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From another thread, I found the post quoted below interesting and I thought a new thread would be a good idea.
Specifically in tonal music, it looks to me like there are two distinct types of tune with regards to their melody. In one type, the melody outlines the harmony pretty strongly. Example: All of Me. Its section A consists in chord tones (arpeggios) almost exclusively. In the other type, you don't particularly find that, if at all. Consider for example Summertime. Looking at its harmony, the tune is as tonal as All of Me. But the melody uses a total of 6 tones, outlining not much.
Originally Posted by christianm77
I'm confused about what to do with this idea. Should I consider Summertime and others of the same type as tonal tunes featuring a modal melody?
What other ideas do you have regarding melody as the fundamental backbone of a tune?
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06-01-2018 06:11 AM
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More thoughts...
In terms of melody, older tonal minor tunes favour a melodic minor sound for its dominant (e.g. Autumn Leaves' measure #6).
However, when discussing improvisation over minor's V7 (often called III7), most improvisers seem to agree that the chord's natural 9th doesn't fit and you are generally best off trying to use what's in the key signature (through the use of the harmonic minor scale, altered scale, etc.)
I suspect the choice (natural 9th vs. altered 9th / 9ths) depends on the general atmosphere of the tune, to which the melody is a great contributor.Last edited by alez; 06-02-2018 at 02:47 AM.
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Another random thought on melody.
These days I'm giving a try to Horace's Silver The Preacher. If I concentrate on it's melody, the changes it suggests to me are probably something along these lines:
I | % | V7 | I |
% | % | II7 | V7 |
I | % | III7 | VI7 |
II7 | IIm7 | V7 | I ||
Basically 4 "phrases", 4 measures long each. The first 3 phrases have some I at first, then each goes to a different place on its 4th measure: home, dominant, dominant of something else. The last 4 measures just take the tune back home using a standard cliche.
The above changes have some commonality with the official ones, but definitely not enough that I would just play them instead.
The official ones are less intuitive and they don't support the melody as good. But they are a fundamental part of the composition and largely what they make the tune sound the way it does
The changes I've written are probably boring whereas the official ones are definitely hip.
This is just a thought, I'm not asking anything specific, just sharing in case you want to comment.
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the 9/b9 thing is something I (embarrassingly) have just started to pay close attention to. You are right on about the melody being the determining factor. Originally Posted by alez
Major into minor is more common than bog standard jazz education type theory might suggest. I think people are a bit slavish about the altered scale thing (which is one sound of several available), but that's a whole other rant.
A classic example in a tune is the middle section of Invitation.
A good example from soloing is Charlie Christian's solo on I Found a New Baby, but for more recent example I suggest taking a look at Cannonball Adderly, McCoy Tyner, etc etc.
Even the melody for Blues for Alice has this on the Em7b5 A7 (it's actually Em7 A7!)
Here's a vid I did:
I really like the sound Dm9b5 G13b9 Cm(maj7) for minor ii-V-I's
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Anyway, I think the melody is everything... I agree with your comments about super descriptive melodies as opposed to more stepwise or scalic ones.
Also - look out for sequences, and pay attention to the way phrases end - on which pitches. That creates the basic structure of a song.
We tend to obsess on chords as guitar players, but the melody is the song...
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In a podcast posted hereabouts today (perhaps yesterday; I just noticed it this morning) Bruce Forman uses the analogy of the hanger.
Imagine clothes in a closet without hangers. They're all in a pile on the floor. But with hangers, they're neatly separated, unwrinkled, and ready to wear. "Hangers don't get enough love."
The melody is the hanger of tunes.
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Yea... this discussion has been going on for ever.... It's all good. You like melodies... use the melody as the reference for creating relationships and developing them. ( a note... Christians note about playing voicings that clash with melody, were from not knowing how to comp, not from not using the melody.) Anyway.... learn to hear and understand what melodies imply harmonically... as well as what they could imply.
It's really... you just haven't learned to hear or understand how music works or how it can work.
When you use harmony as source for creating relationships.... the only reason there would be clashes would be from not have your comping thing together.... of which one thing ... is being aware of the melody, melodic rhythm as well as harmony and harmonic rhythm etc...
There are technical skills and understandings of what's going on in a tune or how we choose to perform that tune, the organization of what we play. There are common jazz practices, You start with the Form.... how the space is physically organized. That's the big picture, and you break it down from there. When I was young... we all worked from melodies... we didn't really understand what else was going on, didn't realize that harmony, chords and chord patterns also could be developed... just like one can improvise melodic lines, develop melodies through embellishment or what ever approach you choose....so could harmony... chords are also a melody... just with voicings.
You can embellish chords just like melodies... And as one becomes aware of other methods of developing melodies and creating melodic lines.... soloing, the changes can also go through the same organization.... and the next thing that happens is the soloist and the rhythm section learn how to interact and solo together. And becoming aware of the possible organizations.... Like Christian's favorite choice of II V's... you become aware of the possible organizations of why one would use that version and the ensemble can be on the same unwritten page of music...
What is a note without a harmonic reference?, what is a chord without a melodic reference.... there shouldn't be any conflict between the two... unless that's what one wants to do.
Anther note.... comping is all about the lead note, lead line or melodic line on top. I think it was Jordon who was trying to help members on how to approach comping using one, two and three note.
The melody can and usually does imply harmony... chords. Comping is just playing a melody with voicings below. How we choose to realize or play something is a choice. Like Christian D-7b5 to G13b9.... cool.... but that's a personal choice, and if that's all you got... it gets old .... what's the organization for using that II V.... how does it relate to the rest of the tune etc...
Look... it take a long time to get your skills together, when you approach the old school way of thinking the melody is everything etc...it take even longer, when you just use your ears and skip the harmony and theory part, tack on some more time... and you basically become a very limited player.
I agree with Christian about guitarist being chord related.... but generally from having melodic disorders, can't sight read melodic lines and really can't sight read changes.... except for basic vanilla version, don't have a clue of what harmonic rhythm is, except maybe chords of a tune.
Sorry to keep using you for references... Christian... but you post a lot etc...
Enough... so eventually you get to a level of musicianship where you can and are aware of multiple levels of organization going on all together... examples... compound lines, two contrapuntal lines or melodies being played as one. the two line are going on simultaneously... this also goes on with harmony, and a lot when playing jazz. There is another harmony or set of chords going on while the basic changes are going on. Compound harmony.... but with jazz we typically organize the two chord patterns with use of rhythm.
There is the basic harmonic rhythm of a tune.... the basic changes and the physical location of those chords.... and there can be another set of changes going on off that Harmonic rhythm...
Could be as simple as a organized set of approach chords on the week side of the harmonic rhythm... or the basic chords can each become targets.... which means they become I chords or targets of Chord Patterns
Anyway... this may or may not work alone with the melody... but when you also become aware of the harmony as well as the melody being part of the tune, you begin to see that there isn't just one way to perform.... everything doesn't need to line up vertically perfect, the melody isn't the only piece to the tune.
Or you can keep it simple ... either approach can work, Great players and performers can make anything work well. Just don't think there is only one approach.
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I'm a little confused, how did you arrive with these changes to The Preacher? Why do you think the 'official' ones don't support the melody? I play this tune a lot, and always thought it's perfect as is. Originally Posted by alez
I mean even if I don't play the melody and play the changes while soloing it's still very recognizable as The Preacher, to my ears anyway.
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Are familiar with the "half note melody"? It is taking the melody line and reducing it to the two "main" notes per bar... you will hear which two notes are this "backbone" of the melody... it is as if the full melody line were what you get by adding enclosures, side slips, etc. to the schematic half note melody.
The half note melody can often reveal the melody line's harmonic relationships to the progression chords more clearly (because the "right two notes" are the ones most involved in that, typically).
The half note melody is called the half note solo when used as an aid when you improvise... it is the reverse; you apply embellishments, ornaments, etc. to the two notes in each bar... not so much meant to be a performance method as a helpful or clarifying practicing perspective on grasping some of the main relationships between melody and harmony...
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Originally Posted by pauln
I was unfamiliar with this. Sounds interesting. Thanks!
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Careful... your going to start relating melodies to notes with reference to chords.... then the next thing you know.... melodies just become pitches on top of chords in harmonic functional patterns... Chords within space, (Form)... and a lead line or notes and their embellishment on top.
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Yes... the musical difference between forcing melody as structure vs letting the melody be your guide. Originally Posted by Reg
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And of course... there are more approaches to improv that using a melody as guide or.... "forcing the melody at structure"... is that still the same reference for improv, one being vanilla and the other has options or possibilities for....? changing harmonic references.
Or as many call embellishments, the forcing of a harmonic reference without even knowing what their implying, and we as the rhythm section need to follow their cues or hints as to what the soloist wants to do by the moment... maybe that's what some musicians mean when they say... you need to be in the moment. Sorry, that is a joke, not a criticism. I understand the concept....
Yea...I always say... if you want to be able to play Jazz, Get Your Technique Together. It will serve you much better than any BS on the web. At least put in enough time.
Technique is not learning tunes.... You use technique to be able to play tunes. All the players who say learn tunes, or I spent too much time working on technique etc... then started learning tunes and really started to improve....say that because they already have technique or at least put in time trying to develop skills. Tunes teach you focus limited technique. And many times bad technique, and hurt your possibilities to even be able to perform. You need organized technique that repeats.
I do get it... you need some type of gratification, fulfillment.... reward.. something and generally performing tune gives that. So learn some tunes... ( I'll skip the sight reading thing...).
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Yeah but I can't play a melody in time from start to finish in time :-)
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I guess you can always think about that V7 from a harmonic minor scale perspective instead of an altered perspective. Originally Posted by christianm77
Oh, I see! A major II-V (i.e. IIm7, V7) resolving into a minor tonic chord. I've seen that before in some tune, but I can't remember which. And I've also seen the opposite in Alone Together's B section, which has a cadence to II (note: I'll use degrees of relative major) followed by a cadence to I, the latter cadence being a minor II-V into major (at least that's how I learnt it). Originally Posted by christianm77
That's basically what I use (i.e. what I imply when soloing) all the time. Originally Posted by christianm77
Trumpet players are often confused and/or obsessed too Originally Posted by christianm77
Like you said in the other thread, horn players really should learn some piano.
Oh, I totally agree that it's perfect as it is. I just did the exercise of putting together some chords with the tune's melody as ONLY input to the task. I think I used some of this: Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
Originally Posted by christianm77
That's exactly my point: the melody seems paramount, but a tune is often more than a melody with supporting chords added to it. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
I think it's not just that. For example, learning tunes has helped me experience different ways of how this or that may sound in practice or can be put together. I think that's why tunes are often quoted as examples for explaining whatever, much like christianm77 does in his great vid above. Originally Posted by Reg
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Yeah.
So back in the day, tunes were often written from the point of view of 'diatonic melody chromatic harmony'
So you often get things like a diatonic melody backed up with a chromatic voice leading in the middle voices.
Compositional thinking/hearing
For a very simple example take Cherokee's A section - Bb major pentatonic melody against the most vanilla version of the changes
Bb - Bb D F Bb
Bb7 - Bb D F Ab
Ebmaj7 - Eb G Bb D
Ab7 - Ab C Eb Gb
Bbmaj7 - Bb D F A
C7 - C E G Bb
F7 - F A C Eb
Bb - Bb D F Bb
So all the notes are in Bb apart from this line Bb-Ab-G-Gb-F-E-Eb-D, right?
Old school swing improv
You can still solo on this tune using the major pentatonic and related vocabulary - which is exactly what many of those early players did on this type of progression when not actively varying the original melody. Lester Young springs to mind.
Chord symbol hieroglyphics
Now if we put the melody notes on the chords - which is what we do in chord symbols - we write in extensions, like so (you'll see more elaborate version of the changes)
Bb6 | % | Bb13 | % |
Ebmaj9 | % | Ab7#11 | % |
Bb6 | % | C9 | % | etc
Note that however the chords LOOK the melody is strictly diatonic - pentatonic in fact. This is most represented in the Ab7#11 chord - which simple means here, chromatic chord, melody on the 3rd of the key. I'm not at all sure historically when chord charts starting incorporating the melody in this way. I would imagine it was a way of preventing clashes with the melody when guitarists became more harmonically ambitious, so I reckon probably the mid 50s? Just a guess...
Now, I think when Ray Noble wrote this he was thinking about a simple folksy melody and a chromatic counter melody. The result are the chords we read in a lead sheet, rendered down to a single chord symbol.
Bebop thinking/hearing
OK, so beboppers (according to Barry Harris) would just play over the basic chord, so we would use Ab Mixolydian on Ab7. No need to worry about whether or not we use D. It's up to the improvisor.
For instance, Charlie Parker plays Db the Ab7 on Koko (Cherokee changes) - for instance - line 13, second bar in the Omnibook, and several more times. Notice that Aebsersold has kept the chord symbols here bare bones - just the basic chord quality, no extensions.
OK, so this is what I think of as the bop paradigm. Kind of chord-centric... The classic is the dreaded ii-V lick (sorry Barry) applied regardless of harmonic or melodic context.* Parker might play subs or extensions, but he doesn’t appear overly concerned with the extensions as we might find them in a chord chart, such as above.
This was facilitated by Birds unusual facility in transposing material to all keys, which is why he could play the B section of Cherokee :-) this facility became standard for the next generation.
Current (chord scale) thinking/hearing
Now the chord scale theory paradigm, which also extends to what Jordan Klemons is teaching in a different, and very cool way, would be to take these melody notes and incorporate them into extended chords that would also relate to scales.
So in this case, my chord chart becomes the basis of stacked third structures. Then we might talk about that Ab7#11 being a Lydian Dominant sound with a theoretical 9th (Bb) in it too, or perhaps in Jordan's case a Bb triad on an Ab shell voicing, because that structure supports the melody as an upper extension. (Which can lead to surprising relationships in some cases where the appropriate structures move away from the key.)
This is NOT how the song was written (Noble was a classically trained composer from the 1930's, and this stuff is a post-modal jazz concept) but it is a way to interpret what's going on for improvisational resources.
Melody oriented players such as Peter Bernstein have some element of unifying melody with the chords in this way even if they might not think in chord scales per se. In fact chord melody guitar ENCOURAGES one to think this way, as does a piano style with the two hands working together rather than separate (i.e. Keith Jarrett as opposed bop or stride).
Summary
In general I would characterise the history of mainstream jazz harmony as --> diatonic melody based --> chord only --> unified chord & melody. If that's not too Hegelian...
* BTW this might appear to contradict some things I've said about Parker elsewhere, I don't really want to go here into why it doesn't IMO.Last edited by christianm77; 06-05-2018 at 07:38 AM.
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Where jazz is today is Melody and groove driven. Smooth jazz is the the movement of the day.. there are far more smooth jazz players and radio stations than historical players.. I believe a student should study the past.. like Miles Davis is David Sanborn and many others I think we should stay in the present look to the Future.. like I said right now it's about Melody and groove and I kind of like happy Sax land
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Are you Kenny G?
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Then I guess I'm a bebopper! That's how I think on this tune. Plus some Django and Brian Setzer licks thrown in just for fun. Originally Posted by christianm77
But it's a 'burner' tune, no? I usually use it as example when 'melody as backbone' doesn't apply, at least for me. Go and shred and have some fun, show off your chops! I know, it's heretic on this thread, but if I hear a player tune after tune hiding behind the melody, I might start to think their really just don't have enough chops haha
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All the below is my general observation; there have always been exceptions. To my ear, the melody vs chord things shows most in the way songs were composed... as in, which came first, the melody or the chords?
In general, popular music (not just jazz) sounds to me like the tunes up to about the 1960s were composed by beginning with the melody line and then composing an underlying progression to most support it... meaning that real listening and composition judgement had to be used, resulting in memorable melodies that in order to accommodate them were accompanied by progression movements that were hauntingly beautiful.
The general approach from then up to about the 1980s sounds to me like a transition into composing both melodies and progressions at the same time. The linkage of melodies to chords remained fairly coherent but the diversity of progressions was reduced and hence the variation of melodies also simplified. This period of about 1960 to 1980 resulted in some very nice music in spite of its self limiting composition approach.
Since then music has seemed to sound like chord progressions were composed first in a more generic way so that they fairly stood on their own, if even a bit more pedestrian, and the melody lines were added after to fit the already existing chords. This sound is, in my opinion, becoming increasingly pretty lame, but characteristic of the modern approach in which progressions of three or four chords are used to make zillions of songs that, to a musical ear, are sadly recognized as just more awful variations of the same machine-like songs. The lines, especially modern vocal lines, sound like someone oblivious of melodies was assigned to write them using a CST program, and vocalists convinced to sing them... they sound quirky, goofy, not melodic.
To me, smooth jazz for example does not sound melodic; it reveals strongly the algorithm of simple chord progression first, then the wanky attempt at applying a selection from a store of safe bolt-on melodies after. It has the sound of good studio musicians suffering poorly contrived machine music with the obligatory style control switch set to "Sounds like jazz!".
Try this at home...
- compose an independent melody first; then compose a progression for it
- compose something by simultaneous chord and melody construction
- compose a progression first and then compose a melody for it
See if you don't notice the difference in the sound of the results.
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I actually think most of us are beboppers actually, the chord thing is pretty standard. But it's not cut and dried. There were some very harmonic swing improvisers and some very melody oriented post bop players. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
But old school swing improv often takes a generalised view of the changes compared to bop, by which I mean less harmonically detailed in terms of getting involved in lots of implied chordal movement as opposed to following the changes slavishly (Parker doesn't do that)...
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Smooth jazz is like a laxative, so movement of the day takes on a different meaning... Originally Posted by Joseph parsley
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I think one approach doesnt work for everything. I like to stick with the melody on ballads, it sounds good almost always. But i like to play changes too, and sometimes i like a bit of both. Originally Posted by christianm77
Also, lets not forget the art of quoting. It doesnt have to be the original melody all the time right? Inserting quotes from other tunes from time to time sounds fun and refreshing.
I found a way to quote Thunderstruck on Swing 42 or Crazy Train on Douce Ambience btw, to a pretty enthusiastic response. I wouldnt make them backbone of the tunes though.
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"Bebop is the music of the future"
- Barry Harris
(Google if you've not heard of him)
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Originally Posted by Joseph parsley
I like happy sax land too! Charlie Parker is the most joyful sound I know.
What say you?
(Did not mean to hijack post)
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