John Scofield's Chord Melody Approach

[00:00:00]I I've also noticed that that you use a lot of tenths in your playing, meaning the the root and then the third an octave above the root.

[00:00:08]>> Right.

[00:00:08]>> So it's it's really prevalent in your in your chord melody playing. Maybe you could uh >> Well, I you know, when you play everything in block chords, it's very difficult, you know.

[00:00:27]Um something like that.

[00:00:29]But you can play some of these tunes and and outline the harmonies without quite so much uh jumping around. Um This is Body and Soul, right?

[00:00:47]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Yeah.

[00:01:36]>> You know, that yeah.

[00:01:38]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Yeah, so there was, you know, didn't play one chord, but it but it had the roots in there, you know, and sometimes that turns out to be a tenth.

[00:02:41]>> Yeah, right. Right.

[00:02:43]>> All right.

[00:02:44]>> It just comes to grabbing the root, trying to grab the root under there, yeah.

[00:02:47]>> It It's so neat. It's so much more open than that real dense kind of block chord melody style. It's just very airy.

[00:02:54]>> Yeah. It's a nice thing, yeah.

[00:02:56]>> Um I was going to ask you, maybe you can just show the tenths going up a scale for us. Yeah.

[00:03:03]>> In C major?

[00:03:03]>> Yeah, fine.

[00:03:07]>> [music] >> Again?

[00:03:17]>> [music] >> Great.

[00:03:25]And needless to say, you have to play them in all keys and and work the fingerings out and everything.

[00:03:30]>> But you can hear, you know, any of the great improvisers. When Sonny Rollins used to take cadenzas by himself, you know, he would be able to outline the whole tune and with just the saxophone without any chords, so.

[00:03:41]>> I think a tune like All the Things You Are is really cool because you really have that movement in the melody and with with the >> Right, yeah. Well, it's a great progression, you know.

[00:03:50]>> Could you show that to us?