Melodic Structures by Jerry Bergonzi - A Review

Even for an experienced improviser, certain chord progressions and tonalities can appear daunting. For the beginner, working through a set of changes can offer so many choices of notes and scales, that is hard to know where to start.

This is where Jerry Bergonzi's book, Melodic Structures aims to help. It goes straight to the point and takes out a lot of the variables that can take a long time to go through. Each chord can be pruned down to four notes only, and with permutations, those notes used as a springboard for your improvisations.

Those who are sceptical of such an approach only have to listen to Jerry and his colleagues demonstrate it on the CD and the pin will drop. I was quite surprised. In some cases if I hadn't been told what was being played I wouldn't have noticed what techniques were being employed. It's very musical.

So how does it work?

Major chords are constructed of the tones 1 2 3 and 5. Minor chords 1 b3 4 and 5. Half diminished 1 b3 4 and b5 and b9 Chords 1 b2 3 and 5.

Simple mathematics shows us that there should be 24 permutations of each pattern and with a bit of practice one can start combining the different variations into quite creative solos.

The book is well worth buying for detailed explanations of the method, and the description of further techniques - actually I'd go so far in saying that if you only but one jazz book buy this. Books such as Mark Levine's Piano and Theory books are other excellent books, but I'm yet to come across something that gets improvisers working more efficiently on material than this.

Even for experienced players this is a method that can change your outlook on soloing. The book is not meant to restrict you to a limited number of notes but to act as a launchpad to a much larger pool of tonalities. It's worth a try simply to see we where it takes you. Furthermore if you are someone struggling with playing certain chords in certain keys this is definitely for you. By eliminating alot of variables it gets you practicing faster what you really need to.