ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 discusses the melodic embellishment technique of neighbor tones, nonharmonic pitches approached by stepwise motion, which immediately return to the same prior chord tone. Diatonic vs. chromatic neighbors are discussed, including questions of ambiguous cases where the chord of the moment or the key of the tune determine which neighbor pitch would be diatonic. Improvisation exercises in the chapter include practicing upper, lower, and double neighbors. The chapter explains why upper neighbors are diatonic and lower neighbors are chromatic throughout the book. The neighbor tone exercises are applied to major, minor, and diminished triads, and then to the “Distilled Saints Melody” and “Mike’s Original Saints Melody” introduced in Chapter 2. The chapter includes a composition exercise where the task is to compose a simple melody based on “When the Saints Go Marching In” which is then embellished with the same set of neighbor tone exercises from earlier in the chapter. The chapter continues with a performance etude called “Just Neighbors,” a melody that utilizes a great quantity neighbor tones. The chapter concludes by suggesting advanced studies which apply neighbor tones to a variety of 7th and 9th chords and learning the chapter’s earlier exercises in all 12 keys.
