THE MELODIC SKELETON

 

Well, we discussed how the concept of “tripartite phrase” can help to structure our improvisation, we delved in the idea of target note, tension and resolution, and finally proposed how to start a bebop phrase.

We also discussed the “block exercise” to create a drill to practice the transition from the phrase beginning and its development; now, please let me introduce to you a great friend of musicians willing to develop a phrase in a truly melodic and consequent way: the concept of the melodic skeleton. 

Should we truly wish to be tedious late-nineteenth-century theorists, we would start to ramble on about motives, repetitions, variations, harmonic regions and other nice Schoenbergian jokes - but we are here simply to learn how to develop a nice bebop phrase, so let’s leave all this nice stuff for another time, okay?

The melodic skeleton is essentially the phrase itself stripped of any embellishment, passing note, melodic or rhythmic tension; in essence, a basic idea of ​​what a melodic skeleton is can be had by thinking of certain nursery rhymes or children’s songs.

The melodic skeleton par excellence is the arpeggio of the chord. Nothing more complicated than this: play the target note (preceded, if you like it, by its preparation as discussed in a previous post) and then proceed by playing the notes of the chord arpeggio in eights.

Several possibilities immediately open up: extend the arpeggio to the ninth, eleventh and thirteenth, develop the arpeggio over several octaves, go up and then down or finally create different motifs using the notes of the arpeggio (both the triad and extended) in a “broken” way.

Obviously depending on my initial note the arpeggio can start from the tonic, the third, the fifth, maybe even the seventh, and obviously move both up and down.

Example: Dmin7

Ascending

Descending

Example: C major

Using mainly the C6 chord tones

Arpeggios

Trying to avoid the fundamental

 

Concluding, it is always important to seek musicality and avoid automatisms and mechanical execution; let us remember that, even if this is a preliminary exercise to prepare us to develop much more complex phrases, we are always making music and not pressing keys – we are musicians, not Berkeley trained monkeys.