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When I play solo in a tune, I think more about the chords progressions.
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12-21-2021 05:11 PM
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I have a tough time divorcing the two.
Kind of depends on my job as a player...sometimes its best to let the melody guide...when taking a longer solo, the chords become more important.
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I'm with you Kris.
I love tunes like Have You Met Miss Jones because of the tonal A section and the quick change middle.
I think I have a lot to learn from melody.
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I'm an unabashed changes chaser. I prefer players who do the same, with only a few exceptions, and even then they're still often playing the changes (Eric Dolphy for instance). That being said, it's always nice to reference the melody in there somewhere.
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I think one way to pose this question is do you hear the melody in your head when you solo?
Melody may not inspire you in a direct way but can still inform your ideas. You can play a counter melody, reference the melody in climactic moments but reach the climax with a different melodic build up etc. The influence can even be very subconscious.
I find that there is an inverse relationship between the tempo of the tune and how much the melody informs my ideas. For example I may not think of the melody much when playing Joy Spring but rely on the changes. On the other hand, when playing a ballad like Skylark, the melody is almost always playing in my head at varying levels of consciousness.Last edited by Tal_175; 12-22-2021 at 07:13 AM.
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If I know the tune well, I can hear the melody as I solo and I can feel the changes. In that situation, it's both. I can't disentangle them.
If I don't know the tune that well and I'm reading, it's focusing on the changes to avoid clams.
If I know the melody, but I can't feel the changes that well, then I'm likely to be more influenced by the melody. Dolphin Dance was like that for me until I took the time to work on it.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 12-21-2021 at 07:58 PM.
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For most jazz standards I learn how each melody note relates to the chord (or not), so I'm doing both (I guess).
For bebop tunes (E.g. Anthropology), I just follow the chords.
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The lyrics, if there are any.
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When you say "melody" do you mean the head, or playing melodically? If it's the latter, I think most straight ahead jazzers are trying to play melodically through the changes. If it's the former, it is something earlier players of jazz did more of ie keeping the melody in their heads as they improvise around it.
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I never separate them, the tune's the tune. It's not just an unaccompanied melody nor just a sequence of chords, the whole thing is the tune. I always play it with that in mind otherwise I may as well invent a different tune altogether.
I explored this some years ago just for fun. I went through the Real Book and chose a tune I'd never heard of. I found it on YouTube to get the rhythm, studiously ignoring the melody, and put down the backing myself and played something over it.
Quite interesting. Very nice but nothing to do with the original tune. As you can imagine :-)
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What about contrafact tunes?
New melody/head/ over existing chord changes.
Often these new melodies are completely different in character from the original but chords changes the same.
That's why chord changes are more important to me when it comes to improvising.
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Originally Posted by kris
Let's not forget these were the popular tunes at the time and contrafacts were invented to circumvent copyrights in most cases. When they played the contrafacts they were still "thinking" or at least paying homage to the original.
The melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo are all part of the tune. You wouldn't think of an orchestral arrangement as separate melody and chord changes. Everything is the tune (even though you can separate chords and melody analytically).
Imagine how ridiculous it would be to play a jazz version of, say, "Gravity" and completely ignore the melody but just blow over the changes. Then why bother playing a jazz version of Gravity in the first place? I think they would have said the same thing in the 50's if you ignored the melody of a standard all together.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
For example, you have a concert with a female singer who sings the theme, you play solo and then the singer sings the theme again.In the accompaniment, I am focused on the chords to be good and match the melody.
The same is true for jam sessions ...Some people don't even know heads but play solos.
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Originally Posted by kris
That's what I strive towards when I learn a tune. It's just what it means to play a tune for me. Even if I'm playing in a rock band and take a solo, I'd still strive to relate the solo thematically to the tune, not just to the chord changes.
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Not long ago I heard a very modern jazz tune.
The head was written in a very modern way.
It was only after the chords in the improvising musicians' solos I realized that these were chords taken from "Sweet Georgia Brown".
I don't mean "Dig" by M. Davis.
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When I have a "job to do" - chords. When not... then I really dont know.
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Melody, always. Any melodic sequence will imply a harmony; that’s enough for me. Put it this way: Paul Desmond and Ornette Coleman are both huge influences.
Last edited by L50EF15; 12-24-2021 at 10:42 AM.
Grant Green, What is This Thing
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