The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Weird question time!

    Let's consider your run of the mill song written in the Western tradition in the last 100 years or so. It has a melody that sounds like, well, like a melody.

    Then somebody comes and plays a solo over the chords of that song. And it sounds, well, like a solo.

    It doesn't sound like a different song that happens to share the same chords, it has a different... intent? concept? phrasing? je ne sais quoi?

    Of course there are outliers like those bebop tunes that sound like a solo, or if somebody went and quoted the whole Flintstones theme over a rhythm changes tune. But in general, you know what I mean (I hope). There's the melody. There's the solo. And they sound different. Why?

    I am not an expert on musicology or the history of musical forms, so feel free to enlighten me in any manner you find convenient.

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  3. #2

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    Perhaps because of chord scale theory?

  4. #3

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    One difference is, Tin Pan Alley standards have melodies that were intended to be performed vocally. Solos or bebop heads are instrumental parts. Wide angular skips, fast legato lines are very difficult to sing but very natural for technically developed musicians to perform on the piano, sax, guitar etc.

    Classical music is the same. A piano concerto sounds nothing like the kind of lines composed for opera singers.

  5. #4

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    Melodies tend to be singable by mortals. There are often lyrics -- which further limits density and complexity.

    But, just to do a thought experiment ... what if you limited the soloist to the same number of notes as the composer? Would you still be able to tell the difference?

    I think the answer is "it depends". If the soloist does what many of us do -- eg play an idea (think, melodic cell) multiple times while varying the pitch of the shape, harmonic context and rhythmic placement, then it's not going to sound like a composer's melody. Mostly, composers don't do that.

    If, otoh, the soloist plays a singable line - I don't know how to describe what a melody actually is - then it may be hard to tell which is the melody vs which is the solo, if you don't know the tune.

    And then, to speak out of the other side of my mouth, if you listen to a good solo repeatedly, it starts sounding more like a melody because you learn to expect what's coming next.

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Howzabopping
    Weird question time!

    Let's consider your run of the mill song written in the Western tradition in the last 100 years or so. It has a melody that sounds like, well, like a melody.

    Then somebody comes and plays a solo over the chords of that song. And it sounds, well, like a solo.

    It doesn't sound like a different song that happens to share the same chords, it has a different... intent? concept? phrasing? je ne sais quoi?

    Of course there are outliers like those bebop tunes that sound like a solo, or if somebody went and quoted the whole Flintstones theme over a rhythm changes tune. But in general, you know what I mean (I hope). There's the melody. There's the solo. And they sound different. Why?

    I am not an expert on musicology or the history of musical forms, so feel free to enlighten me in any manner you find convenient.
    Its a very good question.

    to me it boils down to the way motives and ideas are developed via repetition and varied repetition.

    Music generally sets up expectations in the listener and the art is often is how those expectations are met, confounded or subverted.

    Melodies for standards are generally have a clear form, while the form in solos is less clear (but sometimes present)

    For instance you can see the way sequencing, for instance, (the use of a melodic phrase moved diatonically through a scale) is used as the primary compositional device in a tune like Blue Bossa or Autumn Leaves very clearly, and in regular phrases of 2 or 4 bars.

    That’s a technique you find throughout Western music. (And composers such as Mozart will set up these expectations and subvert them brilliantly) Sequencing while present in solos is less obviously used on the whole is much harder to spot in improvised solos; in general phrases are less regular and clearly related to each other, and as a result the form is a lot less simple and clear as it is in a song.

    Bop heads are somewhere in between.

    (That is incidentally the main reason why I think many people find jazz difficult to understand. Pop listeners like lots of unvaried repetition by contrast. But all music walks a line between chaos and boredom, and that line is subject to personal taste.)

    Some soloists are more motivic than others. Also there is the school of thought that solos should be heavily ornamented or varied melodies which implies soloing is primarily about ornamenting or even hiding the composition.

  7. #6

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    As an exercise, try improvising on a 2 or 4 bar phrase, varied to fit the changes. It’s really good exercise. Here’s a vid I did:


    Amongst other things this works your musical memory and gets you out of ‘throwing notes on the chords’

  8. #7

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    Melody - each note counts. The effort is there also with not-so-good ones.
    When working on creating one, I just roll it back and forward, check if everything snaps together perfectly. Kinda listen it like in 3d or something. Every part has to "speak" with all other parts.

    Solo is more like 2d.. linear. The form keeps it all together but it seems most soloist go for question/answer. Meaning 2 phrases are closely tied together, but the ties are very much loosened after 3-4 phrases.

    It's a great question btw. Probably the best one ever

  9. #8

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    Well... if solos sounded like melodies they wouldn't be solos and vice versa.

    Melodies are sparser, solos are denser.

    Solos wouldn't stand up as melodies by themselves.

    Melodies are statements, solos are fillers.

    If solos sounded like melodies they wouldn't be solos and vice versa.

    Can't think of anything else

  10. #9

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    Maybe I'm not quite understanding ragman1 [and others above] but solos can be, and do become, a melody. Yes, there's lots of solos that are very complicated musically and stand on their own but if you were to listen to solos by, say, Gerry Mulligan, a lyrical player, there are sections that you could take and use as a melody. No?

  11. #10

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    Ideally a soloist will be "telling a story" and playing melody when they solo. Some players seem to have more of a knack of doing that than others.

  12. #11

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    Paul Desmond's solos sound like melodies to me. In a good way!


  13. #12

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    I think the real reason they are different is that melodies are composed over a period of time, sometimes months or more, sometimes just hours, while solos are composed on the spot, with no time to revise or think clearly about the notes. I believe that I can come up with a better melody, most of the time, if I have unlimited time to do it, than I can if I have to just make everything up as I go along, on the spot. And I believe that anyone else can also. It takes much talent and long practice to be able to play good, nevermind great, improvisations. To be technical, playing solo only means playing alone, not necessarily improvising, perhaps playing a much rehearsed piece alone. But in jazz, a soloist is expected to improvise, and the results can vary widely, even when professional jazz musicians do it.

  14. #13

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    To be honest, very few solos count as melodies, there's no point to it.

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
    Paul Desmond's solos sound like melodies to me. In a good way!

    Great example. In transcribing a Paul Desmond head, it's sometimes hard to know where the head ends and the solo begins. They're the same thing.

  16. #15

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    Miles Davis was good at this. I love his "Doxy" solo.


  17. #16

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    Ignoring all the gray areas, for the purpose of this post, I'd offer the following.

    I think of melody as something singable that comes straight from the heart. It is constructed first (in this view) when a composer creates a song. It is foundational. You can reharmonize a melody, and it's still the same song. You can't change a melody to the same degree without making it into a new song.

    The composer of a melody need not think about chord changes until the melody is finished. Then, the composer chooses among the infinite number of ways it could be harmonized.

    The soloist, otoh, needs to fit in with the composer's changes. That's a restriction the composer didn't have. And, soloists often use a reservoir of learned devices to navigate the changes. This can emerge as "jazz vocabulary" and is part of the art form. Well practiced licks have a place in a jazz solo, but not, typically, in a melody.

    In this forum, there is abundant discussion of devices which can be used to navigate chord changes while soloing. There isn't any discussion of the mechanics of how to create a melody, at least not that I recall. I assume that's because melody comes from the composer's unconcious mind. Or, phrased differently, straight from the heart. Nobody can teach you a set of techniques from which you can derive the melody of Stella, or Shadow of Your Smile.

    Speaking for myself, as a journeyman on a good day, when I compose I don't know where the melodies come from. I'm certainly not thinking about any sort of theory or technique.

    When I solo over changes I can feel (meaning no thought whatsover is required) I get close to making real melody. But, if I have to think about the changes, it gets much harder to make melody. Also, even if I can feel the changes, I have to stop myself from having a technique occur to me and then making a conscious decision to employ it the solo. Mostly, that's where the solo heads south. I think of that as my mind wandering from what it's supposed to be doing, which is, more or less, staying out of the way.

  18. #17

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    The solo is an abstract of the melody that exploits the particular characteristics of the soloist's instrument.

  19. #18

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    It's pretty simple really.

    Like others have said a melody to a tune is; typically more sparse, may be intended for the human voice, makes a distinct statement, and is designed to be uncluttered.

    An instrumental solo involves expansion, variation, and elaboration. A similar (not same) concept is found in Symphonic Form: I. Theme, II. Development, III. Recapitulation. The second movement "Development" could be thought of as similar to a jazz solo at least in terms of objectives (if little else).

    Fiction has similarities as well. A simple beginning with the stage set and characters introduced etc., then the story may get much more involved with lots of twists, turns, and surprises, and is also expected to resolve back to some kind of conclusive ending.

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by emanresu
    Melody - each note counts. The effort is there also with not-so-good ones.
    When working on creating one, I just roll it back and forward, check if everything snaps together perfectly. Kinda listen it like in 3d or something. Every part has to "speak" with all other parts.

    Solo is more like 2d.. linear. The form keeps it all together but it seems most soloist go for question/answer. Meaning 2 phrases are closely tied together, but the ties are very much loosened after 3-4 phrases.

    It's a great question btw. Probably the best one ever
    I think your observations are closest to how I view this...

    The real distinction between melody and soloing is a particular relationship between the notes and the chord harmonies. Lots of possible relations have been mentioned, but the critical one to me is the "interpretive identity" (regarding preserving the recognition of the tune).

    This is made more clear by thinking about jazz soloing rule #1 - "Let the melody be your guide".

    The meaning behind this is suggesting that the melody is already a guide, but a guide for what? Melody is the guide for how to uniquely interpret the chord progression of a particular tune (same functional moves and changes that occur in many other tunes)... tunes' melodies make their identities distinct. In other words, the melody answers the question, "What tune is this?" This is why standard jazz performance is to start the tunes by playing the head (melody) to remind the musicians which tune is being played.

    Imagine two tunes that share most of their progression harmonies in common and you discard their melodies and just solo using your vocabulary, theory, ear, or just hands on auto... who knows which of the tunes you might be playing? The melodies' special connections to their tunes' progressions make manifest the identities of the tunes, so when melody is your guide when soloing the tunes' identities continue to be restored and revealed.

  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by jazzereh
    Maybe I'm not quite understanding ragman1 [and others above] but solos can be, and do become, a melody. Yes, there's lots of solos that are very complicated musically and stand on their own but if you were to listen to solos by, say, Gerry Mulligan, a lyrical player, there are sections that you could take and use as a melody. No?
    Well what would you do to turn that solo into a melody?

    And there's your answer....

  22. #21

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    This "linearity" up there, I didn't mean to say anything negative about it at all.
    But without pre-meditating about everything what is going to happen in the solo, it just goes like that.
    And, when it works the right way, it can be insanely good just as it comes.
    ...but "good" is not what we're talking about here now I guess.

    Personally the strangest thing is, a bad or uninspiring tune can bring me down. Sometimes I have to leave the room(when live) or switch the box off.. But can't say the same about uninspiring solo.
    When it's not my cup of tea, the solo goes "neutral" but a melody can get so depressing.

  23. #22

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    I had the good fortune to have studied with Dave Samuels. He was old school, a real melodicist. Each week I had to take a piece he assigned and I had to write/compose a solo on the changes. I had the time to consider things like Where do I begin the phrase? Do I complement or contrast with the previous phrase? Do I use longer notes to make the note breathe? How do I use rests to make my statement stronger? How does the use of dynamics effect the colouration of the story I'm telling? And tons of other things a composer thinks about but a "soloist" doesn't think they can think of on the fly.
    And there was nothing I incorporated into my weekly solo that didn't come from inside of me. There was nothing I "composed" that was not part of my soloing if I had the time to think about it. And by this process, my awareness became sharpened so these things became part of the real time soloing process. My solos became better, more logical, less reactive and more lyrical, and the ordering of ideas became more compositional as a whole.
    Melodic content and the things that were the realm of the composer were now things that shaped my options when I soloed.
    But it's more trouble to learn this way. It's a lot easier to just play Faster, Louder, Higher and throw in my favourite licks to fill in the space. It's your choice what you do in your practice time; it shapes who you become.

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    As an exercise, try improvising on a 2 or 4 bar phrase, varied to fit the changes. It’s really good exercise. Here’s a vid I did:


    Amongst other things this works your musical memory and gets you out of ‘throwing notes on the chords’

    Great video! Not many videos or articles around touch on the subjects of melodic development for soloing.

    A couple I found:




  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
    Paul Desmond's solos sound like melodies to me. In a good way!
    Guy's solo is actually a head in disguise! Mind=blown

  26. #25

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    Shall we give our favorite melody like solos ? good game

    (obviously 'Moody's Mood for love' is so fabulous that it got Lyrics written for it

    My favorite is Miles solo on 'Summertime' off Porgy and Bess ....... superb !

    sorry if this is a derail
    (feel free to ignore guys)