Playing More Melodically

[Tone Taster]

This is a spawn from a previous post.

 

Whether one reads music or doesn't.

 

Whether one knows theory or does not . .

 

In order to play more melodically; We ALL MUST LISTEN to the Classical Masters who emphasized

melodies and themes

 

Yesterday, I was in this rut and nothing I seemed to play was melodic or developing thematically and I was hiding behind the chops

I decided that I needed to take in some classical music

Strauss

Mozart

Mendelson

Tchaicofsky (butchered that one, I'm sure)

 

Sight reading some of their melodies for about

30 minutes helped me internalize on the fretboard

 

Let me tell you that today was flowin' with melody all day. No problems, no licks bashing.

[Big Red 67]

Remember songs and play them. Chistmas songs, childrens songs, anything. Summertime is a fav of mine.

[MILLO]

Big Red, the issue w/ the music mentioned by yZe is not only the tunes, but the fact that the works are mainly made of melody. Usually, when you hear chords played by a symphony orchestra, you're not hearing CHORDS, but MELODIES. However the most important thing is how these melodies ARE DEVELOPED. This is where it can be of such value. And well, the importance of the melody itself.

 

This is the way I see it: in more of the Romantic to 20th century periods, this music is not like rock or jazz where you have the riffs, chords and/or pre-made swingin' or toom-pah-toom-toom-pah rhythm in the bottom and a soloist blazing on top, but having to improvise OVER what's done. Melody is king. The rest of the music goes where those melodies go or motives go.

 

I've actually stopped listening regularly to classical music, which is stupid of me given the fact that now I'm studying more improv than I ever did (well, I never did, I just knew the theory and could wank a bit, but oh well...) and it'd be logical to think now is when I need that melodic- and motivic-development influence the most. Oh well, I guess I'm also building my chops... if only days were longer!

 

A few weeks ago I found an old tape w/ some Jolivet flute tunes and have left it in the car after rediscovering my love for it (our car is from the late 90's and still has a tape player in it). Some pretty sick licks on that one. As a matter of fact, I think I'll try to find that cd and get the names of some of the tunes, since I'd like to steal some of those licks and development procedures (what a term)... however, that'd be a bit over my head right now.

 

I'm not saying this music is the best or that the it belongs to the elite. I'm just highlithing its value to people who are interested in melody and its development, including jazz, blues and rock improvisors.

 

I'm sure yZe is a more experienced improv player than myself. His posting is just evidence of the fact that it's refreshing and helpful to let yourself be influenced by this genre...

 

Check out Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Lizst, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Puccini, Debussy (not the typical 'cyclical' composer, though), Gershwin, Bartók, and even "not-developmental" cats like Stravinsky and Satie, or not-too-melodically-driven like Shostakovich, or rather abstract and seemingly lacking of direction like Taketmisu.

 

Just to put things into perspective: Allan Holdsworth cites not only Coltrane, but also Debussy, Prokofiev, Ravel, Takemitsu as important influences.

[Big Red 67]

Yes, I took music theory and know how the melodies relate to the chords. Summertime has allowed me to extend past the limits of the chords. That is part of what i was referring to. Man you can follow voice leading to a ridiculous end. Then the rules become the melody.

[Tone Taster]

Here's the books with just the melodies with some actually legitimate chord charts written above the melodies in fake Book style.

 

These books come highly recommended by yZe in that he has seen tons of really half-cocked attempts with some really horrible chord changes, and these 2 books are anything but those:

 

 

The Classical Music Fake Book

 

&

 

The Great Composer\'s Fake Book

 

I do suggest amazon for probably a screamin Deal

 

You will not wlk away disappointed

 

Another thing one can do, is to at least find a legal downloading site and buy these individual tunes

 

Air On The G String (Orchestral Suite No.3 In D)

Ave Maria

Bagatelle Fur Elise WoO 59

Cradle Song

Farandole

Funeral March Of A Marionette

Habanera (Carmen)

Hungarian Dance No. 5

Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring (Cantata No.147)

Minuet In G

Minute Waltz

O Sole Mio

Ode To Joy

Pizzicati (Sylvia) [Delibes, Leo]

Rage Over A Lost Penny

Rakoczy March

Rustic Wedding

Sleepers, Awake!

Tambourin

Tango In D

Trumpet Voluntary [Travers, John]

Turkish March

 

 

Look at the table of contents of the tunes and dig in

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html?cart=335854100013294970&item=3592380&page=01

 

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html?cart=335854100013294970&item=3592380&page=02

[MILLO]

thanks for the recommendations..

[Ricardo.]

Where's the Debussy on that list?

 

To add to yZe's post, some if not all of those tunes are available for legal download on some sites, sometimes performed by schools or people in college. Most of the Copland I have is from these legal sites, for example.

 

Great advice, by the way

[Eric Iverson]

For great melodies, you can't go wrong with Mozart's woodwind concertos.... oboe, flute, and especially the one for clarinet, a stone cold masterpiece!

 

I have the sheet music for the clarinet one. Sounds beautifully elegant on clarinet, but is a royal bitch to play some of those three octave arpeggios on guitar! And still have it sound beautifully elegant, not just another BS shred exercise!

 

A CD I once bought, Cello Adagios, has some gorgeous classical melodies to play along with, and the cello is essentially in the same range as the guitar. (The low note is C below the low E string... some guitarists even tune that string down to C for cello pieces.)

[Gruupi]

Interesting thread. I play a few types of music and listen to many more. I play a few classical guitar pieces but I can't say that it is essential to do this to understand melody. I almost never quote direct melodic ideas from classical songs when I am playing electric or improvising. I will say that moving melodies around inside a chord has kind of become second nature by osmosis and that my classical technique has facilitated this.

[Eric Iverson]

Actually, there are tons of beautiful melodies out there, just for the grabbing by ear! Sometimes I just take the mando or flute and try to pick up the soundtrack to a movie, or just turn on the radio and play along and try to get it... it's great practice, no notes to rely on, you gotta get it by EAR ALONE!

 

Which I think we all should practice, no matter how well we can read or how much theory we know!

 

Unless you think that running scales and exercises is all there is to music!

 

Oh, and some of your great jazz melodists are good to play along with, too (Getz, Grappelli, Miles, Trane, Jim Hall) even if you can't get the fast stuff. Oh and good singers.. why not play along and cop their phrasing...

 

PS I just picked up the Jamey Aebersold backing track package entitled Ballads, which has some tunes with great melodies and AND chord changes!

 

Now this stuff may not work on a death metal gig....

[Gruupi]

I have the Abersold death metal package, how did you miss that one Eric .

[musicalhair]

I like the idea of going back to classical music for melodic ideas, jazz standards and the whole Rodgers & Hart, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Burt Bacharach, Victor Young, Jobim, etc catalogs are full of worthy melodies.

 

Many guitar pieces have great melodies: Ponce, Tedesco, Guiliani, Sor, Tarrega, etc. Even if the pieces can't be fully played the melodies (and more) can be pulled out and studied and used.

 

Bocherini, Tartini, Haydn, Brahms, and Ravel are some of my favorite composers that make me think of melody-- besides Mozart Bach and Beethoven. I should include Rossini because I should think of melody when I think of him but instead I think of the big bombastic overtures that rocked so hard before their time.

 

But really, we have to sing these things not just play them to become more melodic in our playing. Singing is the key, not neccessarily singing nicely but vocalizing our ideas. Melody has contours and phrasing and each tone has a "job" or a relationship to the tonic, so knowing how they work is important to developing melodies on the fly.

[Tone Taster]

Originally posted by musicalhair:

Singing is the key, not neccessarily singing nicely but vocalizing our ideas. Melody has contours and phrasing and each tone has a "job" or a relationship to the tonic, so knowing how they work is important to developing melodies on the fly.

I believe that singing is A key not THE key.

 

I agree with vocalizing, but try to sing along with a blazin' pagnini run or Bach run, or even a Rochmaninoff (butchered spelling, again) run.

all of which are melodic, but are nearly impossible to sing.

 

I believe that singing does help, no doubt, but sometimes people take this to the extreme with the "if you can't sing it, then it's not melodic" premise which is flawed because the beauty of instruments (besides vocal chords) is that one can play equally as melodic lines, yet intangible to articulate with the human voice

I believe that melodicism is something that is developed internally whether singing or not.

[Big Red 67]

Flight of the Bumblebee! hehehe

[Tone Taster]

Originally posted by Big Red 67:

Flight of the Bumblebee! hehehe

Yup, I'ma warmin' up the pipes right now

[Phillydor]

Originally posted by yZeC

 

I believe that singing does help, no doubt, but sometimes people take this to the extreme with the "if you can't sing it, then it's not melodic" premise [/qb]

Which people? Who are they? - I want names and addresses! I only ask this because these anonymous 'people' are often used, without question, to back up a flawed (though in your case not entirely untrue)argument. I think I know what you mean though - it's always bugged me that guitar playing, somehow seems associated with singing, whether you're a singer or not.

But there's a lot of joy in learning classical music. I get excited when I find some great guitar (or vihuella, or lute)piece that was composed 500 years ago. I play all kinds of music, but I always get back to playing classical guitar, there's nothing like it as a way to get back to the source.

Are you talking about playing classical guitar style? Learning something like Recuerdos de Alhambra requires a lot of attention to technical stuff such as tremelo technique, not easy if your not a fingerstyle player.

[Guitarzan]

there is a wealth of gold to be mined in any form of music. every type of music has elements that are unique unto itself.

jazz

classical

pop

opera

ethnic

video games

yada yada

milk it for all it is worth.

[Ricardo.]

Originally posted by Philemec:

Originally posted by yZeC

 

I believe that singing does help, no doubt, but sometimes people take this to the extreme with the "if you can't sing it, then it's not melodic" premise

Which people? Who are they? - I want names and addresses! I only ask this because these anonymous 'people' are often used, without question, to back up a flawed (though in your case not entirely untrue)argument. I think I know what you mean though - it's always bugged me that guitar playing, somehow seems associated with singing, whether you're a singer or not.

[/QB]

People interviewed in Guitar Player say it occasionally; I can dig one up and quote it if you want to call me on it. I believe one of them said something about "if I can't hum it, I won't play it" and then remarked that Jeff Beck was awesome

[MILLO]

Duke Ellington used to say that. I don't agree, but I understand what he was trying to say, especially in the context of his music.

[Phillydor]

No don't worry - this is a great thread and I like the thought that YzeCouncel and others have put into their posts. Just stirring the pot a little to keep things bubbling!

[Big Red 67]

Originally posted by Starcaster:

Originally posted by Philemec:

Originally posted by yZeC

 

I believe that singing does help, no doubt, but sometimes people take this to the extreme with the "if you can't sing it, then it's not melodic" premise

Which people? Who are they? - I want names and addresses! I only ask this because these anonymous 'people' are often used, without question, to back up a flawed (though in your case not entirely untrue)argument. I think I know what you mean though - it's always bugged me that guitar playing, somehow seems associated with singing, whether you're a singer or not.

People interviewed in Guitar Player say it occasionally; I can dig one up and quote it if you want to call me on it. I believe one of them said something about "if I can't hum it, I won't play it" and then remarked that Jeff Beck was awesome [/QB]

I wanna meet this guy They. He sounds like he knows everything!

[musicalhair]

Well regardless of if Beck or Ellington or anyone else said it, I don't think it was meant to be taken to anally retentive extremes. Even if was stated in an "all or nothing" kind of way, I'd take it as a form of emphasis and not an attempt to make a "melodic if and only if singable" kind of equation. There will always be a beautiful melody that is "faster" than you or I can sing, though the best "lyric soprano" might give some tough lines a run for their money though. Same goes for our playing it on an instrument as well, it takes skill.

 

The idea of a "singing" line being about the best snap-shot image of "melodic playing" you can come up with is for good reason: our ears and our voices and singing go far back before there were musical instruments able to "carry a tune". Even in the melodies mentioned above as too difficult the are really mostly just too "fast"; they could and would be slowed down to learn them anyway singing and or instrumentally, so the point is kinda off anyway.

 

The best way to internalize melodic ideas is singing them. There may be other good ways or complimentary ways but singing will always be a primary way to learn any melody we have to play, wheter we're lucky enough to have it a page in front of us or if we're learning it off a tape, or learning at a rehearsal. It is analogous to learning about wine by tasting as opposed to learning about by reading Wine Spectator.

[MILLO]

Some great 'albums' of melodies are the Peer Gynt suites by Grieg, as well as Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky ballets (like that one you have to see every Christmas), 5 pieces for violin and piano by Prokofiev, as well as some of his orchestral suites from operas and ballets... like Lieutenant Kijé, from which Sting extracted that melody for that 80's Cold War song of his that says "the Russians love their children, too"--whatever trhe name of that song is. Unless Prokofiev took it from somewhere else.

[MILLO]

...another famous, easy-to-get one: The Planets by Gustav Holst

[MILLO]

..another awesome one is Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

[Phillydor]

Has anyone ever heard Dave Edmund's electric guitar version of Sabre Dance (Katchurian) One of my long term ambitions, not yet achieved, is to learn that!

[Big Red 67]

I like Mozart, and Water Music.

[MILLO]

Aram Khachaturian (sp?) has some wonderful tunes, too; definitely. There's that one melody of his that always made it to TV and cartoon shows, very pretty and famous--can't remember either how it goes or its name... that Sabre Dance being one of those you hear in cartoons, etc.

 

More collections of great tunes: the violin concertos of Bruch, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Beethoven. Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherezade(sp?).

 

Another one is Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Beautiful tunes all around that work.

[Tone Taster]

Man, I am just diggin' playing through the Franz Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakoff melodies

 

Guys, lets focus on being melodic

 

Use the chops/hot licks only for when you can't be melodic

[mdrs]

"I got this guitar, and I learned how to make it talk". I'd say even The Boss himself agrees with you, Musicalhair!

 

When I sing, it is typical that anyone within earshot will plead with me to STOP! So, I HAVE to let my guitar do the singing!!

 

I don't read, so I have always depended on my ears to emulate cool melodies. I listen to Mozart every week, at least once or twice. I've always felt he was THE MASTER OF MELODY. His melodies are sublime. I often will pick up my guitar and play lead to the background music on t.v. shows late at night before I hit the sack. Often I'll rely on standard rock and roll chops, lifted from the likes of Clapton, Dwane Allman, etc.. But, I do try to spend time being very vocal in my lead and improvisation. I'll emphasise my picking, and use the edge of my finger and the pick to "milk" a more vocal sound. I'll use more bend downs, and bend ups to get to the note I'm going for, not just hit it straight away. Subtle use of poping harmonics with the right hand can be very expressive. I also try to incorporate my acoustic fingerstyle into my electric lead playing. Bluegrass and country guys do this to great effect. And, I'll try to remember to slow down, and only play the bare minimum number of notes.....try to hit just the "right ones". Also, don't get to the climax of your phrasing too fast. Anticipation heightens the eventual reward!!

 

One of Duane Allman's greatest musical influences was Miles Davis. I've read that "King of Blue" was an album that Duane listened to extensively, and actually said that it sort of freed him up to get to the level of melodic improv that got him on to so much of what became the Allman Bro's music, esp. the live stuff.

 

Listen to off the beaten path guitarists, like Rory Gallagher, who had a very individual sound to his leads...

 

Mozart, Miles, Duane, Rory.....pretty good teachers.