The motive of the crime (part 1)

Hey !

Today I'm starting to speak about a vaste and important subject in improvisation and composition.

From my humble point of view this is the spine of any great improvisation and any great composition: motives (commonly called "patterns").

These are fragments of musical statements that are developped (or just repeated) in order to create a robust frame in which songs, solos and melodies are built.

So many great songs are composed on motives, from pop to heavy metal, from world music to classical.
At least we can find some similarities between Metallica's "Sad but True" and the intro of Mozart's "Serenade #13 In G, K 525, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik". 

In this post I'll focus mainly on rhythmic motives. Some motives can also be considered only with notes choice or movements, regardless of rhythm.

( fig. 1 ) is the Mozart's famous catchy "Kleine Nachtmusik" line that we all know. The motive is built on G (the key of the tune) and D7 (the related dominant).
What makes this line so mighty is not only the Wolfie's genius but also the 2-bar rhythmic motive that is transposed from G to D7. Also the conclusive movement of the second line that mirrors the suspended first line (ending on the note D) creates no doubt on the resolution on bar 4.

Now what is cool is to strictly separate rhythm from notes or harmony in solos.
Why not take a simple rhythmic motive (a canvas) and play all the notes (colors) we want on it ?

Let's play on B7.
Basically we can play B mixolydian or B mixolydian #11 (F# melodic minor) and other simple stuff such as B blues or Ab major pentatonic.

( fig. 2 ) is the main 2-bar motive we'll develop in this exercice. This is just F# melodic minor scale played in a jazzy mood, mixing some diatonic chromatisms, arpeggios and some kind of "pentatonic" sound on bar 2 with a little help from my scale.

( fig. 3 ) takes the rhythmic motive of ( fig. 2 ), plugged with a descending B7 arpeggio and chromatisms around the 7th and 3rd of B7.  

( fig. 4 ) starts with the #11th of B7 and leads to a bluesy tone on the 3rd. Bar 2 stresses the 2nd (C#) and the 6th (G#) of B7 to bring a jazzier sound. The end of bar is a plain excerpt of F# melodic minor in order to stress the B7#11 sound.

( fig. 5 ) is deliberately based on an A lydian #5 position, i.e F# melodic minor starting from the 3rd degree (A on fret 5, E string).  Bar 2 is a jazzy chromatic lick leading to the 3rd and 7th of B7, the chord tones.

As you can see in these short examples, possibilites are limitless in solos and compositions if we keep the same motive.
I could even play any crazy note I want (atonal, chromatic or tonal) and still be consistent with the rest of the solo because the spine is still here. Consistency, that's the point.

I'll develop other examples on motives in the next future.

Play strong

Jean-François


Don't hesitate to drop a line below, or on Facebook or Twitter to let me know about your thoughts on this blog post. That would be really helpful for me. THANKS !

www.soubelet.com