improvising melodic lines

Having a musical conversation? Is creating melodic line in an improvisational musical setting similar to participating in verbal conversation when among friends with common interests? Say what? Is what basically occurs in verbal conversation similar to musical improvisational conversation in that each participant generally takes a turn to add too or continue the general trend of thought being discussed, while the other participants hopefully become listeners, internalizing the new data being provided by the speaker and formulating their responses? Coolness emerges with improvisational musical dialogue in that it very often follows along the same lines as verbal conversation with the additional concept that everyone involved is talking at once and that's cool, for in the combination of the voices, the overall statement by the group is created.

The "soloist" leads the conversation, supporting group members "murmur" their musical thoughts that hopefully reflect, accentuate, prompt and support what the soloist is "saying" musically. The "topic" of the musical conversation could be said to be the musical composition the group is performing. The intellectual intensity of a musical conversation basically corresponds to verbal dialogue in the level and degree of musical communication and interaction between the participants. Suffice to say that when a person internalizes a large amount of information on a particular topic, they generally have a quite a bit to say and can lead a conversation on that topic. The same concept applies to music. As one's musical vocabulary grows, so can the range of ideas and possible combinations of the musical colors, thus a finer ability to musically tell our stories.

So, where are your musical interests? Moving towards a jazzier sound perhaps? In making the transition from the blues rock colors into the world of jazz music, perhaps consider developing the ability to accurately sing the chromatic scale, it made all the difference in the world for me when crossing this bridge. Took about 3 weeks on non stop trying. Ended up with a sore throat but got the pitches internalized for ever. From then on, everything sounded different, clearer for sure and all of the pitches began to fit theoretically in place. Here's the sound of the scale, can you accurately sing along? Give it a try. Example 1.

Well, easy one eh? To accurate sing the half steps somehow makes a difference in making a artistic change towards the jazz styling, in which allot of coolness comes from "slipping" into a color by half step. Curious to explore the theory of musical chromatics?

With this idea of verbal / musical dialogue, let's discuss various components of improvised musical dialogue. All of the following ideas are, just that, ideas. Ideas to stimulate thought and consideration of these artistic elements. Again, utilize what works for you. Remember though that your present day attitudes and abilities will naturally evolve and progress as you work at your craft. Ideas that seem far fetched today, from whatever source, might become new avenues of artistic thought and direction tomorrow.

Phrasing / Tone. If there is one dominating aspect of recognizing the artistic signature of a particular player’s melodic lines, it could well be phrasing / tone. Improvised music is akin to verbal conversation. The intent and emotional content of our ideas are conveyed by the rhythm of how we phrase. The tone quality chosen to portray this idea brings the phrase to life emotionally. Think of the myriad of different ways one might say hello when greeting another. Apply this simple concept to your phrasing. Adding in the bending of a pitch often adds a bit of blues color. Finding your own way of turning a phrase perhaps? Listen to your inner voice, physically manifest this inner voice by vocally producing it, then find and produce your voice on your chosen instrument. Rarely will two original players phrase in an identical fashion. As one increases their time spent listening to music masters, consciously or unconsciously we begin to categorize their overall approach and its emotional impact.

A player's tone can be, and in most cases is, as individual and unique as their phrasing. Tone production is based on many factors, i.e., gear, instrument, hands, technique employed etc. It is not uncommon for a player to spend lots of time and effort shaping the actual tone they produce. Getting your right tone plays a large part in producing your art. It is a tough choice when deciding whether phrasing or tone is the true essence of one's artistic signature, but taken together, the combined elements will begin to produce your artistic signature. After years of listening, recognition of famous artistic musical signatures becomes second nature, whether listening to the radio, listening to a friends stereo, music played in supermarkets, elevators or the mall. Once we learn to know and love a particular players tone and phrasing, they become unmistakable. Regardless of one's artistic direction, developing our own artistic signature that portrays and personifies our emotional and artistic statement is an ability that can bring forth boundless joy through the music.

Rhythm. At any given moment, any groove potentially exists within our physical environment, it could be said to be like static electricity, which is in the air but not organized into a discernible presence. We must initiate and sustain that groove. It is amazing how some players, with the aid of a simple metronomic pulse, can create the essential groove. This groove has to come from somewhere. Any ideas? "If you can sing the line, you'll be able to play the line." I've heard this idea many times throughout the years from players at all levels. Transcribe your favorite lines vocally, internalizing it’s rhythmic emotion. Create different versions of this idea by placing it within different rhythmic environments, i.e., Latin , straight ahead, ballad etc. If one can sing and play the line, writing out the lick in standard musical notation is the closure to this format of study, commonly referred to as transcribing. The ability to transcribe rhythmic ideas potentially can become additional fuel for your own internalized rhythmic motor.

Jazz lines rhythmically have been traditionally an eighth note rhythmic figure. Mature eighth note musical phrases can contain different styles of eighth notes in the same line. For example, a jazz melodic line may start with aggressive eighth notes, ones that charge ahead and almost want to rush the groove, initially establishing the forward motion of the line. The middle eighth notes within this line are perhaps more even, sitting directly on top of the beat. The end of the line might contain eighth notes that are held or pulled back just a hair, balancing the front of the line's aggressiveness. Toss in the occasional triplet with the 8th notes and we got a start. Latin flavored eight notes generally tend to be more evenly executed. Swing eighth notes are sometimes characterized by sort of a loping quality that oftentimes places the accent on the off beat. This elusive concept of getting your lines to swing is potentially remedied by a combination of listening and scat singing. Taking simple melodies and rephrasing them in a swing styling is a good place to start. Needless to say, there is an endless potential to rhythmic combinations in all of the American styles.

Getting your lines to swing. I remember a time helping a friend to realize that their inability to get their vocal lines to "swing" was keeping them from getting their guitar lines to "up off the ground." I suggested for my friend to sing to me the song "This Old Man." After a bit of cajoling, my friend sang this childhood favorite, a little abashed I think. I then suggested to sing the melody again, this time thinking of "how might the Count Basie Orchestra do it" and try to emulate their phrasing. Big smiles with rather overdone version resulted, but the process of internalization / projection was in place. By adding in a few scat syllables, my friend vocally began to make the transition in getting their lines to swing. As composer and bassist Charles Mingus suggested, "you better git it in your soul" sums things up nicely. But once there, how do we get it out? Singing can become a great joy for the artist, is a cool way to share ideas and surely sharpens one's internalized vocabulary. Try it. Maybe rehearse your group with this approach, have everybody try to SING their parts together in time, then play it ... ?

Quotes. Ever take the melody line of one song and play it in another? This is commonly called "quoting." Does hearing one melody often prompt recall of others? Rarely if ever does it fail to bring a smile somewhere, when I insert the lick from "Jingle Bells" into a solo. The ability of a player to take recognizable melodic fragments from one song, cliché or not, and insert them into their improvised lines of other songs not all that easy, especially in the brighter tempos. What oftentimes prompts a quote is the ability to think ahead in music, being able to "hear" what's coming up, so important to the improvising musician.

Quoting a melody from one tune and placing it in another can also indicate a players oneness with the art form. How the essential musical components we all share can be reshaped and artfully placed in perhaps a different musical setting is fun, oftentimes providing a bit of humor in the line and showing the flexibility of style of American music. Potentially like call and response, an ancient and very powerful melodic approach, quoting melodic motifs oftentimes will get the other players in the group to respond in kind, adding to the overall interaction and excitement of the music being created. Try quoting an idea in your soloing and see what happens. "Can any lick be anywhere" in improvised American music? That's kinda the idea...

Musical dynamics. As in verbal conversation, our musical thoughts and expressions contain different intensities, nuance and pitches. In musical terms, these verbal attributes aurally translate and come under the heading of musical dynamics. Perhaps like listening to a computer generated voice, music which maintains the same dynamic levels i.e., no variation of volume or articulation, begins to sound flat and eventually uninteresting to our ears.   Oftentimes, getting our emotional message clearly through the music depends on a players ability to correlate the emotional intensity of their musical lines with appropriate use of varying dynamics. This is what good story tellers are so good at. Enhancing the essence of their story by modulating their voice and delivery of speech to draw in their listeners, like creating suspense through a gradually increasing volume of their voices. Whispering the sweet endearments between lovers, or shouting out the joyous message of redemption from the toils and frustrations of day to day life. Hearing and creating technical musical wizardry is cool, fun and exciting. Hearing and becoming a good storyteller can be life enriching.

Character of melody / vehicle. For the improvising musician, the character of the melody of a particular musical composition creates the mood or tonal environment to improvise within. I generally translate this into the term vehicle and the group melodies accordingly. Thus, Latin tunes, ballads and minor blues are three types of vehicles that provide varying emotional contexts to improvise within. As we mature, we find certain elements within these vehicles that in a sense become essential spices in creating these different environments. Once the knowledge of these "stylistic spices" is gained and internalized, they not only enhance and expand our emotional range of expression but allow us to morph ideas from one style into another, creating variety, humor, and expanding our ability to connect with listeners. Grouping and learning tunes based on their character of melody is also helpful in creating a broad repertoire of music, often essential to the professional career musician.

Musical lines. With these ideas in mind, check out the following lines. The majority of the following lines resolve on the root, third or fifth of the tonic chord. If first starting out in this endeavor, perhaps try to resolve your lines to one of these three pitches of the tonic triad. This may also help to firm up the tonal sense of your ideas. So, if your hear something you dig in any of the following ideas, extract it's theory and add it to your own palette of colors, maybe run through a few other keys to get the lick firmly under your fingers, thus to simply explore the theory and experiment with the concepts.

As the term tonal convergence implies in this text, here we realize the many types of scales into musical sounds, creating lines of a resolving nature towards a tonic. And as so often happens in creating the American sounds, the group of pitches with which we create our melodic ideas are oftentimes enhanced to create the harmony we often find them. So in many of the examples which follow, we simply apply the melodic pitches to conventional American harmony, attempting to capture as much of the sound and character of the various melodic groups as possible. Click jazz lines for a more complex realization of the convergence possibilities. Click each melodic entry to explore the theory of that group of pitches. Click the description of each entry to explore a broader discussion of the melodic color. Remember that each of the glossary entries each contain four links to it's use in the text.

A kind of joyous, American folk sound eh?

Using any kind of blues anywhere in American music is rarely if ever out of place, if it is tastefully placed that is.

Isn't that the leading tone in bar 6? Tis is indeed.

Is any kind of blues idea placed anywhere in American music ever out of place? Well ...

So, how many cool and important Euro Amer melodies are created from this group of pitches?

Cool color here in that we pick up the augmented triad. So, just the 3rd degree is altered between melodic and major? Yep.

Using the augmented 4th in the Two chord creates the old time Five of Five motion ( based on chord type ), while adding the Lydian color enhances the tonic to polytonal effect.

Here a bit of the whole tone color emerges with the lowering of the 7th scale degree by half step to the blue 7th.

Not all that common, using the common tone diminished simply delays the resolution and is a is mostly a jazz thing.

Anything from anywhere? The chromatic scale has it all. Here we simply chromatically enhance the arpeggiation of the pitches of each chord.

Moving by half step into the tonic.

Perhaps the most popular of the dominant chord substitutions.

Using the softened Lydian color over the diminished containing dominant 7th b9 chord.

Using Two / Five from Gb to slide into the minor tonality.

Simply using the whole tone scale to converge to the tonic pitch C by half step.

A nice and gentle motion so character of the pentatonic colors, note the 4 / 3 suspension in the line in bars 59 and 60, creating that heartfelt longing sensation that the poets term epic.

Simply thinking diatonically.

Using the blue 7th to color the line.

Using the Phrygian color simply rearranges the half steps which brings forth the blue 3rd and 7th.

Same group into the minor tonality. Note the "darker" C minor 6th chord in bar 76?

Basically C minor / Eb major into C major? Hip to Cole Porter's "Night and Day?"

Same idea into the minor tonality.

Simply focusing in on the half steps between 5 and b6 and major 7 / tonic of the harmonic minor color. Adds a bit of the exotic to the line eh?

Using the minor / major 7th arpeggio to the b5 of the dominant chord.

Using the diminished color into the minor tonality.

Know any other cliche chromatic lines?

Simply approaching the tonic from below by whole step.

Subbing in the diatonic Two chord of Eb major. Listen for the quote in this next line.

Permutating the Phrygian mode in thirds.

Getting out there a bit, heading toward the world of polytonality.

Subbing in the Two chord normally associated with E dominant 7th chords, we simply use the dominant 9th arpeggio in bar 122 to create a need to converge. Wow, does the b5 of bar 123 disguise the sense of tonic or what?

Simply arpeggiating the F Lydian color to the max.

Using the interval of perfect fourths to launch the line, the Eb helps to set up the motion to the minor tonality.

Keying in on the Ab, we simply run the melodic minor color in a descending fashion to create the tension.

Adding the Db is tricky, as it is a half step from the tonic. Here the line is simply scalar in form.

Very vanilla diminished idea into triadic resolution.

Simply using the parent scale of the tritone sub to create the half step coolness.

Pairing up the tritone sub with it's diatonic Two chord and converging from the polar end of the cycle of 5th's.

By simply removing the tritone, so much of the tension goes away.

Back to our musical roots with the ancient minor pentatonic color.

Simply up then down the scale.

Starting the line with the tension and resolving.

Slipping in the non diatonic blue note b2 ( C# ) of the tonic key into the minor pentatonic color.

Using the augmented color to launch into the polytonal # 11 environment, delaying the resolution a wee bit. Is a part of an advancing players art in simply finding ways to delay the obvious resolutions? To create surprises and curiosity? Look for cool ways to avoid becoming a bit too much of a "master of the obvious" in their expressions? Do we find this in other art forms as well?

Is there a easier way to obscure tonal direction and intent than with the chromatic color? And why would we want to do this? Obscure tonal direction and defy the laws of tonal gravity?

The b9 to 5 in bars 185 and 186 is a cool and common jazz players way of doing things.

Simply creating a more diatonic Two / Five cell for the Bb dominant chord.

Using a scalar approach to clarify the melodic minor color.

Setting up the minor tonality then simply not going there. Where is the diminished color diatonically derived from?

Such a light, non obtrusive sound is the pentatonic grouping n'est pas?

Relative minor / relative major? Simply creating a four note sequence with the pitches.

A nice surprise eh? Even with just a scalar idea of the converging color.

Simply subbing in the diatonic Two chord commonly paired with E 7 / A major.

Simply running the whole tone scale in two parts.

Taking advantage of the half step to highlight the leading tone major 7th of our tonic chord.

B Lydian = Cb Lydian, a mode of F# / Gb major.

Simply subbing in for Two and extending the tonic arpeggio. Does taking the Lydian path from a half step below to converge help prepare the polytonal tonic color?

Simply using the diatonic pitches and focusing in on the half step between the 7th degree B and our tonic C.

Straight ahead ascending diminished color with a leap down setting up the resolution.

Using an octave leap to help jump start the line, straight ahead descending whole tone scale to One.

So, after exploring a bit of these ideas, is it now more true that "anything can go anywhere"? Need some blues lines?

Where to next?

review new ideas

"Silence is a great help to a seeker after truth" Gandhi