We've given attention to chord-scale approaches, but I have wondered
about experiences and impressions of another area of expertise that I've
heard less about overall, that of using various techniques of
embellishment and ornamentation on a fairly simple melody.
This began for me with the discovery, after months of going nowhere in
trying to use chromaticism, that in a given scale any chord tone could
be approached from a note a half-step below. I also found that preceding
a note with both a note a half-step lower, then a scale tone higher,
often produced a pleasing sound.
Later I found a book that itemized a large handful of such devices under
a variety of names. While I have never thought that being able to
distinguish an appogiatura from some other type of embellishment meant o
whole lot, I found it helpful to take a song with a fairly uncrowded
melody, like "All the Things You Are" and try out the laundry list of
embellishment techniques on it. The results were more immediately
pleasing and sounded more like jazz playing than other things I'd tried.
I recall Joe Pass once telling me in private correspondence that he
recommended first learning the melodies to standards, then learn to
embellish them espeically with fills between the phrases, then phase out
change the original melody.
I also noticed when I started transcribing that a lot of the "devices"
I'd seen in the book showed up in the solos I played, and was often the
way chromatic notes turned up.
I would be interested in knowing to what extent some intentionally study
of specific types of embellishments has been helpful, and whether in
transcription a reasonably clear set of such musical devices has been
discerned.
-- //////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Lawson G. Stone—Asbury Theological Seminary—Wilmore, KY 40390 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////// "You know, a long time ago, being crazy meant something. Nowadays, everybody's crazy." Charles Manson