What to play over a simple progression...

[Sakkaku]

Hey guys, the singer in a group I'm playing for has asked me to write little lead melodies to write over the chords Dmaj, and Emaj.

Basically the chords to the chorus are:

Dmaj for 2 bars, Emaj for 2 bars

At the moment, the bass is the driving effect of the song because of its movement in 3rds of the melody, and the occasional 5th/inv 4th thrown in there.

What would you do for some basic runs to 'fill the gaps' basically I have about 4 seconds at the end of each line of the chorus to add some flavour.

Major pentatonics ? Any other idea ?

Maybe you could all post up what you would do if approached with the same problem...

Thanks.

[RandyEllefson]

Those 2 chords suggest A major to me because there's only one place in every key that has two major chords back to back. In major, those are scale degrees 4 and 5. D to E to A is IV-V-I, even though you don't play the I chord in this case. It still suggests A major key/scale for lead. To me anyway.:)

[Sakkaku]

Thanks dude for the advice! I'm still amping for your album! :D

I will see what happens with that A major riffage idea, and I'll let you know how it turns out.

Till next time.

[mjo]

Difficult to say, without knowing the tune. If the A Maj approach doesn't seem too work, you could try some arpeggio ideas. Maybe build some extension off the 3rd or, superimpose some similar ideas - (diatonic or otherwise).

If I'm given the chance to write a part like this, I'll always (mostly) start w/arpeggio based ideas........

G'luck
:Mike

[ashc]

The parent scale is A major, but the progression in isolation in the abscence of the tonic could be looked at modally. In terms of D major as the tonic chord this progression has D lydian written all over it because the major 2nd chord i.e. the G# maj 3 in the E is the #4 with respect to D. D lydian is of course derived from A major anyway....

But then again the song as a whole might A chords all over it, so then it's not D lydian and if your only playing little fills theres not time to develop some dreamy lydian sonic landscape anyway....

You could play with pentatonic substitution, meaning from the parent scale you can use the pentatonics of I, IV and V (works for minor too). Which in this case would just about amount to playing the pentatonic that goes with the chord anyway...

After all the Arps idea sounds nice :)

[Sakkaku]

Thanks for the ideas guys. In future when I come up with one of these brilliant ideas to share my musical.... um... 'dilemnas' with you, I will have learnt how to make chords in power tab, with another line underneath so I can show you what I'd do, to give you all an idea of how it sounds.

Oh to have some great recording tool for my PC!

*Ponders the possibilities*

[szulc]

E Minor modified pentatonic. I call this the Hindu Pentatonic. Play E Minor Pent and insted of b3 play 3. E7add11 if you prefer. E Mixolydian. E Blues scale. C# Phrygian with added M3 (Phrygian dominant AND Phrygian kind of a bebop phrygian thing). F# Aeolian or add M7. B Dorian add b5. (By the way all three of these are modes of the Hybrid scale I wrote about in a previous thread)

Stuff like that will work unless you have very specific bass parts going on.

[Sakkaku]

James - Thanks a lot man. I seriously would have NEVER thought of any of those scales to throw over top of it... in fact, I'll have to figure them all out, because I don't know their formlas... apart from Mixolydian, F# Aeolian... you inspire me to learn more and more about learning the technical side of music!

Thanks dude.

By the way - when are you next coming out with an article ? Your stuff is great! ;)