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"Let the melody be your guide."
Ok, how?
Well, some months back, I found a series of videos on how to use the melody to improvise with zero theory. All the videos I've posted below are guided practices where you can read and sing along to.
In this first episode, music teacher Mike Titlebaum introduces what simple embellishments are.
In ep 2, he introduces an important concept - the distilled melody
Ep 3
In ep 4, he talks to Grace Kelly, demonstrates similarities between his approach and Lee Konitz's 10 Gradients approach
Here's one of Mike's earlier videos that got him quite a bit of attention. This video was made specifically for music teachers. He demonstrates more complex techniques for more advanced students on the tune What Is This Thing Called Love at 28:45. It's quite a long sing-along. Super dense and appropriate for the better musicians among us.
Last edited by brent.h; 11-12-2025 at 05:21 PM.
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11-12-2025 02:17 PM
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Here are some additional videos.
This one is interesting. Dani Rabin talks about how to use the melody's architecture to shape improvisation
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Great example of Basie doing this. Then Zoot takes it a little further, but not too far. The whole side sounds like Paper Moon.
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Here's a somewhat related video
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Crook's, "how to Improvise" has a good section on this and a set of exercises to work through on melodic embellishment devices of different types including,
Originally Posted by brent.h
- Omit notes
- Change duration and rhtyhm
- Connect skips with other notes
He has some others that I am not recalling now. I believe another is to alternate melodic embellishment with free improvisation. What I really like are that he has structured exercises for each device.
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Ya it's not bad. I think his book is great for developing well-rounded improvisors. Originally Posted by charlieparker
Mike Titlebaum's book focused solely on embellishment. So many techniques... And he goes quite deep into it. There's things like appogiaturas and how to create the sound/feeling of the blues with half notes... *chef's kiss*
Man, I love the process of distilling melodies because it forces you to really evaluate and choose the best structural notes of the melody that convey the story. It's like a nice little musical puzzle for me to figure out. And once I have it figured out, I feel I know the song on a bit more. Additionally, discarding the non-structural notes and stripping the rhythms from the melody creates a nice base for you to work with, like a cantus firmus of sorts.
Some melodies already look distilled because of how they're written e.g. What Is This Thing Called Love (few notes, slower moving). So you don't have to do much. Most other melodies e.g. Sunny Side of The Street (more notes, faster moving) are great opportunities to practise the skill of distilling.
It's so important to me because this is the thing that's preventing me from overplaying and chasing the changes. It gives my solos so much structure and direction. I think I'm starting to get why some players say they can't improvise without knowing a song's melody.
So I've made distilling a core part of my practice routine for 2.5 months now. I like taking my time, say an hour, an hour and a half working it out.
Once I got it, I'll put jazz rhythms, syncopations, bends, slides to the notes. I like the sound because it just reminds me of what trad musicians might have done.Last edited by brent.h; 11-27-2025 at 10:06 AM.
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Got any examples you'd care to share of you improvising using this approach?
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Not at the moment, but I'll record one!
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here's the video... it's my one and only take, so quite a few mistakes included.. Originally Posted by CliffR
chorus 1: distilled melody in half notes (the structural notes that are impt to me)
chorus 2: distilled melody syncopated
chorus 3.5: changes playing for the hell of it... tried to do some sequence, and tried some double time line
Last edited by brent.h; 11-27-2025 at 10:56 AM.
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Nice!
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What was the original melody? Originally Posted by brent.h
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ok this is pretty bad for me if the song is not obvious to you... something may not be working in my playing then.
did u listen to the first chorus with the bass? there's a bassist playing in the backing track.
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Maybe Charlie just doesn't know the tune? It was clear to me. (I hope!)
The first chorus sounds not a million miles away from the idea of establishing guide tones for each bar.
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yeah I knew it three notes in Originally Posted by brent.h
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great question, i had no clue Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Yes. I probably just don't know the song that well. I don't have that much familiarity with standards outside of the bebop canon. If someone played Stella By Starlight I wouldn't recognize it, which would be my guess for some reason. Originally Posted by brent.h
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This video is blocked in 'Murica. Any other hints? Originally Posted by CliffR
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haha ok here you go... One of the songs here in the video is the one I played. Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Sunny Side of The Street?
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Can you see this one? It's missing Sonny Rollins, which is a huge loss, but still awesome.
I can't help but get a huge smile on my face when I hear Dizzy sing towards the end.
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I studied composition with Joe Maneri when I was in grad school at NEC, and one of the tools/concepts I got from him that has proven incredibly valuable both as a composer and improvisor is what he called "motific variation": Essentially you would take salient phrases from the melody and distill them down to a shape that can be extrapolated across multiple time-scales...as could its retrograde, inversion, and/or retrograde-inversion, as well as transpositions thereof. Originally Posted by brent.h
So, for example, the sixth measure of Ellington's "Prelude To A Kiss" (arguably one of the most distinctive passages in the melody), a long(-ish) note followed by a large upward leap, and then more quickly a small(-er) step downward.
Think of that shape as an abstract line drawing.
Now think of how you could extrapolate melodic phrases from that line drawing...or from that line drawing upside-down...or from a mirror image of that line drawing...or from that line drawing stretched out over eight measures... or (etc. etc. etc.)
But mostly...stop worrying about how the resultant notes of that extrapolated line drawing relate to the chord-of-the-moment.
I mean, don't ignore that completely...but allow the shape of the gesture to move you in and out of consonance/dissonance in a way that "playing over the changes" rarely encourages. Because you're always playing a semblence of the melody, and that is what grounds your improvisation or composition to the original melody.
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For those interested, I made a video dedicated to thematic improvisation. The melody is from Blue Bossa, and in the video I explain how I created the single-note phrases.
You can also download the PDF for free.
Improvising on the melody, for me, is much more difficult than improvising based solely on chords or tonal centers, but the result can be very enjoyable.
Ettore
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I find your playing over a ii7b5 > V7 very useful. Thank you Originally Posted by equenda
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