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Thread: Improvising!

  1. #1

    Default Improvising!

    I know this subject is discussed often but im curious as to how others approach improvisation. how much of you improv is playing scales, cut and pasting licks over a certain chord. or are you forgetting all that stuff and just trying to play what you hear inside your head? For me its a mix of all of the above i guess. just trying to gain some insight on whats going on in other peoples heads when they improvise a break.

    also as a side note...are you focusing on hearing intervals, scale degrees as you play?

  2. #2
    Middle-Aged Old-Timer Tobin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Yeah, for me it's a mix of everything. Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I'll try to play it close to the melody. Sometimes I'll do some scale runs up or down over the chord progression, and mix it up with arpeggios, throwing in some minor 3rds and 7ths for bluegrass flavor, or play some standard licks for fill or turnarounds.

    I've tried to go into a break with a plan of how I want to do it, but I almost always end up just playing whatever comes to mind. Or, more correctly, whatever I can get away with, short of falling apart. And sometimes I do fall apart if I make a wrong choice. Getting it going again after a serious boo-boo is always fun. But unless I'm playing a very specific rehearsed version (which isn't improvising by any stretch), I just seem to default to a sort of up-and-down-the-scales or intervals variation, pausing on double-stops to give some body to each phrase of the music. And yes, to me, it's all about hearing the intervals and scales over each chord in the progression. Or, more correctly, just being so familiar with the scales in each key that they come naturally when playing.
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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    I've applied Bill Monroe's advice to just start with the melody in settings from pop to jazz to English Country Dance. The melody contains the feelings that set up the later riffs that might be a comment on that core feeling.

    When you have enough melody bits and other songs' melodies under your fingers, you find that they fit at certain times (and not others). Jazz players will tell you that best results come from listening to the other players and then using their riffs in your solo, conversing by echoing their statement and riffing on it. The simplest version is to just play the last few notes the previous player did, and repeat them with some variation before heading off in your own direction

    I take a melody and just add or take away notes. If there are long notes I add in-between notes; if there are lots of notes I play long ones that mark the main notes in a melody. After that you have somewhere to go, restating you first statement with other changes.

    It's not so much about scales and arpeggios as about melodies and chord changes. Learn lots of songs, make up your own chord patterns, with variations, for those songs. Play the melodies that are usually sung, embellish them with extra notes. Work up several songs with a practiced solo. Eventually you have enough vocabulary to speak extemporaneously, that is, you will have "something to say". It's hard to say anything without some words. Words are melody phrases, not notes on their own. Melodies are sentences, songs are short stories. Before you can make up a new story, you need to memorize some good ones to tell.

    Don't expect that some technical work will set you up to improvise. It is knowing lots of stories and words that will do that, and that takes developing repertoire. But I couldn't just wade through a book of tunes--I just liked a couple of tunes or songs and worked on them until I could do those. Then I learned a few more. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    My improvision is what I hearin my head. What I hear may be runs I’ve used before, scales, parts of other songs, whatever. Years ago I played in a BG gospel band that had a radio program. Remember local radio and local (live) broadcast. Anyway we taped on Friday night and it was aired Saturday afternoon. When taping I could go all out improvising because if I went too far afield and totally crashed we would just stop the tape and try again. Was a great learning experience.

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  8. #5

    Default Re: Improvising!

    When I find it difficult to come up with improvised melodies, I try to improvise rhythms - which usually leads to some tonal inspiration. Like, play a line of sixteenth-note triplets on one particular note, or displace the beat by an eighth-note, or play the rhythm of a tune you know well, or...

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    Registered User Pete Martin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    All the above. Just trying to make logical lines.
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    I try and keep the melody in my head and improvise around it on the mandolin.
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    I’m not very good at it yet, but that doesn’t hinder me from trying... nor does it hinder others from throwing a break my way... what I’ve found most successful is being aware of A. What the arpeggios for any given scale are and B. What the individual notes are on any given chord... these 2 things always help me land on a note that sounds appropriate... another thing I saw in a YT vid that is a good cheat is to always play the note that is a 1/2 step before or after the base note of the key you are in at the end of your break. ie: you are if you are playing in G, you end your break with the notes F# G or G# G.

    Again, I’m not at all very good at it, but these hints have helped me at least sound ok.
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    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by dbrown101 View Post
    how much of you improv is playing scales, cut and pasting licks over a certain chord. or are you forgetting all that stuff and just trying to play what you hear inside your head? ......
    also as a side note...are you focusing on hearing intervals, scale degrees as you play?
    Learning to improvise is a lifetime's work; I say this as a New Orleans native jazz musician. In a way, jazz is my "folk" music, considering the culture I grew up in.

    It's also great fun to improvise!

    However improvisation can take quite different forms depending on the genre of music. Improvising in Irish session music is certainly not like playing Gypsy jazz!

    Now this is from a very basic jazz player POV:

    What's the melody and harmony (chord changes) and form?

    The melody is a guide for the nature of the song. The chord changes and the form of the song are the framework of the new melodies.

    One can play a version of the melody, or make new melodies off of the chord changes.

    So one needs to know the chord arpeggios and related scales to have freedom to create what you hear in your head.

    When I solo, though, I'm really just trying to "sing" those melodies I hear in my head on the guitar or mandolin.

    As for licks, we all need some stock patterns to use when we are playing when we are thinking of something new; also stock licks are part of certain styles, and can be used as building blocks.

    Mostly have fun and give yourself permission to hit wrong notes - but learn to make them work by resolving them.

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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Zak Borden is the one who I was referring to on the YT vid earlier... here is his 3 part series on improving







    Good stuff IMO
    Last edited by soliver; Oct-16-2017 at 9:46pm.
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  19. #11

    Default Re: Improvising!

    The main thing great improvisers have in common is that they spend a lot of time improvising. For example, if you are a bluegrass player, you will get more benefit using a pentatonic scale to create your own melodies and licks than from repeating a lot of rote patterns and licks. Always make creating your top priority.
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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    I don't know if this fully qualifies as improvisation or not, but I like to take a tune I know, usually a hymn, and start playing it as a chord melody, then adding variations with arpeggios, running 8th notes under the melody, etc. Some of it sounds pretty good, but it usually falls apart at some point, unless I figure out something that works and write it down (then of course, it's no longer improvising!).

    The woman I play with for the worship services at my church, who is much, much younger than me, can do this sort of thing on piano very effectively on the fly, and I'm both impressed and inspired by what she does with the tunes. Since I'm playing viola when I play with her in that setting, I'm on single melody or harmony lines most often, but these chord melody "improvisations" are things I do at home on my plucked instruments, both for fun and to try and improve my playing.

    When I do this, I am "focusing" strictly on what I hear in my head. My command of music theory is very weak, having never been trained in it despite decades of playing in orchestras, so I most often play chords with no clue what chord I'm playing, unless I stop and break it down to figure it out.

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  23. #13

    Default Re: Improvising!

    An old Bob Wills story: He said, "When I point at you, you give me everything you know."
    Licks, and/or chord arpeggios are a starting point.
    As I was growing up, my parents listened to Mountain, Blind Faith, Cream, B.B. King, Carol King, CSN&Y, Neil Young, etc. Not Bluegrass. A high school friend was from Missouri, and introduced me to Bluegrass, probably mid seventies. We went to see Hot Rize at the foot of Vail mountain. So when somebody points at me, I have forty years to draw from. Granted, you can't crowd that into a single twenty second break. But you get a feeling for what works. A feeling for what's impressive, but not out of place. This is completely separate from my skills or lack-of on a given instrument. Skill plus history, I guess? But it's all in one mooshy old brain.

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  25. #14
    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by bratsche View Post
    I don't know if this fully qualifies as improvisation or not, but I like to take a tune I know, usually a hymn, and start playing it as a chord melody, then adding variations with arpeggios, running 8th notes under the melody, etc. Some of it sounds pretty good, but it usually falls apart at some point, unless I figure out something that works and write it down (then of course, it's no longer improvising!).

    The woman I play with for the worship services at my church, who is much, much younger than me, can do this sort of thing on piano very effectively on the fly, and I'm both impressed and inspired by what she does with the tunes.
    ......

    When I do this, I am "focusing" strictly on what I hear in my head. My command of music theory is very weak, having never been trained in it despite decades of playing in orchestras, so I most often play chords with no clue what chord I'm playing, unless I stop and break it down to figure it out.

    bratsche
    The woman at church can improvise chord melody etc. "on the fly" as you say because she has command of theory and does know where the chords changes are and which chord to use.

    You may have to spend some time and "stop and break it down to figure it out" to get the command of chord changes you already know you don't quite have...yet.

    That what the woodshed is for.

    I'm sure once you are more solid in your chord theory, your already fine musicianship will show in your improvisations.

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    MandolaViola bratsche's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    That's much easier said than done, David - I wouldn't even know where to start. let alone find the time or necessary discipline for such an undertaking! As for my young friend, I am pretty sure she does it without even thinking about it at all, she's been playing these hymns so long and knows them well. Pianists have an advantage from learning to play different notes with both hands from early on, I think. They are able to hear and play things harmonically much more easily than one who's played a melodic instrument, and/or treated a plucked instrument primarily as such.

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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by bratsche View Post
    ...I wouldn't even know where to start...
    bratsche
    You have already started. This capacity comes from doing, not study, in my experience. One may know "where the notes are" on a page but not which fingers to use on which strings. But after enough time of trying one gets familiar with lots of choices for that. For me it started with finding solo versions of existing tunes (mainly Beatles) that had well-defined melody and bass lines, and important harmonies. Using a non-standard instrument I had to be creative about choosing which were important, and where to voice them.

    Your "private stock" of arrangements is the foundation on which you build. Eventually you have a lot of things you can do with a song or tune. The good news is that there is not an infinity of chords and bass lines that are actually used, but specific ones that happen repeatedly. True that us melody players are slower to get into the multi-line thinking that is necessary, but it is quite easy on mandolin, by comparison to violin, to do these things.

    I know where lots of notes are, but I found them by trying. Theory follows practice. It's what we use to describe stuff, not how we learn it. Playing music is more like engineering than theoretical physics. There is a lot of learning what doesn't work---what works is what remains.
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by bratsche View Post
    That's much easier said than done, David - I wouldn't even know where to start. let alone find the time or necessary discipline for such an undertaking!

    bratsche
    I can't speak for the time nor discipline, but you can start by learning a couple jazz standards and really digging into the chord changes.

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  32. #18

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    I would disagree that theory follows practice. A little theory allows you to cut to the chase of making music much quicker.
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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by JonZ View Post
    I would disagree that theory follows practice. A little theory allows you to cut to the chase of making music much quicker.
    Maybe we disagree as to what comprises theory. Reading music and knowing note names is not theory, just reading, and that was the entirety of my "theoretical" knowledge for 7 or 8 years of violin study. Around age 12 or so I began teaching myself guitar using a book of folk songs and the little chord charts. When I went to a music camp that summer and had some basic harmony/theory class I realized it was only what I had been doing with guitar (and violin), but now I had a fancy name for a particular chord, like "first inversion" or "dominant 7th".

    I highly recommend learning to read for all players, but that is not what professional musicians call "theory". Learning what those fancy jazz chord names mean is sort of theory, but mainly is reading. And I learned how to do arrangements and improvise nearly entirely by ear, sometimes building out from the basic lead sheet of a jazz tune, but mainly by listening to a recording for the melody, bass line, and chords. I hear a sweet harmony and know it is a major chord--a chord with more "mustard" and I hear a 7th--sweet mustard for major 7th--pepper for #9--sweet and sour for D7b9. I remember the sound of these chords, not their described theoretical function. I remember how they fit, and that they often happen in this or that place. This is all just learned memory of sounds, not a technical framework that predicts the next move.

    In a jazz workshop I have joined someone might say "Why don't we just use rhythm changes for the bridge sometimes instead of the ones in the chart" (on a Bud Powell tune) but that is employing a handy vocabulary, not a discussion of how the bridge harmonies function as a development in sonata form, before the recapitulation of the final "A" section.

    Learn notes, but don't worry what they mean--it's the tune that tells you that.
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  36. #20

    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by bratsche View Post
    Pianists have an advantage from learning to play different notes with both hands from early on, I think. They are able to hear and play things harmonically much more easily than one who's played a melodic instrument, and/or treated a plucked instrument primarily as such.
    There are certainly advantages in playing such instruments - contrapuntalisms, harmonic choices, et al. I enjoy these instruments for these reasons - for solo playing you can provide myriad platforms to launch various improvisational excursions.

    However, the mandolin offers plenty of opportunity as well. There are many strategies/approaches to employ to encourage improvisation on melody instruments. Something you might try, for a chordal approach, is starting just with maj/min voicings, learning all your basic inversions and playing with those. Then add more, etc.

    For melody, try experimenting with modal forms, or blues. Start simply. The world is full of examples of simple, beautiful improvisation.

    I often recommend Mark Shatz's demonstrations - take two notes, and be as creative as you can. Then three. Etc.

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  38. #21
    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Wright View Post
    Maybe we disagree as to what comprises theory.
    .........
    I highly recommend learning to read for all players, but that is not what professional musicians call "theory"
    ....... I remember the sound of these chords, not their described theoretical function. I remember how they fit, and that they often happen in this or that place. This is all just learned memory of sounds, not a technical framework that predicts the next move.

    ..........

    Learn notes, but don't worry what they mean--it's the tune that tells you that.
    "This is all just learned memory of sounds, not a technical framework that predicts the next move."

    Theory is just the description of those "sounds". Sounds come first, theory later.

    "Learn notes, but don't worry what they mean--it's the tune that tells you that"

    And it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, as they say.

    Tom's point is good - reading music is NOT necessarily learning theory.

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  40. #22

    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Wright View Post
    Learn notes, but don't worry what they mean--it's the tune that tells you that.
    When you understand why certain notes "work" in certain situations, it allows you to integrate new knowledge and skills more quickly.

    For example, when I understand that sliding from the b3 to the three is what gives a certain lick its bluesy sound, I can use that device in other situations almost immediately, if I understand a little theory.
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    Default Re: Improvising!

    I agree with both arguments,knowing theory makes learning quicker for most people. The exception that proves the rule are few but they do exist. The one I knew best is gone now. My father didn’t know the first thing about theory. He had no idea what he was doing and that drove me crazy when I was learning. I’d say why did you do that like that his response was it just needed to sound like that. He played any string instrument, in any type music . I’m told in the service he played in a dance band with music in front of him to be like the others, he would turn the pages occasionally but never reading a note. To tell the truth I’ve often wonder what a musician he would have been if as a kid or young man he’d had training.

  42. #24

    Default Re: Improvising!

    I too am very intuitive and savant like in my approach to solo breaks. But there's a type of Jazz break where one plays outside the chord progression. Talk about heavy theory? So for instance everything but the ii, V, I in C# minor. ?!?!?!?!? Blows me out of the water. While the late Oscar Peterson thrived in those places. Fortunately there's room for all. From the chord arpeggio survival tactic to the Jazz rampage. And isn't it funny how a non-musician wouldn't really care? I find it a kick to know there is ever more sophisticated approaches, even if I can't get there.

  43. #25

    Default Re: Improvising!

    Quote Originally Posted by farmerjones View Post
    I too am very intuitive and savant like in my approach to solo breaks. But there's a type of Jazz break where one plays outside the chord progression. Talk about heavy theory? So for instance everything but the ii, V, I in C# minor. ?!?!?!?!? Blows me out of the water. While the late Oscar Peterson thrived in those places. Fortunately there's room for all. From the chord arpeggio survival tactic to the Jazz rampage. And isn't it funny how a non-musician wouldn't really care? I find it a kick to know there is ever more sophisticated approaches, even if I can't get there.
    Playing outside isn't as complicated as you might think. A lot of the techniques are very straightforward, such as using the notes of a pentatonic scale a half a step away from the tonic. The tricky part is a deft ingress and egress.
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