Miles Davis - 1947
Many musicians look at ‘Donna Lee’ as a right of passage. It’s a great melody and challenging to play. We will take a look at the structure of the melody in this analysis and then look at the harmony in the next (Link).
Example 1 & 2: Let’s take a look at the first 16 bars of ‘Donna Lee’.
It’s quite instructive to look at what parts of the melody fall on the strong beats (beats 1 and 3) and what notes fall on the off beats (beats 2 and 4). We talk about this more when we discuss the so called “bebop scale” (Link).
70% of the melody that fall on strong beats are “chord tones (1, 3, 5 or 7). The rest are either turns (~) or resolve immediately to a chord tone.
This tends to ground the melody in the harmonic structure of the piece.
65% of the notes that fall on the off beats are chord tones.
There are two examples of a flat 5 falling on the off beat. This is a signature sound of “bebop”.
The rest are extended harmony notes (9, 11 or 13), adding spice to the melody.
Look closely at how arpeggios form the backbone of this melody. Try to identify approach notes, turns and enclosures that set up the arpeggios.
‘Donna Lee’ is not only interesting melodically but also harmonically. The next page looks at the harmony for this song (Link).
