Jazz Improvisation

[bloodsample]

(similar topics may have been discussed in the past, but I want to get some fresh ideas)

 

To all you jazz musicians (regardless of your instrument):

 

What do you think about when you solo? (Don't say your wives or something cheesy like that, I want a technical answer ) Are you thinking scales? Are you thinking riffs? Are you "hearing" notes in your head and playing them?

 

(If you said "yes" to the last question, I envy you )

 

Since I don't know my scales too well , I tend to figure some basic riffs that I can work around ahead of time and then solo around that.. With that technique I can fool some people some time, but I can't fool all the people all the time

 

What do you guys think about?

[marino]

Originally posted by bloodsample:

Are you "hearing" notes in your head and playing them?

More or less. It's a long, slow learning process, where you develop your musical instincts, at the same time building your harmonic knowledge, your ear for pitches and your instrumental skills - and the interation of all these things.

 

Forget about learning jazz from licks, or even patterns. A good jazz solo is a composition, and that requires deeper knowledge.

 

As Joe Zawinul said once, "I don't think when I play - it's too slow".

[orangefunk]

I'll put a different spin on this as someone who isn't a full on jazzer in the traditional sense.

 

For me its about putting everything together, it can be prepared patterns it can be just spontaneous... you can take a prepared pattern and apply a different rhythmic element which you might have just thought about on the moment.

 

I think you do have to know scales though and get those down so that you don't even have to think about them.

 

a lot of guys have trademark patterns and phrases... Freddie Hubbard seems to include the same motif on every record he has ever done... its almost like his calling card. :-)

 

sometimes I like to sing along with the lines I play even if I don't always hit the right notes I'm singing I can use the rhythmic element I've decided on.

 

Usually I don't really compose a solo as Marino states but then we're all different and to be honest I'm not at the same technical level with regards to pure jazz as Marino. For me everything comes into play wther its some sophisticated scale or harmonic concept or some sequence of notes I've heard from an old disco record or electronica.

 

Last night I improvised a composition (is that a contradiction?) into Ableton Live and used all of the above incorporating odd time signatures, arabian scales, scale patterns that shift, a lot of repeating motifs starting on different degrees of the scale or pentatonic.

 

It didn't always work of course but its a great process... and damn addictive :-)

 

To add another Joe Z element... he always starts his compositions originally as an improvisation and records everything.. birdland started that way.. its a process which I think lends itself to a lot of musicians regardless of level... just start your sequencer/recorder play into it and add layers.. don't worry about odd notes and playing wrong...

 

Of course live performance is another matter, but I think people tend to forget about actually just playing, improvising and creating in their own home. I find peoples approach to playing to be somewhat clinical at times.. I love hearing the processes and mistakes, they're often the best thing.

 

Something I read recently was the Japanese attitude to teaching... where they put an emphasis on making mistakes and learning from them... I make mistakes all the time... and sometimes the results are damn thrilling :-)

 

Anyway thats my take..

 

 

Peace

Ofunk

[BluesKeys]

I will first say I am a Blues player dabbling in Jazz. So I am not a Jazz player on the level of Carlo. That said I usually take the melody or something close for the first stanza of my leads in jazz. From there it varies, some songs I have worked out a lead of sorts. Meaning I will not play it note for note everytime but familiar patterns will surface.

 

I also sing along or hear the notes first in my head, and too often you can hear me over the mic, so I try to keep my head down. I will use melodies or riffs from other tunes when they come to mind. Even strange things like the theme song for Woody Woodpecker (a TV show) or if on organ, I'll use riffs from Time is Tight, or Green Onions (Booker T). I'll even play a lead using bits and pieces of other leads.

 

I don't know where I heard this quote but I know there are some people you never get board listening to them play.

 

" The difference between an average player and good player, is, a good player can play what is in his head."

 

"The difference between a good player and a GREAT player, is, WHAT is in his head."

 

So I fall into a good player, trying to change my mind.

[sudeep]

was it Art Tatum or some other great who he only concentrates and thinks about what he is going to do with his left hand, as the right hand does whatever it wants to!!!

[guestuserguestuser.com]

Originally posted by marino:

More or less. It's a long, slow learning process, where you develop your musical instincts, at the same time building your harmonic knowledge, your ear for pitches and your instrumental skills - and the interation of all these things.

 

Forget about learning jazz from licks, or even patterns. A good jazz solo is a composition, and that requires deeper knowledge.

 

As Joe Zawinul said once, "I don't think when I play - it's too slow".

Well put, Marino. I agree with what you say, with one exception: For the beginner, I think it's worth learning licks and patterns and trying to incorporate them into solos. Even top professionals use licks and patterns in their solos (but also much more, of course)

 

They are part of the language, but too much importance shouldn't be placed on them, they are just devices, two building blocks out of a pile of building blocks.

[marino]

OK, let me rephrase that slightly...

 

I didn't intend to mean that licks and patterns are totally useless; of course, I use preconceived phrases in my playing too. But since our friend Bloodsample (good name!) seemed to believe that you can play jazz just by learning a few licks, I wanted to point out that this would make for boring soloing. Not to speak of stumbling with complex progressions...

 

Personally, I've never studied a single lick from the 'pattern books' during my formation years. Rather, I've studied transcriptions of actual solos, and transcribed a few myself. Only when I've started to teach jazz improvisation, I've familiarized myself with those books, and noticed that for a few students, they could be an useful tool (every case is just different).

 

But in talks with a few great improvisers which I've been fortunate to meet, nobody has ever told me "On this progression, I like to start with this group of notes" - or even "I use the Mixolidian mode here". You have to know all that, of course, but when you're soloing, you're supposed to make, or attempt making, some kind of musical statement. So you better know your theory well enough, that you can get to the point of forgetting it, and thinking about the music exclusively.

[Dave Horne]

If you look at music as a language (which it is), you'll have a better idea of how things go. You probably don't think about words when you're explaining to someone how your day went. If you try to explain how your day went in another language, a language in which you are not extremely fluent, you'll probably stumble around for the correct words and probably botch up the grammar as well. (I know this from first hand and daily experience.)

 

Music is the same. The more fluent you are, the easier it is to 'speak'.

 

After reading the initial post I gave some thought to what goes through my mind when improvising. I really don't actively think about what is going on, I just 'speak'; practicing improvising is another issue and I give a great deal of thought to what goes through my mind ... though a lot is really just being on automatic pilot.

 

Learning a language comes from speaking it and speaking it daily. You can help things along a bit faster by learning the 'grammar', but as with all languages, it takes time before you can speak without thinking all that much about your choice of words.

[marino]

Dave - the language example is perfect.

[David Loving]

Yes, that's the best way to put it. I like to ask what you think about when you hit a baseball or swing a golf club.

[The Soundsmith]

Miles is purported to have said, "Eight good bars a night is enough." By which he did NOT mean you can play crap for the rest of the night - if you can create eight bars of interesting improvisation that you have never played before, and do it on a regular basis, you are playing jazz.

 

Most of what we play on a nightly basis is vocabulary, phrases, licks, stuff we've played hundreds of times, that is established in our neural pathways as ways to get from point A (the IIm chord) to point B (the I-MA7 2 bars down the road.) The rue creative moment is when you either hear something and respond by playing something new to you, or when you suddenly discover you just played it - what the hell was that?

 

Jazz mastery is only gained over time, as the phrases you have created and the ones you have stolen (and we all do, copying someone else's phrases is the basis of the vast majority of the jazz vocabulary, and one of the best ways to find new approaches to the music) are integrated into your background mental processes (I started to say 'thought processes,' but as has been said, if you're thinking about what to play, it's too late...)

 

What do I think about when I play? Depends on the song, the audience, the groove, all the minutiae that make up the instant we call 'now.' Usually I'm monotoring what I just played for dynamic, rhythmic accuracy, quality, etc. but almsot never about 'what am I going to play next,' unless I have a deliberate reason to insert a quote from another song, and need to test whether it will fit the chord progrssion, or if I need to play it in a different key to make it fit, etc. But basically there is a 'creative zone' that lets me focus on the long form of the song - second solo chorus, got to step it up some for the next 16 bars, or last eight, build it up hard.

 

Some songs I have developed a consistent approach to a solo, where I will use a specific lick to set myself up for a particular solo concept, or even play almost the same solo every night (always with minor changes, and always free to just take it somewhere else if I feel like it), other songs I approach fresh every night.

 

But mainly it's about feel and groove. without which there IS no jazz...

[kanker.]

Originally posted by Dave Horne:

If you look at music as a language (which it is), you'll have a better idea of how things go. You probably don't think about words when you're explaining to someone how your day went. If you try to explain how your day went in another language, a language in which you are not extremely fluent, you'll probably stumble around for the correct words and probably botch up the grammar as well. (I know this from first hand and daily experience.)

 

Music is the same. The more fluent you are, the easier it is to 'speak'.

Excellent indeed. To take this a little further, jazz in a group setting is a conversation - instruments and players having a discussion in congress with each other.

That is why when I'm playing I'm thinking more about what everyone else is playing. In order to be a part of the conversation (comp) or to lead the conversation (solo) you have to be aware of all of the nuance going on around you, to surround yourself with it and have it dictate what you play as much as you dictate what they play. When I'm soloing, in terms of my own playing, the only things of importance to me are the note I just played, the note I'm playing, and the note I'm reaching for. It's very much about living in the moment and acting/reacting in the moment.

[bloodsample]

Very cool, thanks for the input.

 

When I said I play based on riffs I didn't mean that's all I do, but I found that once my mind/fingers leave me hanging, it's nice to throw in some riffs or variations of. Then again it depends on the kind of jazz. Improvising on a modal tune is very different than a rythm changes for example. I find riff based improvisation most useful on blues tunes.

 

Well I'm now freshly inspired and ready to tackle another jazz combo semester

[circlesee]

I read this when I was in college, it may be of interest. Describes in analytical terms the process of learning how to improvise jazz on the piano.

 

David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262691612/qid=1126840932/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-7996537-0019909?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[Michelle ggurl]

I, too, like Dave's "music is a language" analogy ... in fact, those are the first words in the first chapter of the book I co-wrote a while ago on creating music (meaning improvising and composing). The book is proabably too basic for most people here, but it does delve into jazz theory in the last 1/3 of the book. So here are my thoughts on improvising as they apply to me, personally.

 

If we take the "music as a language" analogy, consider what happens when you learn a new language. You're probably doing so because you're going on vacation. You start with basic words: "hello", "yes", "no", "help", "please". Then phrases: "thank you", "good morning/evening", "where is ___?", "my name is ___", "how much is that?" etc.

 

Then you start becoming conversant in the language, able to extemporaneously tell how your day was (to use Dave's example). Still you may not have the vocabulary or discipline of inflection to be a master orator or actor. But that level of refinement is possible.

 

So for me, I play jazz but feel I could improve, certainly. I have become a lot more fluid and comfortable improvising over my original music in the band I am currently in/co-leading, and it took a while to get my "land legs" in it (it's a different trip than playing standards out of a fake book or playing rock solos). If I had the CD we released early this year to record over again, I know my performances would come out better. So what was my process?

 

In the beginning, I had to plan more things out: start with this type of phrase, then that type of phrase, etc. This was a recording, so I composed parts of the solo. Not to say there was no improvisation ... it was all improvised in that the actual notes and inflections were different every time, but I thought about how long a certan intensity of playing would be, and certain intro and cues out became consistent.

 

I, like Marino, was never one for books of improvised patterns. I listen to records, find things I like, then take that phrase and make it my own ... learning it exactly as is, but then not playing it that way. Usually what happens is the rhythmic element, or how to use chromatic or leading tones is what I walk away with, but the original phrase never gets used in my own playing.

 

Now, I find the most important thing is to be Aware and in the moment. I improvise my solos, and when I say improvise now, I mean they are never the same (there is one song that is an exception by choice and style). The cues out on a couple of tunes are the same because the band relies on that. But everything else is different, and before I start I couldn't tell you what I was going to play. I pretty much play what I hear, but what I hear is somewhat dictated by what I can execute. Of course there are times I hear things I can't execute, but not often in actual performance; I think this is a "being on and in the moment" filtering that happens.

 

I guess at this point it's worth pointing out that I know enough theory like second nature that for most chords (if not all) that I see/hear, I can think of at LEAST one scale to play over it, be it diatonic, diminished, or altered. Doesn't mean I can just blow chops full out the first time I read through something (or ever), but at least I have a really solid starting point.

 

At home, I practice to get closer to what I hear in others' playing but can't execute yet. I have pretty good ears, I think, and and pretty much analyze what's happening in most stuff I hear. If I stick with it, my playing will only get better as a result.

 

Wow, this is a long post. I hope there's something helpful in here ...

[Michelle ggurl]

Oh, and Dasher, your post really resonates with me too. Very good analysis of the "nuts and bolts" of "I play what I hear."

[stoo schultz]

For me, the solo plays itself. All I think is "Well, here goes . . . " I play something, which suggests something else, which suggests something else etc. I don't really know why one thing leads to the next, I guess it's unconscious, like riding a bike.

 

For someone without much improv experience, a good exercise is to sit down and literally "compose" a solo, note for note, thinking about making it have a beginning, middle, and end, with tension and release. Like telling a story.

 

Or another thing to do is slow the accompaniment way down, and play your solo as if the final version is going to be speeded up. Again imagine you're telling a story. Practice by gradually increasing the tempo.