Bb Cm7 | Dm7 Dbdim | Cm7 F7 | Bb Dalt / Gm Gm#7 / etc.
Reed wrote:
>All the great jazz players when playing over standard tunes are
>essentially playing in one key (or at least in large key centers).
In experimenting with different slow melodic lines, I took this to heart
and started noodling away on the Bb major scale, until I got to the Dm7.
On the Dm7, the notes Bb and Eb are the ones that differ from D Dorian. I
was certainly able to generate some reasonable melodic lines that
included these, but I found one that I liked that centered around A
Bnatural C, reintroducing the Bb on the Dbdim chord, and another that
featured C D Enatural, reintroducing the Eb on the Dbdim chord.
So what am I to make of this? What thoughts went through my head? What
would help me learn to do this in closer-to-real-time with fewer duds?
Though I certainly wasn't thinking "Cm7 Dorian" in the second half of the
first measure, it did seem helpful in the second measure that I knew that
one pool of notes for the Dm7 was the notes of the D Dorian scale. Maybe
I should have been, but I wasn't thinking "Oh I'll just sharpen the Bb",
or "I'll approach the C from a half tone below". With hindsight,
admittedly, it felt more like, "Oh let's add some tension by leaving the
key centre briefly for one chord. On the other hand, I also wasn't
thinking "Let's switch to the key of C for one chord".
So I don't feel that the time I've invested in practicing different
scales and learning about chord/scale associations has been wasted. I
think I've always known intuitively that I wasn't going to be improvising
by switching mental gears from scale to scale on every chord. But perhaps
it would be helpful if jazz education did place more emphasis on
analysing the harmony of tunes. Could we do some more of that here? Any
experts willing to dissect My Romance step by step?
Also, does anyone know of a nice solo piano performance of this tune that
a novice transcriber may be able to tackle?
Thanks
Richard