Re: Melody (a second class citizen?)

RickH wrote:
For me, finding "ones voice" in jazz is about melody,
I suppose for others it can be harmony or rhythm or lyrics, but I like
melody.
So what makes great melody? Why has melody in modern pop music become
so lame (IMO)?

Great question. A tough one too, since most of the great melodies we associate with a harmonic and rhythmic context. Well, maybe no explicit harmonic context for Taps, but then...
I agree with you about the state of melody, but I don't have a ready explanation. Why were most of the standards written from the 1920s through the 1940s? Why does Andrew Lloyd Webber rule Broadway?
This isn't an answerable question to me.

Steve


Why does Danny Boy still make me cry even without the lyrics, what
makes that (IMO) one of the greatest melodies of all time?
(along with hundreds of other great melodies, DB just comes to mind)

Melody, it seems, is neglected in education, or at least few have
tried to quantify and analyze it to the same granularity as harmony
and rhythm.
Most melodic analysis just ties it to harmony and rhythm, but does not
seem to study it for itself.
Any good theory books on melody alone?
Maybe melody simply cant be studied analytically like harmony and
rhythm because it does not eminate from logical rules, but from the
inner voice.



--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001
.

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