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Thread: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam session

  1. #26

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    1. Melody
    2. Harmony (usually the chord note above the melody note) on sustained notes
    3. the Blues (flattened 3, 5, 7)
    4. Ending licks stolen from Bill Monroe (which usually involve a lot of (3))

    In that order

  2. #27
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    I find these backing tracks to be really helpful with my improvising. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB9...XSDV3wP8gDQ2lw

    It's mostly fiddle tunes but some with words too. You can play with the tempo by adjusting the video speed in the settings. Practice licks here and beef up your solos for your next jam!

  3. #28

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    These two articles came in a news feed I get on jazz. They are about the top nine myths about jazz improvisation. It reminded me of this thread. The number one myth came up a couple of times in this thread.

    http://https://www.jazzadvice.com/my...improvisation/

    http://https://www.jazzadvice.com/4-...improvisation/

  4. #29

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    The #1 myth was "Either you got it or you don't".

    Rereading this thread I don't see anybody saying that actually, maybe I just missed it. But I agree it's a myth, pretty nasty one too. And I have heard it from musicians too, some guys 'just have it goin on'.

    In this thread I got a lot of good advice, and I have been doing a lot of it, learning melodies and harmonies, and some patterns to work into it (BanjoBen's stuff is helping, I needed a good starting point and his is as good as any I guess).

    I've been a musician almost my entire life (that's 40+ years of playing something),
    but bluegrass and mando are new to me.

    I learned a long time ago that playing the notes isn't enough, it has to be played in the style for the genre it is intended. That was my original point: I need to learn some style-correct vocabulary, and planned to start by borrowing others stuff and work up my own over time.

    Since the topic of jazz has come up, let me tell you about the greatest jazz player I ever had the pleasure to know (old guy here, you got me started now...).

    Sax player I went to high-school with (late 70's).

    He later went to University of Miami (one of the top 2 Jazz schools in the US at the time).

    He spent years practicing patterns from books of patterns (no he didn't only do this, it was part of an overall program), but the thing was he got them under his fingers in every key. He used to walk around carrying these books of jazz patterns with him.

    That was how he started, but it isn't how he ended up. The point is he set out to become a great improviser and dedicated himself to practicing and learning what was needed to achieve it. It didn't just 'happen', nor was just raw talent.

    I went to music camp with another jazz great (we were both trumpet players in high-school at the time, and this was a classical music camp), he was a better player as a junior than I was as a senior. Yeah he became mega-famous, one of the very few who could play both classical and jazz well. And he had the same kind of study habits. He carried around transcripts of many of the great jazz solos (myth #3 in action right there), and learned them. Years later we caught him using excerpts from the Arban book (a trumpet method book for classical trumpet players) on some of his jazz albums. He made them work though, fantastically well too.

    No you don't need 10,000 patterns to start improvising, or memorize 100 solos (more myths). But learning all that does make you better. And it makes sense to try to become at least passingly familiar with what has come before, and then develop your own style from there.

    The point is those guys worked hard, they learned patterns, they studied the greats who came before them, they played in bands every chance they got, and went to top schools. Their goal was to be great, and both of them achieved it using essentially the same methods. So IMHO some of those myths are based on truth.

    I believe the same methods apply to amateurs too, just scaled back to whatever level you prefer. Anybody can improv by working around the melody a bit, but becoming a better improviser will take work and practice aimed towards that goal.

    In my case I thought maybe I could skip that level of effort on mandolin, seeing as I have done it on several previous instruments. But no, turns out getting a vocabulary under your fingers is just as important as it is on others. I think even more so, because you can't play stuff up to speed that you haven't worked on before. And Bluegrass is new to me, so I don't have any past vocabulary to draw from. Silly me for thinking I could just get up there and wing it.

    I just wish that two weeks of practicing would have gotten me 'there'. But no, gonna be a while yet before I am happy with what comes out the sound board. :-) But my goal is to be able to perform in public, so I need to get to a certain minimum level, not there yet.
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  5. #30

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by CarlM View Post
    Learn to play the melody. Everything else is just fluff.
    In an improvisational context I don't really agree with this. Especially for certain styles of music. Certainly playing around the melody is fine and good, but sometimes the situation either doesn't allow for that or doesn't lend itself to that. If I'm playing a Bluegrass number like 9 lb hammer or something and it gets passed around a few times I am probably not going to be very concerned with the melody the third time around-- that's generally been covered. Nothing wrong with sticking to the melody, but I think it's shallow to dismiss everything else as fluff.

  6. #31
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by MandoManCaleb View Post
    In an improvisational context I don't really agree with this. Especially for certain styles of music. Certainly playing around the melody is fine and good, but sometimes the situation either doesn't allow for that or doesn't lend itself to that. If I'm playing a Bluegrass number like 9 lb hammer or something and it gets passed around a few times I am probably not going to be very concerned with the melody the third time around-- that's generally been covered. Nothing wrong with sticking to the melody, but I think it's shallow to dismiss everything else as fluff.
    That's the definition of fluff. After the basic has been established the fluff is added for variety and excitement. Why should fluff be considered bad. It's only bad when it replaces the basic, if 9lb hammer had been around the group 3times with no melody played no one would even know what was being played or how to improvise, it would just be a bunch of notes played over a chord progression. To me that is the definition of boring.

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  8. #32

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    f I'm playing a Bluegrass number like 9 lb hammer or something and it gets passed around a few times I am probably not going to be very concerned with the melody the third time around-- that's generally been covered.
    The best lesson I have had on improvisation was from David Grier. He played Wildwood Flower about 15 times in a row. each was noticeably different. Each one contained the melody and was recognizable on its own. Jazz will totally abandon the melody. In other styles it should be the heart of any improvisation.

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  10. #33
    Registered User Manfred Hacker's Avatar
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Bowsman View Post
    The term "improv pattern" seems kind of weird. If you're playing patterns, are you really improvising?
    So you think all our 'heroes' playing at 300 bpm (quarter notes) and faster improvise everything on the fly and never use any patterns they have practiced 8 hours a day?
    I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Mark Twain

  11. #34

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by Mandoplumb View Post
    That's the definition of fluff. After the basic has been established the fluff is added for variety and excitement. Why should fluff be considered bad. It's only bad when it replaces the basic, if 9lb hammer had been around the group 3times with no melody played no one would even know what was being played or how to improvise, it would just be a bunch of notes played over a chord progression. To me that is the definition of boring.
    That's fair. I think I misinterpreted your usage of the word fluff.

  12. #35

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by CarlM View Post
    The best lesson I have had on improvisation was from David Grier. He played Wildwood Flower about 15 times in a row. each was noticeably different. Each one contained the melody and was recognizable on its own. Jazz will totally abandon the melody. In other styles it should be the heart of any improvisation.
    Grier is a master at that. I really appreciate that style of improvisation, but I also think that abandoning the melody is perfectly acceptable if the melody has already been established. I think there is plenty of room in bluegrass for that style of improvisation, especially when many of the melodies are somewhat simple and can get repetitive after hearing them played by a few soloists. As you said-- one approach is to add a lot of variety to the melody. The other is to play something outside of the melody. I think both have their merit. I know from the improvisation end of it I find it a fun challenge to paint myself into a corner and try to get out as Tony Rice once said. Again, I'm not saying melodic improvisation isn't important, but I think that a lot can be learned by improvising outside of the melody. I learned a lot by crashing and burning. It's a great way to learn safe patterns, scales, and things such as that. I even think it's a great way to learn melodic improvisation. As you improvise with scales and patterns, you learn to identify melody and note intervals. Practicing scales and arpeggios, etc is very important but I think a lot of people find that learning to actually use them is daunting when jams start-- and it is. The only way I know to get past it is to attempt breaks and learn what works.

  13. #36

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by kurth83 View Post
    While I could pick the tunes, I couldn't improvise at all.

    I realized I don't know any bluegrass improv patterns, and my skills aren't up to the task of making them up on the fly, which for some reason I thought I would be able to do.

    So I found this guy calling himself BanjoBenClark, who for a small fee teaches an introductory set of improv licks, I gotta start somewhere.

    Here is one of his: https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/ba...-in-g-mandolin
    It's kinda canned, but enough to make you sound good, until your mates realize you are
    just playing the same licks over and over again. :-)

    Or I was thinking about taking up banjo, anybody can do that right? I'll be the next Scruggs, yeah, Cough...
    Guitar players have been “improvising” by playing the same licks over and over for decades. It’s a time-honored tradition.

  14. #37
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Jazz will totally abandon the melody. I added the bold.

    I believe 'can' is the better term here.

  15. #38
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Well …. crashing and burning when you improvise is a long honored tradition among those that do. IMO I. Learn the chords and structure, how the chords fit 2. Learn the melody. Listen and learn how to hear the chord changes coming within the melody. 3. Add pieces of the associated scales, the ones that the chords and melody are constructed from / with, in both single tones and double stops. 4. Syncopate 5. Add right hand techniques tremolo , cross picking 6. Add left hand techniques hammer on slide into and out of tones. Bottom line you have to play and practice melodies , scales , chords and techniques until you are using them like words in a conversation. Keep it simple don't try to add too much. Be patient ….. play daily …. carry on. R/
    I love hanging out with mandolin nerds . . . . . Thanks peeps ...

  16. #39
    the little guy DerTiefster's Avatar
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    I mostly do improvisation when singing. Somehow I can sing a note I want to hear more quickly than I can pick it out on the fretboard. But the same "hear it in your head" is what I'd like for an instrument, too. Have you practiced making up harmony on the fly for simple melodies? If you notice the chord patterns, it is quite likely that you also know some other tune that uses the same chords, and you can interleave it into the break. I've heard someone doing chord accompaniment with vocals on one song and at the same time had another song ringing in my head. Sometimes that's "counterpoint," which is an interesting topic to look over.

    But it seems to me that "improvisation" involves being able to play the notes in your head fairly accurately and being able to recover rather than falling flat on your fretboard when you miss a few. It also seems to me that knowing everything about everything and having practiced it that morning makes for good improv.

    I've enjoyed reading the replies here. Thanks for asking the question.

    Michael
    You live and you learn (if you're awake)
    ... but some folks get by just making stuff up.

    Michael T.

  17. #40
    Fingers of Concrete ccravens's Avatar
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    The OP has stated, multiple times, that he already knows the melody. It's what to do after that, or as some of you have said, the 2nd or 3rd time around, that he is asking about.

    Playing the same melody over and over is the very definition of boring; playing multitudes of random notes can be the same. As in most things, there is a balance between extremes to be preserved.
    Chris Cravens

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  19. #41

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    I like the fluff!

  20. #42
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by kurth83 View Post

    Or I was thinking about taking up banjo, anybody can do that right? I'll be the next Scruggs, yeah, Cough...
    Banjo is built backwards, is played upside down, and is as easy to tune as two cats tied together by their tails and hung over a clothes line.

  21. #43

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    I like the fluff!
    You do it so much better than the rest of us, Andy.

  22. #44

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    My teacher told me there is no try. Only do, or do not.

    He was a funny little guy.

  23. #45

    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by kurth83 View Post
    While I could pick the tunes, I couldn't improvise at all.

    I realized I don't know any bluegrass improv patterns, and my skills aren't up to the task of making them up on the fly, which for some reason I thought I would be able to do.

    So I found this guy calling himself BanjoBenClark, who for a small fee teaches an introductory set of improv licks, I gotta start somewhere.

    Here is one of his: https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/ba...-in-g-mandolin
    It's kinda canned, but enough to make you sound good, until your mates realize you are
    just playing the same licks over and over again. :-)

    Or I was thinking about taking up banjo, anybody can do that right? I'll be the next Scruggs, yeah, Cough...
    In my opinion this is one of the worst ways to learn to improvise, ESPECIALLY for a beginner. The best resource I have found to learn to improvise is the flatpicking essential series. It's a bluegrass guitar book series, but the process applies the same to mandolin.

  24. #46
    formerly Philphool Phil Goodson's Avatar
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    Quote Originally Posted by Relio View Post
    In my opinion this is one of the worst ways to learn to improvise, ESPECIALLY for a beginner. The best resource I have found to learn to improvise is the flatpicking essential series. It's a bluegrass guitar book series, but the process applies the same to mandolin.
    Why??
    Phil

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  25. #47
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    Default Re: So I tried to improvise for the first time, live in a jam ses

    I was once told improvising is 90% feelings and 10% skill. Feel the music and let your mind and fingers go free.

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