When a Lovely Chord Progression Seeks A Melody

What is the benefit of playing a chord progression by itself, without a melody? It may be simply to appreciate the certain amount of beauty inherent in the way one note leads to another. Or, to strengthen the critical connection between the intellect's knowing the name of the chord and how it’s built, the muscle memory in physically producing the chord, and the ear’s memory of how the chord sounds. Perhaps it’s just because when you play the progression, it frees your imagination to hear whatever melody you’d like, at the moment, to go with it.

As you play a simple chord progression, do you ever internally “hear” a melody to go with it? But when you attempt to play that melody, the notes you physically produce don’t exactly match what’s in your inner ear? I’ve found that in my teaching, beginning improvisers are often concerned about this, having not yet discovered the spontaneous give and take nature of improvisation.

At first, it seems that ...sounds come out which you didn’t expect, but then you are able to direct the outcome, then unanticipated sounds happen again, then you are able to steer again. I believe this is normal, and once a player is accustomed to this process, it’s a lot of fun. Best of all, the ear progressively develops, as the process is repeated time and again. But instead of being blindly repetitive, practicing improvisations has endless variations.

Here is an improvisation assignment my students have enjoyed: