[Dixielandjazz] melody vs chords & the importance ofwords

[briantowers]

The manner in which jazz musicians improvise has always interested me.
Personally, as a trombone player, I believe I generally improvise on the
melody.  However there may be some sub-conscious tie-in with the chord
sequence also, as I sometimes find myself playing a certain phrase, when a
certain chord crops up.
My wife, a reed player, mostly improvises on the chords.  I can see this is
very handy since,as long as she has the chords in front of her, she can
improvise on a tune she has never heard of and it still sounds OK!
In my case I would be struggling, if I did not know the tune. I would have
to wait for the chord coming from the rhythm section, before i could play my
notes.   It is my impression that many clarinet players do their
improvisations based upon the chords, rather than the melody?

Knowing the lyric has always been a tremendous help to me in playing the
song and I agree with Kash in that knowing the words is extremely useful, in
putting one's solo across and getting the mood of the piece.

Cheers,
Brian Towers,
Hot Five Jazzmakers, Toronto, Canada
Band web site:                http://hotfivejazz.tripod.com
Newsletter:                      http://hotfivejazz.tripod.com/TJM

Snip...
> I have found that those that play instruments dealing heavier into
> chords than us melodic instrument people tend to place more importance
> on the chords than the melody.  My argument has always been that...in
> most cases....songs spring up from the melody line, or even the words,
> and the chords are then added to embellish that line.
>
> I would go further to say that show tunes more obviously flow first from
> the written words that must be sung to carry on the story line.  On the
> Street Where You Live springs to mind, however, many of OKOM songs came
> from shows popular at the time.