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    A Guide To Melodic Improvisation PDF

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    Frank Benvenuto
    This document provides an overview of a book and accompanying play-along CD titled "A Guide to Melodic Improvising". The book aims to fill a gap in jazz education by focusing on melody, which the author believes is the most emotionally powerful element of music. It discusses principles, techniques, and concepts of melody and melodic improvisation over 10 chapters. The play-along CD integrates with the text to demonstrate the topics. The book and CD provide opportunities for readers to learn, practice, and apply principles of melodic improvisation.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    A Guide To Melodic Improvisation PDF

    Uploaded by

    Frank Benvenuto
    326 views2 pages
    This document provides an overview of a book and accompanying play-along CD titled "A Guide to Melodic Improvising". The book aims to fill a gap in jazz education by focusing on melody, which the author believes is the most emotionally powerful element of music. It discusses principles, techniques, and concepts of melody and melodic improvisation over 10 chapters. The play-along CD integrates with the text to demonstrate the topics. The book and CD provide opportunities for readers to learn, practice, and apply principles of melodic improvisation.

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    A Guide to Melodic Improvisation.pdf

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    This document provides an overview of a book and accompanying play-along CD titled "A Guide to Melodic Improvising". The book aims to fill a gap in jazz education by focusing on melody, which the author believes is the most emotionally powerful element of music. It discusses principles, techniques, and concepts of melody and melodic improvisation over 10 chapters. The play-along CD integrates with the text to demonstrate the topics. The book and CD provide opportunities for readers to learn, practice, and apply principles of melodic improvisation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    326 views2 pages

    A Guide To Melodic Improvisation PDF

    Uploaded by

    Frank Benvenuto
    This document provides an overview of a book and accompanying play-along CD titled "A Guide to Melodic Improvising". The book aims to fill a gap in jazz education by focusing on melody, which the author believes is the most emotionally powerful element of music. It discusses principles, techniques, and concepts of melody and melodic improvisation over 10 chapters. The play-along CD integrates with the text to demonstrate the topics. The book and CD provide opportunities for readers to learn, practice, and apply principles of melodic improvisation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    A Guide to Melodic Improvising – Text and Play-along Set

    There are many books, practice methods and play-along CDs that discuss jazz
    harmony and jazz rhythm, but few that deal with melody at any comparable level of
    detail. Jazz educational methodology focuses almost exclusively on harmony, and few
    improvisation courses discuss what the essence of a solo really is – melody. I’ve
    always felt that melody is the most emotionally direct and powerful element in
    music, especially in improvised solos, so this book seeks to fill that educational gap
    by focusing on melody as a learnable and improvable attribute, and as a key to greater
    enjoyment of music as a listener and performer.

    Any improvisor, beginner or advanced, can increase the interest level and
    emotional impact of his or her solo by prioritizing on its melodic development rather
    than on merely trying to express the complexities of the harmonic progression.
    Greater harmonic and rhythmic knowledge and facility lead to greater melodic
    sophistication, of course, but without an essential melodicism any jazz solo risks
    becoming more abstract and less memorable. After all, when you whistle or sing
    along with a tune, what is it but the melody with which you connect?

    In this book and play-along CD, I have set out to help jazz improvisers
    understand how to increase the melodicism of their playing by presenting what I
    believe to be a thorough look at the principles, techniques, concepts and
    fundamentals of melody and melodic improvising. The book begins with a general
    discussion that defines melody and its component elements, then progresses into
    more specific explanations and techniques for melodic improvising. I have also
    included some relevant historical information to illustrate several very important
    developments in jazz composition and improvising.

    The text is illustrated with musical examples throughout, and there is a


    section of practice exercises drawn from the text at the end of most of the chapters
    so that you can directly begin to apply the information to your playing. I have
    integrated the play-along CD with the text, so that topics discussed in the book are
    demonstrated on the CD. This CD, along with the practice materials both in the
    text and in the play-along section, will give you the opportunity to hear, practice and
    then play for yourself the principles of melodic improvising about which I’ve written.

    CHAPTERS:

    1. Melodic Techniques in Jazz Improvisation


    2. The Materials Of Melody
    3. Materials of Melody, Part 2
    4. Techniques of Melodic Development
    5. Thinking Compositionally
    6. Melodic Sources
    7. Melodic Improvising Over Complex Chord Changes
    8. Melodic Improvising Over Complex Chord Changes, Pt. 2
    9. Modal Improvising
    10. It’s Not What You Play, But How

    APPENDICES:

    Episodes in solos or compositions that embody truly melodic use of the


    intervallic, rhythmic or phrase concepts developed in the book. - a partial list
    intended only to be illustrative, not complete.

    I. Jazz compositions with notable melodic content

    II. Classical compositions with notable melodic content

    III. Standards with notable melodic content

    IV Melodic soloists and solos, by instrument - presented by leading New York


    musicians Pete McGuinness, John Hart, Andy Ezrin, Owen Howard, Bill Mobley and
    John Hebert

    V Modal Chart - Major, diminished, melodic minor (ascending), harmonic minor,


    augmented, harmonic major

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