102.164Conceptual application to “Mack the Knife”

From your legal melody/chart, reduce first to:

• repeated-chorus form
• melody structural notes
• basic functional harmony
• chorus cadence
• escalation architecture

Then forget the particular big-band/cabaret treatment temporarily.

Rebuild perhaps as:

sparse ballad

bossa

dark minor cabaret

funk.

If the tune remains identifiable:

you have found its underlying skeleton.