Any music sentence or motif is taking place in some harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic environment. It’s a 3-dimensional thinking. All the aspects (dimensions) have their inner sub dimensions.

Oh, I sound like some scientist, but you need to be like one if you want to take your playing to the next level…

Let’s speak about some basic harmonic progressions and what we can do with that.

For example : l Dm7 G7 l Cmaj7 l

You can see there is second and fifth in the first bar, and first or tonic in the second bar.

You can also notice , all that is in key of C major, so you can play D Dorian over Dm7( C Ionian ) G Mixolydian (C Ionian) over G7 and C Lydian on the second bar (or C Ionian , but avoiding F or playing them as a passing note). This example seems to be really simple, but is it?

You need to take care about all separate chords and their characteristic notes concerning the chord’s place in time. Further, you need to implement a lot of rules about chromatic notes that take the melody to next chord pitch , as an appoggiatura (a note above or under desirable note) and many more. In my recent article I’ve written about what you can play over Cmaj7.

So this time I will try to tell about some possibilities .

I will talk about substitutions and about superimpositions.

The first and most common choice is tritone substitution where the seventh and third are same .

Instead l Dm7. G7 l Cmaj7 l it’s l Abm7, Db7 l C maj7 l and you can see that seventh and third of G7 is F and B, so they are the same but invert in the Db7 F and B(Cb).

So that is a first step up. II ,V structure remains .In melodic sense that means you will play Ab Dorian (Gb Ionian) DbMixolydian (GbIonian) and then C Lydian , or to tell in more simplified way Gb Ionian first bar and C Lydian second bar.

It’s very simple, isn’t it? I don’t think so. Try to play music not just rows of notes.

More things to think about, more possibilities, but more problems too.

Exercise that and be aware of every move of melody through chord changes and time .

You can use a tritone substitution in the other way, as a superimposition .

You can play Abm7, Db7 melodic lines over Dm7,G7 chord changes .

That’s really out but interesting; practice to make a music of that.

There are many more to tell about these music devices and there are many more substitutions and superimposition possibilities but I think this article would be too long and you will lose your interest .

I wish you all lots of practicing hours every day in this happy new year. Cheers!

-Misa

http://www.myspace.com/miskosvetlanamihailo

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