Connecting mandolin to ear and brain...

[dadsaster]

My long-term mandolin playing goal is to be good at improvisation. I'm still a beginner but shouldn't beginners start working on improvisation out of the gate? One of the techniques that appeal to me is singing while I play. Does anyone have real-world advice on how to better connect their brain/ear to their instrument/fingers?

[RonEllison]

If you look at my post in the ear training thread you'll see this.

Hear, or imagine, a short series of notes and then play them. The first thing is to establish a key. Then, if you know the scale of that key you know where to start looking. Trial and error and try again.

At first this can be painfully slow. Perhaps this is why some people look to theory to speed things up. It wont. One of the reasons it can seem so difficult is because it is so simple. Note 'simple', not 'easy'. Hear or imagine a short series of notes and play them, in the context of a key. Another way of putting it is hear, or imagine, a series of sounds and know where to put your fingers in order to make those sounds. Associate sounds with finger positions.

Do this enough and you will be able to play what you imagine in real time. The important word is 'enough'. Unfortunately 'enough' becomes more the older you get.

Like any skill the more you do it, the better you get. Spend some of every practice session doing this. Try playing along to recordings and/or the radio. There's no reason not to start now.

[farmerjones]

I imagine the biggest problem for newer players, is coloring outside the lines, after being so disciplined to stay within.
One really has to be brave to deviate from the charted course.
Listen, listen, and listen some more to examples. Copy, steel and rob, until you develop your own "way." Fortunately, it's actually pretty difficult for a newer player to sound like Sam Bush, or David Grisman. Aiming, only to miss is expected.

Although his lectures are geared toward graduate students, watch and listen to Kenny Werner, the author of "Effortless Mastery."
He has a few key elements that confirmed my thinking. Also discussing the subject like this helps to inspire. But bare in mind there are truly few substitutes for time behind the instrument. Familiarity breeds contempt. Sometimes contempt or boredom is just the fuel for invention. Even a newer player can get bored with a tune. i.e. So you're tired of Red River Valley, how are you going to embellish it? Swing it? Add tags? Eventually one gets to Jazz. Eventually one can get so improvisational the melody evaporates or get absorbed within the improvisation, and you wake up in a smoky dive wondering what happened.

[dadsaster]

Although his lectures are geared toward graduate students, watch and listen to Kenny Werner, the author of "Effortless Mastery."
He has a few key elements that confirmed my thinking. Also discussing the subject like this helps to inspire. But bare in mind there are truly few substitutes for time behind the instrument. Familiarity breeds contempt. Sometimes contempt or boredom is just the fuel for invention. Even a newer player can get bored with a tune. i.e. So you're tired of Red River Valley, how are you going to embellish it? Swing it? Add tags? Eventually one gets to Jazz. Eventually one can get so improvisational the melody evaporates or get absorbed within the improvisation, and you wake up in a smoky dive wondering what happened.

My fear is that by practicing pentatonic scales and arpeggios, I'm going to become a "color by numbers" player. I don't know exactly how to avoid this. I've read "Effortless Mastery". I don't really understand how to apply it as a beginner. It seems like a book for musicians who feel they have plateaued. I don't think the limiting factor in my playing is fear; more likely knowledge and ability. I also worry that if only approached the instrument in the effortless way he describes, I'd never get past my warmups.

I'd be interested on hearing more thoughts on the subject.

[catmandu2]

There are many approaches in improvization. What kind of music are you playing/looking to play?

Re the ear/brain/instrument nexus, singing while playing is a good un. Only a personal anecdote; I've been well-served by emulating what I hear through my playing; I started when I was about 9 or 10 and this seemed natural.

Niles H will hopefully reply with several examples he's reiterated over the years.

[dadsaster]

There are many approaches in improvization. What kind of music are you playing/looking to play?

I have eclectic tastes. I like playing bluegrass, blues, rock and swing. Regardless of style, it seems like I'm going to need to learn how to play what I hear in my head.

[catmandu2]

May as well get yourself a jazz education, then. Lots of materials, a good teacher..

[Bill McCall]

Well, you do need to learn the scales, arpeggios and chords in all the keys. All the chord inversions, across the top 3 strings and the bottom 3 strings. But not next week.

In the beginning you have too much freedom, so I would suggest learning to improvise by starting to only change the rhythm of the melody notes, then maybe move on to changing a couple notes in one measure of 1 phrase, and building from that. Maybe only play a break using 2, or one string. Then you'll have to develop a new melody, which is what a break is, in a confined space. Develop a lot of different breaks in that small space, then add another string. Then change what 2 or 3 strings you use. That ought to keep you busy for a few days in each key.

You're right in that you do need to improvise a little each day. How many melodies do you have for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or Mary had a Little Lamb? I'd work on those before Little Rock Getaway or Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

have fun, it is a blast.

[Gary Leonard]

Connecting what you feel/hear to your instrument/fingers. When looking from the bottom of that mountain, that can seem damn near impossible. I'd suggest playing with another person for the best results.

I have been playing mandolin, my first musical instrument, for just shy of three years now, and I can tell you what NOT to do. I tended to focus on the melody, and have memorized quite a few. When learning them, I may have picked up the chords, after all they are mostly simple fiddle tunes. And chopping out the rhythm, well that is rather easy to do, as you are filling in the back beats. But can you lead the rhythm? I can guarantee that for 90% of the melodies I know, I can't play just the chords from memory. I hope some of you are laughing with (perhaps at) me, but I find myself going back to some of the first songs I know and correcting this problem. Playing scales, arpeggios, and chord tones during practice was good, but how in the world can you put them into practice when you don't really know the tune? Bill McCall above defines a break as playing a new melody in a confined space. Well, you darn well better know what that space is. I can guarantee if I was playing with another person, trading breaks and rhythm regularly from the get go, I would be much farther long in this musical journey.

[Bill McCall]

Ear training is a separate skill from improvising, both of which are learnable. In fact, there's currently a thread focused on ear training.

i agree it is fun to work on these items with another, but not everyone has a buddy with similar interests or open time.

Since most folks know the simple children's songs, I suggested using simple songs to work on that are very familiar. And John McGann uses them in his improvising book and this type tune is recommended by both Kenny Werner and Jamey Aebersold.

ymmv

[Ivan Kelsall]

As a beginner,you really need to get a few tunes under your belt - tunes that you know so well that you can play 'em in your sleep (well maybe not quite !),but tunes that you know inside out,only then can you begin to improvise on them.

I've been playing for 12 years now,& my own goal is the same as yours. I spent far too long in 50+ years of banjo playing simply playing 'tunes', until it dawned on me that a large (& maybe the 'best') part of playing, was to be a good 'back up' player. That's what i'm working on in my mandolin playing so i ''noodle''. All that means is taking one of the tunes i can play very well & working an improvised melody line around it. I also work on 'breaks' in the tune,seeing what i can come up with.

The reason why it seems so easy for the top pickers to 'improvise' so well,is that they've worked on the tunes. I was told that by a very well known Bluegrass musician who lived in the UK for several years,& with whom i got to play with fairly regularly. That's why their breaks seems so 'easy' - hard work & practice !,
Ivan

[Mark Wilson]

I'm in the process of learning to play what I hear in my head. For some reason I find fiddle tunes for me seem to spark the least variation ideas while the tune is unfolding. But a tune like Carter's Blues, for instance seems to trigger a lot of variation ideas in my mind.

I loop a backing track at moderate speed and play the basic versions I've learned from YT videos. Then as familiarity sets in I might change just one phrase on a pass thru the tune. Then another. Not always as intended but the track is coming around again so I get another shot at playing what I heard in my mind. Not unlike playing with others in my weekly jam. We will loop a new song in similar fashion.

Sometimes I'll stop and refresh my fingers on the scale notes or patterns for each of the chords used in the song and then restart the loop. I just find blues and old gospel vocal songs to be better tunes (for me)for thinking of new bits to try on the fly than other type songs I know. Similar to using the familiar kids songs mentioned above (but more fun)

[jshane]

If you look at my post in the ear training thread you'll see this.

Hear, or imagine, a short series of notes and then play them. The first thing is to establish a key. Then, if you know the scale of that key you know where to start looking. Trial and error and try again.

At first this can be painfully slow. Perhaps this is why some people look to theory to speed things up. It wont. One of the reasons it can seem so difficult is because it is so simple. Note 'simple', not 'easy'. Hear or imagine a short series of notes and play them, in the context of a key. Another way of putting it is hear, or imagine, a series of sounds and know where to put your fingers in order to make those sounds. Associate sounds with finger positions.

Do this enough and you will be able to play what you imagine in real time. The important word is 'enough'. Unfortunately 'enough' becomes more the older you get.

Like any skill the more you do it, the better you get. Spend some of every practice session doing this. Try playing along to recordings and/or the radio. There's no reason not to start now.

This is exactly right, and there is no other way, really. True improvisation is "playing what you hear in your head".

[JonZ]

Practice doing what you want to get better at. Just remember, it is a hard skill to learn. To start, loop a slow strum pattern on just one chord. Imagine a simple lick and then try to play it. Repeat. Then do licks over other chords. Then chord progressions. This is very different from any other practice you have probably done, because you are practicing creation rather than duplication. Give it time.

It helps to know the location of each tone in the chord and scales that go with whatever you are trying to play over. At first there is guesswork involved, and knowledge of where your most viable tones are will make your guessing more accurate. A good way to really get each tone location down is to break up the usual patterns. One day try playing melodies using only the tones on certain frets, like 0, 1, 4, 5. Then the next day leave out different frets. When you cannot fall into standard patterns, you have to visualize the individual tones. You can do the same thing by leaving a string out.

Another good way to learn the location of every tone in a pattern is to switch between patterns. So play 4 tones of the scale and then switch to the arpeggio for four tones, using the first available tone in the direction you are playing. Create patterns that will cause your switching points to shift on each cycle. You could do the same thing with two different scales, like a G major and C major. Alternate any patterns you want to learn in a cycle that does not repeat.

[Pete Martin]

Sing a couple of notes out loud, then find them on your mandolin. This starts the ear to hands training playing by ear needs. After you can find a couple of notes, try a very short phrase, 4 to 8 notes. Then eventually longer phrases and whole tunes. Eventually try singing and playing at the same time, See if you can play what you ing in real time. This exercise has HUGE benefits for improvisers.

I like to get people who are interested in improvising going on improv after they can comfortably play about 4 tunes. Improv can easily be learned with the instrument.

[JonZ]

Pete,

Do you provide some sort of context, like a key or starting note? Without context, what you are describing would require perfect pitch.

[catmandu2]

Lost my trane of thought. Oh yeah, despite my enthusiasm for jazz pedagogy - Pete and all are great - just to mention there *are* opportunities to learn to improvise in those blues forms and all. It's just that there's so much to inspire in jazz, and the theoretical pedagogy is great. But alternatives to harmonic formal improvisation such as lyric forms like blues, raga, modal etc.

[CarlM]

I took a workshop class with David Grier where he explained his approach to improvising. Or more correctly he demonstrated. He took the tune Wildwood Flower and played a straightforward bare bones version of it like a normal person would play it. Then he changed a couple of notes to give a slightly altered melody. Then changed a few more and added in chords a bit at a time till he had played probably 15 different versions, all recognizable as Wildwood Flower even to a non musical listener. He explained that it takes a lot of time to do it that way. You have to trial and error the changes at different spots in the melody, discarding things that do not work, keeping what does. Everything is fair game. He is probably as good an improviser as there is in bluegrass.

Another approach is, to try introducing different techniques at points in the melody, again trial and error, things like tremolo, double stops, crosspicking, crosspicking double stops vs full chords, slides, hammers ons etc.

A teacher I used to go to till he moved away would have me change the character of the song on a pass through, play it as a blues, as swing, as a notey fiddle tune, with as few notes as possible, as a church hymn or a bouncy little number. Those things can be applied to part of a verse also.

Changing keys may bring new ideas. Another approach is to play one line straight melody then the next as far off the melody as you can and get back to the next line, alternating through the tune. Or play in a different spot on the fret board or in a different octave.

These are a few approaches to improvising. There are others.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From CarlM - "He explained that it takes a lot of time to do it that way." More or less what i said in my own post - but is there any other way to do it ?. Like ear playing,it takes a long time to master,but it has a lot of advantages & even the guys who 'read the dots' admit to that.

From CarlM - "..Or play in a different spot on the fret board ..". Absolutely !!. That way,not only are you learning to play starting off from a different place on the fingerboard,it helps to learn where the 'sounds' (notes) are. I never bothered to 'learn the names' of the notes when i began,i heard a 'sound' in a tune & looked for where i could get that 'sound' on my mandolin - eventually the 'sounds' named themselves.

Personally,i find it easier to improvise on tunes which already have a more 'complex' melody line. One of my favourite tunes purely because of it's simplicity,is ''Angeline The Baker'' - i've tried to come up with a decent improvisation on it,but the simplicity of the tune pulls me back to the basic melody. Now - if i go for something like ''Black Rock'' by 'The Infamous Stringdusters',i can play a pretty decent break on that.

Cafe member,Mark Gunter,posted a thread on here quite a while back regarding a mandolin player that he knows personally - Danny Ellison.
He also posted a link to DE playing another very simple tune, ''Sally Ann''. Most of us might have heard Earl Scruggs playing that on Banjo. Danny Ellison plays it in a way that i could only dream about - & i'll bet that it took him some time to come up with it,

Infamous Stringdusters ''Black Rock''

Ivan

[CarlM]

Danny Ellison plays it in a way that i could only dream about - & i'll bet that it took him some time to come up with it,

I am not sure if you would agree but one of the most notable things about that arrangement is the chord selection in the backup. Even when he is playing fairly straightforward melody the selection of chords behind it by the guitarist changes the character of what is being played. He moves to some minor chords where normally there are major. This effect can be employed when playing solo by introducing drone notes between melody notes or by crosspicking different double stops or chords.

My own approach to Sally Ann changed drastically when I heard other versions than Scruggs' particularly sung versions by Pete Seeger and others. You get a better sense of the melody of that song when hearing it sung. This version seems to come from that more than Scruggs' version.

[SincereCorgi]

He also posted a link to DE playing another very simple tune, ''Sally Ann''. Most of us might have heard Earl Scruggs playing that on Banjo. Danny Ellison plays it in a way that i could only dream about - & i'll bet that it took him some time to come up with it

This is something a beginner might not realize- a lot of great 'improvisations' are more like a flow-chart of sections that have already been worked out in the practice room.

I don't claim any great insight into how to learn to improvise, but I do know that time learning your way around the instrument (i.e. chord shapes, scale patterns, arpeggios, shifting) isn't wasted and that you just have to spend a very large amount of time sucking at it before it gets better.

[Mandobart]

One of the techniques that appeal to me is singing while I play. Does anyone have real-world advice on how to better connect their brain/ear to their instrument/fingers?

Just focusing on singing while playing - this is something many beginners struggle with. I suggest just strumming out a very basic rhythm (chords) on the mandolin while singing. Play the first chord to set your vocal, then just sing (lead with your voice) and follow with the mandolin.

[catmandu2]

S-corgi made me think - I should throw up a favorite approach of mine to begin with. It's very simple (just 12 basic chord forms) and is a basis from which to apply chord melody, leading, extensions, etc.

Just the 12 forms (3 maj, 3 min, 4 7ths, dim, aug). Then you can do things like "force" improvisation, working with simple patterns, etc. (kudos to Buddy Wachter). Nice organic way to get into harmony/chord theory.

[JonZ]

I would be interested.

[Bertram Henze]

This connecting thing is one most of us have done with singing - you hear a melody and repeat it singing da-da-da and instinctively hit the correct notes without knowing their names. Now you want to do the same with the mandolin? Practise, i.e. try to mimick any melody you hear (on TV, radio, whatever) with the mandolin in your hand; after a while, a map of finger positions vs pitch is being built up in your brain, and you'll find the correct courses/frets faster and faster.

The next step to improvising is inventing melodies that go with the music you hear - also this can be practised singing and, with the above connection engaged, the mandolin; the odd little extra note here and there first, little detours later, until you arrive at completely new pieces of music that are everything except the basic melody but still harmonically going with it. It's a long journey, but lots of pleasure on the way (and lots of wrong notes, but that's how we learn).