How to get a developmental songform out of a 2-bar(+/-4 seconds) motif?

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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How is it made, these developmental songforms of orchestration and jazz, which all consists of a 2-bar motif as basis? How should I work to achiev a developmental songform out of a little motif?

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Michael1985 wrote:How is it made, these developmental songforms of orchestration and jazz, which all consists of a 2-bar motif as basis? How should I work to achiev a developmental songform out of a little motif?
Check out Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor for a good example:
Image

Just those four initial notes were worked into one of the most popular and famous pieces of music in the Western world, one that has endured for over 200 years!
Unfamiliar words can be looked up in my Glossary of musical terms.
Also check out my Introduction to Music Theory.

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Jazz doesn't start from the motif it starts from the progression.

Trad jazz mostly has the same song form AABA

When you play trad, modern, post modern, fusion or smooth jazz the first thing you have to do is get the progression down. If you are not getting the progression you won't get the melody. That's why when you study jazz it's about connecting the melody to the progression.

You have a line. You associate the line with a chord or two or three chords. What's the next chord after that? What was the relevance of the line in context of the first chord or chords you played? How do you get to the next chord tone of the next chord you are going to play? What are your options when you get there?

In order to fully understand jazz you have to play jazz not just think about it. Learn some standards. Study the progression. Play the progression before you tackle the melody. Play the melody in context of the chord progression so you are actually playing and hearing the context of the melody to the chords. Listen and play. Play and listen. Recognize the rhythmic mode recognize how the notes of the melody correspond to the outer lying harmony.

Learn a standard.
Don't just read the notation or the chord chart and think you know it. Learn to play a standard. Work on the progression so you can play it. Then work on the melody so you can play that with the actual progression. Listen to what you are doing. Don't assume because you can look at a sheet that you understand it and can then apply it. Experience the music by performance. It's not rocket science. It is work. See my footer.
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tapper mike wrote:Jazz doesn't start from the motif it starts from the progression.
Once again you are bypassing the huge body of modal jazz, as well as plenty of artists who work from motivic development rather than outlining chord forms.

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That would be....Miles Davis form of bebop. Not trad, modern, fusion, or smooth.

Coltrane developed a multi tonic approach based on chord changes and reharmonization to those changes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reharmoniz ... ic_systems

Charlie Parker was about a 12 tone system over progressions that is the way his "bebop" playing developed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_parker#Bebop

Trad jazz types like Duke Ellington and Goodman Always worked within the frame work of the progression. Listen to In the Mood by Glen Miller. Listen to the notes that are played in a given measure and compare that to the chord that it supports. It's blatant.

Listen to Phish. Who in there own words state that what they are doing started off as jazz working thru ideas based on progressions but then they transformed it.

Listen to all the white hot jazz players of the late 70's and 80's like Carton, and Ritenour and Mclaughlin all of them are progression based players.

Even guys who used to play with Miles abandoned his methodology like Scofield and Stern. Not to mention Bill Evans after his stint with Miles returned to playing his own brand of progression based reharmonizations.

Even Davis walked away from his own take on bebop when he started to embrace fusion.

In popular music there are only two fundamental approaches.
1. Write the melody then build the harmony to accompany it so that other band members can figure out where your going (Paul McCartney)
2. Write the progression and graft the melody to support the progression. When you right a progression first it allows you to look ahead at where your melody needs to be while being in the present.

With rare exception (eddie gomez playing with bill evans or a young charlie haden playing with ornette coleman) Most bassists in popular music (jazz. rock blues etc) follow the progression That's how they define or there role. Supporting the progression not counter point to the melody. Even Haden the elder in his work after coleman does this. He still retains his lyrical qualities and when he is not soloing he is supporting the progression. When he is soloing it is usually either from the original melody or he is improvising based on the chord changes.
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I just hope the OP recognizes that what tapper mike is saying here represents only one school of thought within jazz, and that within jazz, "classical," and lots of pop approaches to music there are plenty of artists who start from melodic development and use very few/no chord changes. Sticking to within jazz, I could go with citations ranging from Louie Armstrong and nearly all dixieland jazz through to later period modal John Coltrane (from My Favorite Things forward, including his masterwork A Love Supreme) to nearly all of Miles Davis' fusion work (show me the chord progressions on Bitches' Brew, which is nearly all one chord vamps) through to more contemporary artists like Keith Jarrett, Vijay Iyer, or Jason Moran, all of whom have experimented on and off again with pieces that have no chord progressions. Then there's also the huge school of contemporary orchestration that started with Claude Debussy that starts from abandoning traditional concepts of harmony and runs through serialism and minimalism that generally start from singular melodic ideas that are transformed into larger pieces.

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jopy wrote:I just hope the OP recognizes that what tapper mike is saying here represents only one school of thought within jazz, and that within jazz, "classical," and lots of pop approaches to music there are plenty of artists who start from melodic development and use very few/no chord changes. Sticking to within jazz, I could go with citations ranging from Louie Armstrong and nearly all dixieland jazz through to later period modal John Coltrane (from My Favorite Things forward, including his masterwork A Love Supreme) to nearly all of Miles Davis' fusion work (show me the chord progressions on Bitches' Brew, which is nearly all one chord vamps) through to more contemporary artists like Keith Jarrett, Vijay Iyer, or Jason Moran, all of whom have experimented on and off again with pieces that have no chord progressions. Then there's also the huge school of contemporary orchestration that started with Claude Debussy that starts from abandoning traditional concepts of harmony and runs through serialism and minimalism that generally start from singular melodic ideas that are transformed into larger pieces.
...not to mention the enormous body of pre-Classical "classical" music which was built on melodies playing off against each other, which is what "chord progressions" evolved from, not vice versa.

And there is a huge amount of popular music which is not related to Tin Pan Alley or the blues, all kinds of industrial, post-punk and so on, which is not based on chord progressions.

Basically there are too many ways to answer the original question, unless it is made more specific.

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Oh yes the great hymns of Gregorian monks. Who could forget those wonder years of musical enlightenment from the dark ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant

So spellbinding where their chants that no other music would ever arise after that which could measure up to the standards of which they carried forth. The classical movement that followed was all based on these hymnal chants. Music itself revolves around this time period only where the original constructs for all music followed. How dare one calleth oneself musican or composer without bowing down before the great chanting monks and surcombing to the great hexachord.
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tapper mike wrote:Oh yes the great hymns of Gregorian monks. Who could forget those wonder years of musical enlightenment from the dark ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant

So spellbinding where their chants that no other music would ever arise after that which could measure up to the standards of which they carried forth. The classical movement that followed was all based on these hymnal chants. Music itself revolves around this time period only where the original constructs for all music followed. How dare one calleth oneself musican or composer without bowing down before the great chanting monks and surcombing to the great hexachord.
What an incredibly stupid and musically ignorant straw man.

Between the time of plainsong and the Classical period there were many ways of creating harmonies from different melodies. Chords and chord progressions were derived from these musics and became structural units in their own right later.

But the original concept of many melodies making the harmony doesn't vanish even if you're thinking of vertical chords. Even in music in which the harmonic structure is not a consequence of the melodic counterpoint, and the melodies are derived from the harmonies, the inner melodies are still there. You can't just assign chord tones to instruments at random, unless you're making some academic experimental music or bad jazz.

Go learn some basic music history and stop trying to sell your narrow and woefully incomplete understanding of music as knowledge.

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tapper mike wrote: How dare one calleth oneself musican or composer without bowing down before the great chanting monks and surcombing to the great hexachord.
oh, the irony...

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Hey. You brought up the time period as pre classical. I provided and accurate well documented for the time period you had chosen. Now you are blaming me for working within the parameters you set. Who's playing the straw man?

You state I'm ignorant of that time period and maybe I am. But failed to provide any worthwhile documentation to support your claim before hand and you are providing none now.

Perhaps in this could be a learning experience for you. Perhaps when entering into subject matter you'll provide references to support your claims as I have. Then maybe you'll earn credibility with me. Because you've shown nothing that contradicts what I have stated.
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tapper mike wrote:Hey. You brought up the time period as pre classical. I provided and accurate well documented for the time period you had chosen.
No. As the whole English-literate world can see, I did not posit some vague pre-Classical world. What I said was:
...not to mention the enormous body of pre-Classical "classical" music which was built on melodies playing off against each other, which is what "chord progressions" evolved from, not vice versa.
We can all see as plain as day, or as plain as plainsong, that I specifically referred to polyphonic music built on melodies playing off against each other.

Gregorian chant is not within the "parameters I set", parameters which obviously (to anyone qualified to be talking about such things) begins about with monody and "ends" (well, not, but you can look at it that way) about when figured bass petrified into rooted chords a la Rameau.

Let's have the original poster post the kind of melody they are referring to, and a piece showing the kind of development they are talking about. Otherwise, as I have already said, there are far too many possible answers.

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1. Listen to "Take Five" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faJE92phKzI

2. Try to repeat the magic.

I don't know the history of the writing of this song, but it sure sounds to me like it was one where the riff came first, and everything else was draped on the riff.

How they got this odd-time signature thing to flow so light and delicate and smooth and insert any other effeminate adjective here, is a wonder to me.

It is a thing of beauty and wonderment to my ears. My kids also love this one and have come to love Brubeck and melodic jazz through Take Five.

-Scott

Edit: This post is intended for the OP of the thread.

Not going to enter into a debate about plainsong, baroque form, Classical, Romantic, Atonal, etc. etc. etc.

OP asked how a song is built around a 2 bar melodic riff. I think Take Five is a great example worthy of study.
Last edited by rockstar_not on Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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I have.

That's not the best version. Here is a closer representation of the vinyl recording.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1S_vA0 ... re=related

Paul Desmond wrote the song. When he did the parts were reversed. The only contribution Dave Brubeck offered was to flip the sections

In the A section he uses the blues scale over a vii-ii "vamp" and caps it working from the dorian mode.

In the B Section He uses chromaticism to link the chords it's a slightly more elaborate method then say...Charlie Parker but the effect is the same.
He outlines the chord via an arpeggio then uses a half step motion to great the next chord

http://www.jazzguitar.be/take_five.html

Not really well written tablature for the transcription but it holds the essence of the piece well.

Working out "moving into a chord" sometimes called bumping or a lead in (as opposed to leading) Is a common method in jazz, rock and the blues. The goal is to start before the measure hits one. It give the song a little push into "The One" (the first beat of the measure) Chuck Berry uses a lead in on "Johnny B. Goode" The first notes played don't start on the first beat of a measure. It starts of &4&.
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