SIMULTANEOUS BASS-CHORD-MELODY IMPROVISATION (David Reed)
(As we utilize only 4 fingers of the left hand, the 3 of them always sound the bass and the chord, while the 4th the notes of the melody, that may or may not belong to the chord.)
In his book "Improvise for Real" David Reed, strongly suggests to investigate by improvisation the 4 types of chords Rmaj7 (in semitones 1-4-7-11), Rm7 (in semitones 1-3-7-10), R7 (in semitones 1-4-7-10), Rm7b5 (in semitones 1-3-6-10), with parallel melodies, always on higher pitch relative to the highest pitch note of the chord. For harmony beyond tonality, the appropriate numbering of the notes of a diatonic major scale measured with semitones is 1-2-4-5-7-9-11 | 1. David Reed suggests that utilizing the relative numbering rather than the specific name of the note (and he is mainly utilizing the numbering as a major diatonic scale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 | 1), the mental tools in the human imagination are kept simple and directly applicable on the frets of the guitar fretboard or the buttons of the piano keyboard. In simpler words he insists in re-creating the desired harmony , by intervals and triads from chords for the melody and the chords.
See also this video which presents almost exactly the same idea, as suggested by Jerry Bergonzi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X-WsnWCAaA&t=209sThis chord-melody technique is by far more abstract, thus powerful. It is not based on memorized chord-shapes! The chord-shapes are continuously changing even for the same chord inside and area of 4-5 frets and are created on the going with the melody! Both the melody is played but at the same time the chord behind the melody too. It is played so that the melody is always the highest pitch note, the root of the chord the lowest pitch note, and the 2 intermediate notes again notes of the chord. One finger is used for the melody and 3-fingers for the chord. It is always sounding at most 4 notes, of 4 strings. Notice that finding and playing these fingerings of e.g. 1st chord Cmajor harmonizing any note of the C major scale, from higher C to lower C, is not the same as just finding the fingerings of the chords Cmaj7, C7, C6, Cadd11, Cadd9, because of the condition of having the note of the melody always the highest pitch, the root unchanged as fret position and because we descend 2 octaves rather than one. Most of the times the resulting chord may not have any known symbol, and so also its shape may not be any known chord shape. Nevertheless the classification of the fretboard shapes of the 8 types of chords as in post 28 and of triads as in post 38, is useful in practicing this type of beautiful chord-melody improvisation. From the next videos that describes this techniques of improvisation called chord-melody, we may deduce that the chords behind the melody are always of one of the next 4 types: Rmaj7, Rm7, R7, Rm7b5. Of course we can restrict the technique to have background chords for the melody only R, Rm, with one (or rarely two) notes (but never the root) each time missing and substituted by the note of the melody. This would be improvisational classical 4-voices harmony, and the post 39 is devoted to it. We may also change the background chord in such a way, that the note of the melody is always also a note of the chord. For this the classification of shapes in post 38 is useful. In other words we may make sure that the 4-string chord-melody is such that the utilized chord types are of some only specific set e.g. Only R, Rm 4-string chord melody. This would be improvisational classical 4-voices harmony on 4-strings , and the post 39 is devoted to it. Or only Rm7b5, R ,4-string chord melody, or only Rmaj7, R7 4-string chord melody etc.
In general though David Reed suggests that we play and improvise as melodic notes any note of the diatonic scale for any chord of the diatonic scale! It seems to me that the only requirement that binds the arbitrary chord with the arbitrary melodic note of the diatonic scale, is that the melodic notes that belong to the chord as a total last in time longer , say 2/3 of the time , while any other arbitrary note of the scale, only 1/3 of the time.
For this wonderful technique see e.g.
