Question regarding "harmonic" vs. "melodic" approach

[JSngry]

Advantage? For/to what?

I don't understand the question, honestly. I can only weigh possible advantages in terms of desired outcome, so...what would the desired outcome be? Reaching critics? Moving an audience? Getting rehired? Self-satisfaction? I mean, a lot of people play a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons.

I can tell you that as far as reaching people (including critics), tone and basic rhythm are the shortest distance between those two points. You can reach anybody with damn near anything if you got that happening. Most people can't hear anything but the most basic math harmonically, and most people can't carry a tune beyond the most basic shapes, but see, those are both "intellectual" conceits, math and architecture. Tone and rhythm are both vibrational activities, and operate on a sub- (or, imo, supra-) intellectual plane. There's math and architecture in them as well, but it's of the type that tends to be felt rather than heard, since the math serves to deliver the idea instead of being the idea.

Just forget about this whole horizontal/vertical thing, it's like a postcard of a mountain, not only is it only two dimensional (at best), the scale of the what you think you're seeing versus what's actually there is so shrunken as to be of next to no practical use at all. And if you use that postcard to go find that mountain, the one that literally looks like the postcard, you never will find it!, because the only place it exists in that form is on that postcard!

Edited June 5, 2012 by JSngry

[Pete C]

It seems to me the melodic approach is favored by the critics, since Lester and especially since Bird.

I don't get this part, as I always think of Bird as a "harmonic" improvisor, and of course one of the handful of the best. His "melodic" side is the amazing ability to create new, coherent melodies within the changes, but by melodic improvisor we usually speak of artists who mine the original melody for solo material rather than relying on the changes as a deep structure for new utterances, to borrow a Chomskyan concept.

But it's not an either/or dichotomy. Dexter Gordon, for instance, could be called both a melodic and a harmonic improvisor. Like Prez, he was cognizant of the lyrics and stories of the songs he played, but lots of his improvisation comes out of Hawk and Bird (and his penchant for "cute" quotes is not necessarily in the service of the original melody). I'd call Stitt, on the other hand, more purely a harmonic improvisor. I think that's why Stitt wasn't really a great fit for Miles in 1960.

I think a case can be made that Ben Webster started his career firmly in the harmonic camp and ended it firmly on the melodic side.

Edited June 5, 2012 by Pete C

[JSngry]

But it's not an either/or dichotomy. Dexter Gordon, for instance, could be called both a melodic and a harmonic improvisor.

And there wasn't a switch he flipped to go back and forth!

Thease are all tools that go into the making and playing of music. They are not the music itself, nor, usually, are they the object of the music itself. It may be that at some point a player hears/feels a melodic shape and calls upon their harmonic base-knowledge to determine with what notes to fill that shape. Later on in the same solo, the same player might hear/feel a harmonic sequence and then calls upon their melodic base-knowledge to determine what melodic shape to give it.

And in the best possible world, you don't even have to think about any of that shit. You just play the music, it flows through you with all the carpentry having been done some place you don't worry about. That's the best.

It's also the rarest, but it does happen once in a while, perhaps not coincidentally when you've been playing a lot and living a lot. Then, you just get the hell out of the way and let it happen.

But it takes a lot of work to get to the point where that can stand a chance of happening.

[bneuman]

And there wasn't a switch he flipped to go back and forth!

Thease are all tools that go into the making and playing of music. They are not the music itself, nor, usually, are they the object of the music itself. It may be that at some point a player hears/feels a melodic shape and calls upon their harmonic base-knowledge to determine with what notes to fill that shape. Later on in the same solo, the same player might hear/feel a harmonic sequence and then calls upon their melodic base-knowledge to determine what melodic shape to give it.

And in the best possible world, you don't even have to think about any of that shit. You just play the music, it flows through you with all the carpentry having been done some place you don't worry about. That's the best.

Well-put.

The more I figure out as a musician how to get the ideas to just flow through, the more I think that distinctions like "Lester is melodic, Coleman harmonic" are just empty confusing words people use to fill up space in liner notes.

Sometimes the melodic/harmonic distinction is supposed to point out the kind of difference between Rollins, who is conscientious about building his ideas off the original melody, and Rouse, who just plays the changes. Sometimes "melodic" refers to players who like to use a lot of simple, very "melodic" ideas that float over the changes rather than dig into them, and "harmonic" refers to players who really dig into the harmonic complexities of each passing change, a la Coltrane on Giant Steps. The Coltrane thing can sound labyrinthian/complex, hence "not melodic". By a similar logic, you can label some bebop players "harmonic/not melodic" relative to simpler "melodic" players. This is sort of like the "vertical/horizontal" distinction; vertical players supposedly allowing their every move to be dictated by what chord change is written above the beat they are on, "horizontal" players supposedly floating over the chord changes with nary a care in the world.

But all of that is kind of silly. I would say that even the most patternistic and complex almost-possessed 1965 Coltrane has something "melodic" about it, in the sense that it has musical direction and it's coming from Coltrane's ear, not from his practice book; it's just not melodic in the sense of a nice simple Tin Pan Alley melody everyone can sing. Parker might be an even better illustration of why the distinction isn't all that helpful. He's really "harmonic", in a sense, because there's a lot of arpeggios and connections of chord tones and voice leading; but he's very "melodic" for the same reason, because lines with such strong harmonic shape are usually pretty melodic, too.

The "vertical/horizontal" distinction isn't that great either. I think "harmonically strong" players like Parker and sometimes Coltrane had such strong ears that their lines dictated the harmony, not the other way around. Maybe the closest thing you could get to "horizontal" is Miles holding a single note that works over 4 or 8 bars, and letting the rhythm section do what they want with it. But in both cases it's not a matter of playing the chord changes or not playing the chord changes, it's strong musicians hearing something and playing it, and then going on to play something else that contrasts with and/or complements what they just played. (Coltrane will often follow a complicated "harmonic" sequence with a simpler "melodic" idea; Miles will follow a simple floaty melodic thing with a choice bebop or post-bop line).

I think the Rollins/Rouse sort of distinction can be vastly overstated too. A small fraction of Rollins' ideas could be said to be "variations on/developments of the melody", especially once you get past the first chorus or two. He plays a bunch of bebop lines (or weirder things later on) just like everyone else. There is a sense that he has the melody of the song in the back of his mind moreso than a guy like Rouse, which can affect the shape and length of Rollins' phrases, encourage him to occasionally reference or signpost a small part of the original melody (especially hits and other parts of it that stand out), etc. But that shows up in his solos in a subtle way. I don't think it makes a difference for the listener. It only makes a difference insofar as it is one of many things you can do to get yourself in a mode that ideas just flow out. The listener sometimes will be affected by whether or not you're doing that.

(Also, if we use this last distinction, is someone who starts a solo with a simple melodic idea and patiently develops it not a "melodic" player if the melody isn't from the song he's playing?)

I don't know that anything about the distinction usefully describes the process from the musicians' point of view. I don't know that it does much to help a developing musician, and think it might actually hinder him. I don't think it does anything at all for the listener, except confuse them and make them worry that the liner note author is smarter than they are.

[AllenLowe]

I'm glad you said that about Sonny and so-called "thematic" development - I hear it (and remember Monk and that great French pianist, what the hell's his name?) describing it as continuous composition - and hence Rollins' vast superiority to Rouse - it's a matter of imaginative thought, some "melodic," some "harmonic." This is what makes him, like Trane, a great performer of Monk tunes - the changes are there but he has incredible rhythmic imagination to go with it, not to mention a knack for harmonic density that Rouse cannot touch. And it's incredibly coherent - which is what makes, I think, people sometimes mistake it as thematic variation.

Edited June 5, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

Great post, Ben. I particularly like "'I think "harmonically strong" players like Parker and sometimes Coltrane had such strong ears that their lines dictated the harmony, not the other way around" and all of the previous paragraph. Geez, if you keep working at it and thinking this hard, you might even become a "critic."

[Big Wheel]

Ethan Iverson's comparisons of a bunch of solos on Lady Be Good is also an excellent jumping-off point for this kind of understanding: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/2-oh-lady.html

The problem of course is that this is really the only way to start analyzing things with any precision, but it's immediately opaque to the non-musician.

Listening to the Konitz and Parker solos, one thing that occurs to me (which could be very wrong and a product of drinking too much caffeine on an empty stomach, but here goes nothing) is that bop almost was like taking the fundamentals of a Pres solo, emphasizing those fundamental notes by accenting them, and then filling up lots of the rests with unaccented notes in the scale. The result is that you have these multiple melodies going - the accents form a basic melody and then there are all these OTHER micromelodies playing off of that.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Big Wheel

[bneuman]

...bop almost was like taking the fundamentals of a Pres solo, emphasizing those fundamental notes by accenting them, and then filling up lots of the rests with unaccented notes in the scale. The result is that you have these multiple melodies going - the accents form a basic melody and then there are all these OTHER micromelodies playing off of that.

Exactly. The "melodic/harmonic" distinction totally misses this point.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Ben Neuman