Conference napalm::guitar

	Great topic, Brian.

	Being chained to my guitar for the last few years I've been
	getting pretty acclimated to harmony and rhythm, but when I
	listen to the likes of Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Diz and
	Bird, I realize that I'm pretty weak in the melody department....

	So I bought a flute. One of them silver things that won't let
	you play any notes unless you *breathe*. Pretty cool. I can't
	play anything on this puppy unless I understand what I'm doing -
	you see, changing keys from G to Ab requires I stop playing F#'s
	and start playing B,E,A, & D flats. On a guitar this is like
	falling off a log. On instruments without necks it's a different
	story.

	Working with simple melodies is a cool approach. That's what I'm
	doing with the flute. There's all this stuff that everybody
	expects to hear, like "Yankee Doodle"! There's a decent chapter
	in Jerry Coker's "Improvising Jazz" that talks about melody (Ch2).

	Last.... I'm in this notes file today because I was looking for
	Buck's note on Solfege. I'm in the car for 1 1/2 hours a day so
	I'm starting spend the time figuring out how to sing my favorite
	melodies in DO-RE-MI syllables - mostly for ear training. I hope
	to go on to move them into all of the keys using fixed-DO solfege.

	Faves?

		"The wind began to switch, the house to pitch..." from
		the Wizard of Oz

		"We are Santa's Elves" from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

		"Happy Birthday"

		"Frere Jacques"

		"Till there was you" and anything from "The Music Man"

		any of the original Vic Mizzy music from "The Addams
		Family"

	Lots of popular melodies start on V.

	I'll shut up and listen, now.

    
    Other than doing it by ear, the best way, IMHO, is to pick up an
    instuctional book on the bass. Study the scales and vary where
    you start within the scale (ie. first start on the root, then start on
    the 2nd, etc..). Once you've got a handle on the scales, work up to
    creating melodic lines within each scale. Then proceed to combining
    these melodic lines together... 
    
    /Billy_K

    One technique that one of my old guitar teachers used on me was to have
    me think of a melody by singing it instead of playing the guitar. 
    Helped get me out of the scale boxs and thinking a little more
    creatively.
    
    Steve Jensen suggested something similar that he got from the Mick
    Goodrick "Advancing Guitarist" book awhile back.  He said put down some
    chordal vamps on tape in the same key and play solos using the
    different modes over them, but only play on one string at a time.  So
    you have to force your mind to think more about what what notes you're
    playing to stay in the mode, but you also have to work harder to get
    something that's melodic.
    
    Greg

    
    This is a bit off the subject, but your opening line ("Hey, how about 
    a topic that doesn't concern gear!") reminded me of it...
    
    I was reading the liner notes to Christopher Parkening's Segovia
    tribute CD last night and found a great quote from the maestro -- some
    advice he gave to Parkening.  I can't remember the exact wording, 
    but the general gist was
    
    	Your love of music must always exceed your love of the guitar.
        If not, the guitar will be destined to just be an instrument that
        hangs on the walls of taverns.
    
    
    More to the subject...
    
    I think the approach of trying to play melodies by ear as a training
    task is a great one (I do this too).  It's also good to look at the
    music (particularly more complicated stuff) to see how it fits together.
    In addition to just getting the notes right, concentrate on phrasing.
    
    I've noticed that my note selection for piano is often quite
    different than what I do for guitar -- I play "piano stuff" on piano
    and "guitar stuff" on guitar ("piano stuff" = things easy to do on
    piano; "guitar stuff" = things easy to do on guitar).  To try to break
    out of a rut, I will sometimes try to replicate the "piano stuff" on
    guitar.  Another thing I do sometimes is to force myself to play
    in an *uncomfortable* key (like Gb) -- sometimes my mistakes are
    interesting.
    
    Jim

    Brian, I have the impression from reading your replies that you like
    jazz quite a bit...why not learn some technically feasible but
    musically great solos on the bass?  I recently learned to play Miles' 
    trumpet solo from "So What" on my alto recorder; it's fun and very
    educational.
    
    Also, why not just pick a key and improvise?  If the instrument itself
    seems inhibitive, sometimes it helps to sing a line and then play it
    (or better yet, sing and play the line at the same time).  For some
    reason, it seems to help get the imagination engaged.
    
    One specific suggestion I'd make about playing melodies on bass is to
    pay lots of attention to smoothly connecting notes.  Since bass players
    spend so much time punctuating music, bass solos often sound to me like
    the players are still poking out separate notes instead playing a
    line with some musical continuity.

    Since both of these ideas have recently appeared in Bass Player
    magazine, Brian already knows about them, but they're worth sharing
    with the notes world.
    
    Turn on your TV, turn the sound down, and plug in.  Try "scoring" the
    show or movie you're watching realtime.  Look for cues as to the mood
    or feel of what's going on and try to reflect or support it in what you
    play.  This is a great way to get you out of thinking about scales and
    patterns, and more into the emotional aspects of what you're playing.
    I've tried this a few times now; it's hard at first, but really fun
    once you get into it.  You almost *have* to start creating melodies to
    get something that really fits the action.
    
    Intentionally detune one or two strings, by a legit interval of course.
    Then play your usual stuff, favorite patterns, etc.  What happens is
    that familiar patterns start to produce different results, and you'll
    most likely stumble across things that sound cool but you may not have
    thought of otherwise.  Okay, now the second part is real important. 
    Write down or record the things you like that come out of this exercise,
    retune your instrument to normal intervals, and then duplicate these
    in normal tuning.  The effect is a double whammy; not only have you
    come up with some new lines, the new lines themselves suggest new
    fingerings in standard tuning that in turn may suggest other interesting
    lines, andonandonandon....
    
    /rick

>    (or better yet, sing and play the line at the same time).  

This reminds me of great jazz bass player Slam Stewart who created a style 
of singing and playing his solos simultaneously... very melodic, witty and 
expressive - the voice is doubling the bass line an octave (or 2?) higher. 

FeliX.

    Yeah, Brian, scat like George Benson does!
    
    Greg

    I heard most jazz performers sing there parts while playing there
    instrument.  I see it with a lot of the jazz gutarists.  I also heard
    that its a part of the training when playing jazz.
    
                                                      stigwhoknowsnothingab
                                                      outjazz