of his playing is quotations of melodies. Most of us are dealing with licks and patterns at those tempos.

There’s also (and I’m aware I’m talking like Schenker or someone) maybe not that many basic melodies. Many strong melodies are artful ornamentations of recognisable basic melodic structures. A lot of these are elaborations of basic stepwise motion perhaps with leaps that suggest a secondary voice.

Cod-musicology aside, the best way to dive into this stuff is to learn lots and lots of songs.

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[Mick-7]

I've been listening to Art Pepper lately, a very lyrical player. He performed with my college jazz band back in the day, which was quite an experience.

[JazzPadd]

For guitar playing, and to build on the evocative suggestions already given on note choice and natural phrasing, non-wind instruments can take on the characteristics of melody by mimicking the natural contours of our breathing while we play. It’s just a variant on singing lyrics or melodies with our voice while we play, but we can let our fingers do the talking by syncing with our silent breathing patterns.

[marcwhy]

George Garzone playing ballads:

or Tom Harrell and Jim Hall:

[emanresu]

"natural" seems to describe "melodic" for me.
Meaning that when the melody is in service of the meaning of the lyrics, they took the natural path to the melody... and it sounds melodic.. natural, usually.
When a guitarist does a melodic melody, it means for me that it works nicely without any pitch&rhythm related contortionizms, , surprises, jumps or bounces.

It seems that a natural melody with singing is more easy to achieve to have a good thought. Instrumental melodies, it kinda has to have something special - that usually is not the most natural. Hardly a rule, just an impression.

[Jimmy blue note]

For me, melodic playing comes from the breath. There is a cadence, a sense of natural phrasing and the ordering of urgency that comes from expression that originates with breath.
It was a concert that was supposed to be a duo with alto player Lee Konitz and Harold Danko. Harold, a piano player to the duo, was stuck on a broken down train and after waiting and realizing there would be no duo that night, Lee announced he would play an evening tribute to Charlie Parker. Solo unaccompanied alto sax on Charlie Parker heads. I thought Oh no, not two hours entangled in unaccompanied bebop lines without a rhythm section to even hint at the harmonic structure! It sounded like an athletic event; not the thoughtful duo I was there to hear.
But Lee began with short phrases, groups of fragments, each of which made perfect weighted and feather-light statements that demanded appreciation. He never played a run-on sentence the whole night; each sound out of his horn asking a question, then answering or commenting on, or contradicting, or summarizing what came before. And it may have been the first time I heard music TALKING to me.
When I left that club, my ideal of what music could be, my definition of what the purpose of improvisation was, had changed. It's when I saw the confluence of space, attack, dynamics, purpose, intention, anticipation, accent... all the elements that punctuate thoughtful conversation, came into play as the things that inform sound.

Yeah, check out Lee Konitz if you want.
I get this same sense of melodic lyricism from Keith Jarrett. The things that inform his line... all the right things in the right place.

[ragman1]

Define melodic

Why?

[emanresu]

Define melodic

Why?

Probably cuz it is a terribly vague matter again. He was righfully bugged imo.

[emanresu]

TBH, we talk about music with vague words describing vague emotions. Not in sense they are vague but pretty much indescribable.
All that music does really really good - the top of the mountain - there is no words for describing what just happened.. why this happened.

The top of music is entirely wordless, and we got so many words to attempt something.

[Jimmy blue note]

Define melodic

Why?

Because asking is the first step in answering: How?

[pamosmusic]

Jazz musicians are in the difficult situation of inventing new melodies over existing songs. That’s actually quite hard.

You can always do it by paraphrasing the original melody.

The question is not - what are the common features of a good melody which is highly subjective anyway. It’s more like - is melody important to you?

It goes without saying that one of the key features of GASB standards in particular is that they are strong melodies. As much as you hear about jazz being based on the chord structures of the standards, I believe this to be secondary to the melodies, the chord were frequently reharmonised with more jazz friendly changes anyway. But the melody remains the core that we hang everything off, and largely inviolable.

To me Coltrane paraphrasing a ballad melody is supreme melodic playing. Everyone goes to Desmond, of course, maybe JohnnyHodges, Ben Webster etc and the stereotype is that Trane did the sheets of sound thing, but his standards playing is incredible. Wayne shorter was a very melodic composer.

If you are going to talk about purely melodic jazz detached from chords you have to talk about Ornette and Lonely Woman for instance is an amazing melody. Many people might not think Ornette is melodic but his music was nothing but melody.

There also an in my opinion lazy assumption you encounter that slow playing is more melodic than fast. I think Bird is incredibly melodic at all tempos. A lot of his playing is quotations of melodies. Most of us are dealing with licks and patterns at those tempos.

There’s also (and I’m aware I’m talking like Schenker or someone) maybe not that many basic melodies. Many strong melodies are artful ornamentations of recognisable basic melodic structures. A lot of these are elaborations of basic stepwise motion perhaps with leaps that suggest a secondary voice.

Cod-musicology aside, the best way to dive into this stuff is to learn lots and lots of songs.

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I think I’m maybe trying to articulate a more specific thing, like what are some characteristics of strong melodies. Which is not really the same thing as a melodic player.

A great melody is one thing, and a super melodic player maybe is one who is super faithful to the melody even as they embellish it.

Sometimes that looks like Chet Baker or Astrud Gilberto. Other times like Clark Terry or Ella.

Coltrane is a great example of someone who is super melodic when he wants to be, even though he’s very busy. Honestly the Ballads album is maybe Peak Ballad Playing. That and this:

unreal, dude