Forward Motion

 

Forward motion is a term used within the jazz education community to describe bebop and jazz melodic lines.

In a book “Forward Motion, from Bach to Bebop” Hal Galper identified the characteristics that

all master jazz and classical musicians used to create powerful melodic ideas.

FORWARD MOTION EX 1

Galpers describes this as creating an effect where “Everything Surges Forward”, where

the one of the bar is no longer the first beat of the bar, it is the last beat of the bar“.

Melodically this is translated into a series of “pickups” which create the effect of

“spelling chord changes in advance to where they are written”.

FORWARD MOTION EX 2