Imagine that you're not a musician, but a software programmer asked to write a program that creates melody to a set of chords. You'd do some research and quickly come to the conclusion that you should make the computer first recognize the key of the piece of music, then choose the scale that underlies that key, and use those notes randomly to create phrases. You'd listen back to the results and you'd be disappointed.
The melodies would be sort of alright a lot of the time, pretty good at some points, horrible at others. You'd wonder why,
until someone pointed out that melody loves chord tones ... so you'd go back and rewrite the program so that it followed the 'Chord Of The Moment' and created melody around those notes. You'd listen back to the results and smile.
You'd then fiddle with the timing factor and program it so that any two chord tones could randomly be linked in the time space between them by the scale note in between and by chromatic runs. You'd listen back to the results and grin.
When you did decide to buy a guitar and become a player, and wanted to create melody, you'd wonder how to keep track of chord tones on a guitar. You'd research it and find that a book and DVD called
PlaneTalk taught that very lesson.
