Exploring New Material with Motifs and Patterns
This post is about one way to develop ideas for licks out of simple material almost by a kind of "free association": you play something, find a bit you like, play around with it and so on.
It often uses an approach I'm going to call "Harmolodic" or "Slonimsky-like" because it involves taking a short phrase and repeating it at different transpositions; it has things in common with the ideas in Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and with some of Ornette Coleman's techniques, although it's not really the same as either. I'm going to concentrate only on note-selection here: rhythm, phrasing and of course harmony create lots more possibilities.
Let's start with some basic material. Here's a phrase that plays each note in the A Natural Minor scale once and then each note in the Eb Minor Pentatonic once. The phrase covers all of the twelve notes in the octave exactly once each -- the phrase even stays within the compass of a single octave. It's therefore what the Schoenbergians among you will know as a "tone row":
T--8--5--7--------------------------9--6------------------------------------------------------- |-----------8--6-----5--7--------9------------------------------------------------------------- A-----------------7--------6--8---------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's nothing very interesting about a major scale and a minor pentatonic: we'd like to break them up a bit and find different ways to play them. One way to start doing this is to use octave displacements. This creates a more angular effect, but depending on how you do it it'll also bring out different qualities of the melodic line:
T--8--------------------------11--------------------------------------------------------------- |-----------8---------------------9------------------------------------------------------------ A-----------------7--------6------------------------------------------------------------------- |-----7--9---------------------------8-------------------------------------------------------- B--------------8-----7--9---------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notice how different notes seem to "stick together" now and create a sort of multi-layered melody. What I hear here are two melodies, one in the high notes and the other in the low notes. We can separate these out and play them one after the other:
T--8-----------11-----|--------------------------------------------------------------------------- |-----8------------9--|--------------------------------------------------------------------------- A--------7--6---------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------|--7--9-----------8--------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------|--------8--7--9------------------------------------------------------------ |---------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's pick out the second (lower-pitched) melody and use that "harmolodic" technique. All I'll do here is play the phrase repeatedly, moving it up a fourth each time but otherwise keeping it exactly the same. We're actually covering the whole chromatic scale with this pattern:
T--------------------------------------------------------------------------4--6-----------5---- |--------------------------------------------------------4--6-----------5--------5--4--6------- A--------------------------------------3--5-----------4--------4--3--5------------------------- |--------------------3--5-----------4--------4--3--5------------------------------------------- B--3--5-----------4--------4--3--5------------------------------------------------------------- |--------4--3--5-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An obvious thing to experiment with is using different intervals when we move the pattern. Here's almost the same idea, this time moving in minor thirds instead of perfect fourths (I switched the first two notes around to enable me to use that slide to move between positions):
T-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5--\3-----------4 |------------------------------------------------------------------7--\5-----------6---------4--3--5--- A-----------------------------------------------8--\6-----------7---------5--4--6---------------------- |--------------------------10--\8------------9---------7--6--8----------------------------------------- B--12--10--------------11----------9--8--10------------------------------------------------------------ |----------11--10--12----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another variation on this yielded up a little ladder run -- all I did was take the little phrase and reverse it, playing it backwards and then forwards as I moved up and down two strings. My rule is to slide down a tone with your ring finger but only a semitone with your middle finger. You can figure out how to continue it all the way down or, as with all these examples, play it backwards to create a run in the opposite direction:
T--11--------------10--12--\10--8------------9--\8-----------7--9--\7--5-----------6----------- |------12--10--11------------------9--8--10---------9--7--8---------------6--5--7-------------- A---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now let's have a look at the first, higher-pitched melody, which we might re-write like this:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |-----8-----------9---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A--5-----7--6--8------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We could, of course, do a similar harmolodic-like idea with this -- here I'm moving it up in whole tones:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |-----5-----------6-----7-----------8-----9-----------10-----11-------------12----------------- A--2-----4--3--5-----4-----6--5--7-----6-----8--7--9------8------10--9--11--------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
which is oddly pleasing to play but not all that exciting to listen to. To make it more interesting, let's play alternating copies of the phrase in reverse:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |-----5-----------6--/8-----------7---------9-----------10--/12-------------11----------------- A--2-----4--3--5---------7--5--6-----4--/6-----8--7--9-----------11--9--10------8-------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So far we've been creating runs that will go "out of key" if played against a conventional harmony or backing track, so let's end with something diatonic. In fact each three-note group in the riff above sounds to me as if it implies a major seventh harmony. Here's the same pattern but only using the first three pitches. Try it over an F major 7 chord:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |-----5-----------5--5-----------5------------------------------------------------------------- A--2-----4--2--4--------4--2--4-----2---------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now let's imagine you like this picking pattern and want to take it further. Here's a very simple application of it to the A minor pentatonic scale:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A-----5-----------5--5-----------5---------7-----------7--7-----------7---------9-------------- |--2-----5--2--5--------5--2--5-----2--/5-----7--5--7--------7--5--7-----5--/7-----10--7--10--- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A--9--9-------------9----------12--------------12--12--------------12-------------------------- |--------10--7--10-----7--/10------12--10--12----------12--10--12------10---------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For me this has a country and western feel to it -- a very long way from the atonal material we started out with.
I hope this post inspires you to explore some material of your own. Pick anything -- someone else's lick or riff, even -- and chop it up, reverse it and refry it until it's your own. You may be surprised where the process leads you.
