Improvisation

The setting is a casual session playing music with friends or a situation on stage in front of an audience: suddenly, someone is kicking off a tune and towards the end of the second verse, a nod is going your direction to take a solo... yet you've only heard the tune a few times... you haven't actually played through it. Or maybe this is the first time you've even heard the song. The moment to take your solo approaches. Sweat breaks out. You tense up. People are listening and will be looking at you. What in the world would you possibly play?

For many players, the thought of improvising on stage or even in the presence of others can be a frightening experience. Or maybe you're already experimenting with improvisation but would like to improve your skills. Either way I think you'll find some food for thought and suggestions here that can help you achieve a goal of playing spontaneously. But let's be careful how we we use term "improvising" and look at the true meaning of the phrase.

What it is and isn't

Improvisation is not.

Music is a language, and the ability to improvise relates to your knowledge of the musical language and how to use it as a tool without strictly memorizing a particular order for every song. It's a knowledge base. Later on we'll look at some ways to evaluate and improve upon that knowledge. The real secret is ear and brain training... really knowing your instrument and music.

Read enough interviews with famous musicians and you start to get the picture. They all have some common thoughts about improvisation. It boils down to this: people who improvise are really calling upon their knowledge of the instrument and their music. The secret is hard work and a desire to move beyond playing other people's music and playing your own. And we're not talking about learning "licks." We're talking about really LEARNING the instrument and music.

Maybe you can play some fairly advance arrangements from standard notation,tablature, or from memory. But when it comes time to improvise, or to play music to an unfamiliar piece where you might recognize the chord structure, maybe the results don't meet your expectations. It's quite possible you've "memorized" a musical speech (OK, a tune). That's OK and we all do it--it's actually necessary. But too much rote memorization without learning to "speak music" and we lose the ability to carry on a musical conversation--to improvise.

Improvisation is really a method of relying on music as a language. We play elements and combinations of what we've played before. Who really plays something brilliant by sheer chance? Rarely. We improvise by stringing together different "words" or phrases we learn and use them in varying combinations. It's more than "licks." We play what's been previously "spoken" or played.

The better you know the elements of music the better you'll be able to play off the cuff. Most of us can carry on a casual conversation without thought. It's because we're familiar with our spoken language. We've practiced it daily since we uttered our first words. So are we really improvising in speech? Or are we falling back on familiar patterns and finding combinations of them that work in the given conversation? If I suddenly said "that banjo player's bank account just exceeded 10 million," would I be improvising, or simply stating a series of different words I'd previously pondered?

With experience in playing there is typically an associated improvement in the ability to play spontaneously, or to improvise. We might "hear" the sounds we want to come out of our instrument, but only at that point which we can translate musical thoughts to the fretboard does it work.

Identify Your Skill Level

Here are a few simple exercises to increase your playing skills and at the same time, help evaluate your mandolin skill level. You may discover weaknesses in doing so. That's OK. Take the attitude that you've identified an area you can work on rather than an area where you've failed!

• Pick a simple melody you know, preferably one you've known for years. "You Are My Sunshine," "Jingle Bells," "the Andy Griffith theme." Just choose something familiar. Hum the melody or sing it out loud. Now without the benefit of listening to the song from any other source, sit down and play it by ear with your instrument. Pick a comfortable key like D or G. If you experience difficulty in playing the melody and require a fair amount of searching around to find the correct notes, then improvisation is likely a problem for you. You'll likely benefit from learning the basic scales and positions. That doesn't mean you have to start reading music or practicing scales, although that would help, It simply means you haven't learned the instrument well enough to translate the sounds inside your head to the mandolin. And that . . . is one of the keys to improvisation.
• Pick a tune you've played on mandolin and consider you know quite well. Now transpose it up or down a half step and play it SLOWLY (if the tune is in "G", start playing in Ab or F#). Evaluate the level of difficulty you're experiencing, if any (remember, play SLOWLY). Extreme difficulty? Probably a sign that you're unfamiliar with a key other than the "basic" mandolin keys or have simply memorized fingering positions vs. sounds. But don't think of this as a weakness. Think of it as an area targeted for improvement.
• Can you hum a basic scale out loud? Now play it on mandolin starting from the low G string. Then play it starting from the A (second fret, low string). Try different starting points. Play it ascending and descending. Again, problems in finding the notes are indicative of a lack of understanding of the basic scale structures of music.

OK, enough of that! If you experienced problems with the above exercises, then you'll likely benefit from actually practicing those three steps. Again, if you discovered difficulties, just think of those as areas where you can improve. You're a step ahead of someone who hasn't identified the same! Remember, ear training is *essential* for improvisation.

Of course this doesn't teach you how to improvise, but simply provides you with a reference: where am I, and where do I need to go in order to improve?

Suggested Ways to Improve Your Improvisational Skills

There are, of course, a number of ways to develop improvisational skills. Here are a few but don't feel like you have to try every one. Search, explore... and experiment.

• Repeated slow practice of scales is a valuable tool for truly learning your instrument. But the purpose of a scale is not to use it in soloing. The purpose is to teach your hands and brain the fingerboard and to integrate that knowledge into the ability to play well. Wonderful things can happen to your playing if you'll dedicate a few minutes to some simple and slow scales per day.
• Stop. Don't just sit down and play a piece of music. Dissect it. Play it mentally in your head and imagine new sounds. Analyze different sounds that relate to the chord structure. Sing them out loud to yourself. Then try to transfer those new sounds to your instrument.
• Study great players but learn to develop your own phrases. It's easier to speak your own language as opposed to that of someone else.
• Learn to read standard notation if you don't already know how. There are terrific books filled with great ideas, but surprise... they aren't in mandolin tablature. I love tab too but there's another world out there waiting for you. I've sampled it and it's wonderful.
• For a few minutes each day or week, practice playing some familiar melodies you already know. It doesn't matter what they are, as long as it's something that's familiar. I try to play along with music I hear on TV, on the radio, and that annoying song that comes from the toy in our baby's crib. I even learned a harmony to it. It's great ear training. Paul Glasse does it as do many other greats.
• Try to learn one small new musical "phrase" per week and see if you can translate it to other keys and then use it in tunes you already know. You'll be making progress if you do.
• Everyone starts at ground zero. The greats all struggled to learn "G" chord at some time in their lives. Think how much good you'll be doing by making genuine efforts in the right direction.

The Final Word

Treat the word improvisation with care. What appears to be brilliant improvisation by musicians is often the result of a lot of hard work. Good players who appear to be improvising are calling upon a substantial library of music inside their head. But guard against going for "licks" and think of the word "phrases" instead. There's a difference.

Take a little time each week and think about your music rather than just sitting down and playing mindless (although I recommend that too once in awhile).

Did we teach you to improvise here? No. But think through this material and evaluate what you want to play and how you might play it. Improvisation is difficult to learn, let along teach. Consider this a step in the right direction.

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