







Musical improvisation is analogous to spontaneous speech. In speech, we might use one word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or a lengthy monologue. In musical improvisation it is the same. Each individual develops their own vocabulary of musical notes, patterns and extended soloing. Developing a musical vocabulary is the process of acquiring groups of notes (single notes, phrases (small groups of notes), and lines (longer groups of notes). This is your musical vocabulary.





Another analogy, for those who like a more concrete reference point, is that of a taxi cab driver in a big city. If the driver learns every street, and has the map of the city well ensconced in his brain, his choice of routes becomes relatively limitless. The driver can’t create new streets, and random driving without prior knowledge, like random improvising, is usually a mistake (although occasionally trial and error works!). He can only improve his ability to navigate his prior knowledge base. Likewise, the improviser can only navigate the sequences of notes that he has mastered through practice and repetition.





There are no short cuts. In anything. Progress in any complex endeavor is slow. It’s the nature of things. Whether you’re trying to improve improvisational skills, learning to speak Lithuanian, or improving your 100 meter sprinting time, you will only improve a little bit at a time. This is not meant to be discouraging. On the contrary, it should help you NOT get frustrated or impatient. The key (no pun intended!) is to decide how much time you have to practice everyday; then, find a time slot that works, make it sacred, and just do it. EVERY DAY.





My approach involves a minimum of music theory. Joe Pass said there are only 3 scales; major, minor and dominant. Understanding the basics of music theory involves knowing what a 'key' is, and knowing what chords and scales are in the key. This allows you to have a foundational reference point to what Western music is all about, and allows you to communicated with others.







Here's the unorthodox part. Step one in my approach is knowing the melody through all the octaves of your instrument. I find it helpful for beginning improvisors to play everything in one major and minor key. Find a backing track (there is easily available software that allows you to change the key of any audio file.) As you play along, start noodling [definition: improvising or playing casually on a musical instrument.] There are only 12 notes in Western music, known as the chromatic scale. Experiment with every note. Get a sense of what notes sound good to you. (We never remember anything we don’t like. Just as in language, one’s style of speaking reflects the words and phrases that we like.) You will stumble upon combinations of notes that you like. Write these down (your vocabulary list). You can also find phrases in other people's solos as well as books of musical patterns and phrases. I suggest learning short phrases, as they are more easily utilized and can always be combined to create longer phrases. Short phrases simply have more uses. They can repeat as a motif, or they can be jumping off points in many musical directions. Licks are not static, fixed entities that one uses exactly the same way each time. Your ears are the most important thing, not the lick. Any lick that starts to be played is modifiable based on what you're hearing. By creating this personal journal of vocabulary, you have transformed a random casual process into a deliberate, conscientious process. The process is simple. The hard part is that a large vocabulary takes a long time to establish and ingrain in your mind. (I find it helpful to practice in a 1-2 octave range, especially in the beginning. That allows you to learn all the notes (scale tones and non-harmonic tones) very thoroughly and in various combinations.)











Listening: I can't emphasize enough how valuable listening to music is. I mean really listening, which I don't think happens that often. Music in our culture is 'on' a lot, but mostly in the background in situations where you are not really listening. Just like a toddler over time absorbs the words being spoken around him, and magically starts speaking, the improviser, in the nanosecond when an idea pops into his head for the next few measures [known as pre-hearing], is often drawing upon ideas he's absorbed from his listening time. The notes might not be right as played on your instrument, but that doesn't matter, because the IDEA is there, so you can stop and figure out the right notes. Ear training exercises, particularly interval and harmonic recognition, are vitally essential to this vocabulary based method. The idea is for your brain to identify the sound of a chord and have your fingers be completely in sync with intervals such that you know what note you want to play next. That's why I practice with backing tracks. Every note is in a harmonic context.







More about practicing and performing: They are very different mind-sets! Like a prepared speech, practicing is cerebral. We use our intellect to deliberately pick a topic and learn it via the route of repetition and memorization. Performance, like extemporaneous speech, is different; it’s spontaneous. The sum total of everything we’ve practiced and locked-in, simply appears. Like magic (of course, like the magician, it’s really practice practice practice!) When you practice, you are thinking about what you are working on. Let's say you want to infuse a new phrase into your playing. You would consciously practice it until it's locked into your brain as permanent musical vocabulary. But when you perform, you are not thinking. You are listening [following your ears], and everything you play appears spontaneously. A good analogy is a basketball player, very much an improviser! He/she will practice a specific move, and consciously force it into a scrimmage situation, but in the real game, there's no time to 'think'. So a hook shot might be practiced a ton, but in a real game situation, the use of it might only arise every 10th game. It's also no different than studying vocabulary words. In the beginning, you consciously work a new word into your speaking. But when you give your extemporaneous speech, you don't have time to consciously use the new word. You just talk, and whatever words pop into your brain are the ones you speak. Deliberate repetition ingrains things in our mind and body.







Obviously there is more to improvisation than just the notes, such as rhythm, pacing, melodic and motivic development, etc. But for playing notes, this method can be very helpful.







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