Jazz Guitar Lesson with JS Williams: Melodic Rhythm

Melodic Rhythm

These examples are a collection of basic ideas I got from talking to drummers and listening to more modern musicians such as Kurt Rosenwinkel and Cortney Pine. The idea is to use rhythm to create a tension within the melodic idea. The sound of a line or idea can quickly be enhanced by using the simple concept of “melodic rhythm”. This concept revolves around taking any number of note groupings and rhythms that don’t resolve on each beat. For example: playing a group of four notes in triplet figures or a group of three notes in sixteenth note figures. Not only does this idea sound modern but it’s sure to get any drummer excited.

Example one’s melodic content is just using fourths and moving them around in D Dorian. What gives this line life are the note groupings. It uses three and two note groupings in triplet figures, and so the natural accents are always moving. In the first bar, every triplet is accented but each one in a different place. Example 2 uses the same concept but with groupings of three notes in sixteenth note figures. Once again, each part of the sixteenth note is accented in a different place within the bar, making it feel like the beat is shifting. Example 3 is a ii-V in C using the concept of “melodic rhythm”. You will notice that the last 3 beats in bar 2 are all triads derived from the diminished scale (G-Bb-Db-E). I think this is a good example of a group of three notes played in sixteenth notes.

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