Know the Melody

When learning to improve, one piece of advice you'll come across again and again is to learn the melody. Last year, I watched Frank Vignola and Vinnie Raniolo perform. It was a terrific show. About halfway through the first set, I realized that most of the improvised sections were just variations of the melody. It was an important lesson to learn. It's one thing to understand academically that you should know the melody. It's another thing to watch a master guitarist use the melody for his own improvisation. Frank really drove the lesson home when he spoke up in the middle of one of his solos and said, "You can't go wrong with the melody!" Lesson learned.

When you learn to play the melodies of the jazz standards, you are learning the language of the music. Eventually, you may find that you are naturally inserting bits and pieces of various melodies into your improvisations. The "Cry Me a River lick" is simply the opening two measures of that song. It works beautifully over any minor chord or its relative major. I can't seem to get through a gig without quoting the first measure of So Nice.

Ray Sasaki was the trumpet teacher at my alma mater, the University of Illinois. Now he teaches at University of Texas at Austin. Ray is equally great at jazz and classical music. One piece of advice he offered for learning to improvise over a particular song was to play the melody 100 times in a row. I think anyone else would be exaggerating, but I have no doubt that Ray practiced what he preached.

Aside from using the melody as a springboard for improvisation, it can help you keep your place. I play in a quartet that reads out of a The Ultimate Jazz Fakebook and some Wikifonia charts. The Ultimate Jazz Fakebook has almost (but not quite) all the right chords, but there are enough substitute chords (or sometimes plain wrong chords) that make you do a double-take. And to be quite frank, the Wikifonia chord changes are just crap. In our last gig, we were playing a Wikifonia chart of It Had to Be You, and the chords don't make much sense. Distracted by these bizarre chords, I found myself a little lost toward the end of my solo. Fortunately, I've played and sung this song often enough that part of my brain seemed to be singing along. That's the only way I can describe it. The part of my brain that was lost started listening to the part of my brain that was singing the melody, and I got back on track and finished strong.

If you are learning a song with the intention of improvising over the chord changes, try learning the melody first. Play it again and again. Sing it in the car. If you get to the point where it drives you crazy because your brain keeps playing the song in the middle of the night, then you're doing it right.
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If you live in Atlanta and are interested in private or group guitar lessons, please check my website at www.godfreyguitar.com for more information or email me directly.

LSD

A highlight of the week is my LSD run, and no, it's not what you think. To a runner, LSD is "Long, Slow Distance." This is a weekly run that is at least 1.5 times as long as your average run. I'm currently running 4-6 miles on a given day during the week, but my long run is at least 10 miles. For some, this may seem masochistic. For others, my 10+ miles is just an average workout.

LSD is a must for a distance runner. The way to build endurance is to, well, endure. It's an incredibly challenging workout. You don't want to go for an LSD run more than once a week unless you're trying to run your body into the ground. There are probably some ultra-runners out there who would disagree, but one LSD run per week is plenty for us mortals.

The LSD run also teaches you mental toughness and patience. You must maintain a slower pace on an LSD run, or you simply won't last…or maybe you will last, but you'll wish you hadn't! At the beginning of an LSD run, I curb my enthusiasm, running purposefully and slowly. Yesterday I ran 11 miles. It felt like I was moving at a snail's pace, but once I hit 5 miles and realized I had 6 more to go, I was congratulating myself for maintaining a reasonable pace. Running an 11:30 mile may seem very slow. Well, it is very slow, but believe me, if you run at that pace for 11 miles, you'll feel it!

About 15 years ago, I was a pretty speedy runner, training mostly for fast 5K and 10K races. Even though I'm not nearly as fast these days, I'm able to run longer distances because I've learned the value of slowing down. Back then, I used a stopwatch so that I could push myself to run faster and faster. Today, I wear a GPS watch that keeps track of my pace. Instead of using it to push the tempo, I actually use it to slow down on my LSD run. If I find that I'm running faster than a certain pace, even if I feel strong, I'll slow down until I reach the pace that will allow me to go the distance. As I continue running, I'll naturally become faster as I grow stronger, but this year is all about endurance. One of my goals is to be able to run 20 miles by the end of the year, and I've already worked out a training plan.

The Long, Slow Distance mindset is part of my musical life, too. As a guitarist, I want to be able to play like Joe Pass, Frank Vignola, or Martin Taylor. The reality is that I sound good for someone who's only been playing seven years, but I'm nowhere near their league. All I can do is maintain my slow, steady pace and go the distance. Each day, I run through scales and patterns, practice sight-reading, work on improvisation, practice music for upcoming performances, review my solo arrangements work on new arrangements, and so forth. Every practice session is like logging another mile in my LSD guitar run. You never know, someday I might wake up and realize I can run with the big dogs. Until then, it's one step at a time.