Beginner Improvisation Lesson

[GuyBoden]

Beginner Improvisation Lesson

[Chonker]

If only it were always this approachable.

[Bach5G]

Too much talking.

[Reg]

Playing sax is different than guitar... obviously, but... where he seems to be going is to use rhythm or rhythmic patterns as templet or pattern for playing improv.

Which works. Rhythm always trumps choice of notes. Most guitarist seem to get into chord tones, spelling changes and melodic resolutions. Which is great.... but generally boring and basically is already implied.

Don't get me wrong.... one needs to actually have those skills... but at some point you need to develop skills to get past what's already implied.

[princeplanet]

....Rhythm always trumps choice of notes. Most guitarist seem to get into chord tones, spelling changes and melodic resolutions. Which is great.... but generally boring and basically is already implied....

Everyone seems to agree with this, but there ARE players like say Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Stitt, Johnny Griffin or even Pat Martino than sometimes choose to play long streams of 8th or 16ths, with little thought to asymmetrical rhythmic grouping, that sound more compelling than intermediate level players with all their clever stops and starts. Just sayin'...

[Reg]

Everyone seems to agree with this, but there ARE players like say Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Stitt, Johnny Griffin or even Pat Martino than sometimes choose to play long streams of 8th or 16ths, with little thought to asymmetrical rhythmic grouping, that sound more compelling than intermediate level players with all their clever stops and starts. Just sayin'...

yea thanks Prince.... I agree, but very few musicians have the musicianship of players you mentioned. And just never will reach those levels of performance. And when you check out what they're playing.... there are rhythmic patterns being implied... even those it may sound like long streams of 8ths. Accents and subdivisions.

Well maybe not Martino.... but I think only guitarist would put Martino in the same group as Hawkins, Stitt and one of my favorite players... Griffin.

[mr. beaumont]

Everyone seems to agree with this, but there ARE players like say Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Stitt, Johnny Griffin or even Pat Martino than sometimes choose to play long streams of 8th or 16ths, with little thought to asymmetrical rhythmic grouping, that sound more compelling than intermediate level players with all their clever stops and starts. Just sayin'...

I think some of it comes down to, "are you playing a steady stream of notes by choice, or because you're chasing changes and it's all you can come up with?"

I think the difference can be heard by most, even non musicians.

[princeplanet]

Well, yeah, as most of us on this forum can only aspire to being good intermediate players at best, then running unbroken streams of 8ths the way we'd do it probably wouldn't be as interesting to listen to compared with inserting the odd thoughtful gap every now and then.

But I feel that if you can do unbroken 8ths on a tune, it's should be easy enough to learn to put the brakes on here and there, right?

[Reg]

Well, yeah, as most of us on this forum can only aspire to being good intermediate players at best, then running unbroken streams of 8ths the way we'd do it probably wouldn't be as interesting to listen to compared with inserting the odd thoughtful gap every now and then.

But I feel that if you can do unbroken 8ths on a tune, it's should be easy enough to learn to put the brakes on here and there, right?

Yea prince. It is part of a process. So, if the goal is to be able to create good solos, which get positive reactions and have some kind of relationship with the tune, style, feel or at least ... the situation of performing etc..

You need organizational concepts that use some basic musical formulas for playing what one would like to play. I guess some just get lucky or have natural predeveloped skills.

You need to start with the "Form" ... There is space that you fill... anyway one chooses. Better soloists know how to develop forms to help enhance what they are playing using Targets etc...

But space, rhythmic patterns... any use of how one rhythmically fills that space within the tune and sections of the tune which reflect the tune is one of the basic musical tools which to perform etc...

Yea accents and articulations work ...... the point is, it is not every now and then. Just like one plays notes etc... that reflect or have a Melodic and Harmonic Relationship with the tune... or something. Rhythm, rhythmic patterns, and rhythmic targets also have relationships with the tune.... and are a powerful musical tool to help raise the musical level of your playing.

Personally, I still believe the most important tool one must work with.

[MarkRhodes]

Personally, I still believe the most important tool one must work with.

I understand Reg to be talking about what (to my ears) Barney Kessel is doing at several points in this take on "Indiana." (It's my favorite one by any guitar player.)

[RLetson]

That video echoes just about everything I've observed while watching teachers and workshop leaders for the last 25 years. I spent a few terms sitting in on a university jazz band class taught by a gigging reed player (with a Duquesne degree) who was working on, among other things, getting the students "off the page" and comfortable with improvisation. He pointed out that the layout of the saxophone invites strings of fast notes, but that it's not necessary to fill all the available space that way. I've seen guitar teachers take a similar approach.

Interestingly, I've also observed audiences respond to fast-flashy playing that I recognize as 1) not all that difficult for an experienced player and 2) not all that interesting musically. Myself, I find Basie's spare approach even more compelling than a fingerbusting, fill-all-available-space performance. But tastes vary, and there's nothing wrong with the occasional bust-out--contrast is as much an artistic resource as anything else.

[Reg]

That video echoes just about everything I've observed while watching teachers and workshop leaders for the last 25 years. I spent a few terms sitting in on a university jazz band class taught by a gigging reed player (with a Duquesne degree) who was working on, among other things, getting the students "off the page" and comfortable with improvisation. He pointed out that the layout of the saxophone invites strings of fast notes, but that it's not necessary to fill all the available space that way. I've seen guitar teachers take a similar approach.

Interestingly, I've also observed audiences respond to fast-flashy playing that I recognize as 1) not all that difficult for an experienced player and 2) not all that interesting musically. Myself, I find Basie's spare approach even more compelling than a fingerbusting, fill-all-available-space performance. But tastes vary, and there's nothing wrong with the occasional bust-out--contrast is as much an artistic resource as anything else.

So are you calling fast playing ..."Flashy" and not worth the time because anyone with experience can cover it. And not musical etc.. and only acceptable when used sparingly.

[RLetson]

No--I'm just pointing out that there's a kind of uptempo playing that is not as difficult as non-players think. And, to be sure, not all of it is necessarily very interesting musically. I come out of the folky-fingerstyle world, and I long ago noticed how audiences responded to passages that I recognized as not-as-hard-as-they-sound. And I also recognized slow and carefully articulated passages that I knew from experience to be quite demanding but that drew no whoops or bursts of applause.

I'm not offering any oughts or musts or don't-evers--maybe at most a not-necessarily or a skepticism about just-because-you-can. (Art, I have been told, is what you can get away with.)

[Ukena]

[...](Art, I have been told, is what you can get away with.)

And yet, as artists, we can be saved by what the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead calls style:

"Finally, there should grow the most austere of all mental qualities; I mean the sense for style. It is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration for the direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste. Style in art, style in literature, style in science, style in logic, style in practical execution have fundamentally the same aesthetic qualities, namely, attainment and restraint. The love of a subject in itself and for itself, where it is not the sleepy pleasure of pacing a mental quarter-deck, is the love of style as manifested in that study.

Here we are brought back to the position from which we started, the utility of education. Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style economises his material; the artisan with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind."

[Reg]

Yea... that was beautifully put. And obviously not for beginners... but it is cool to have a recognizable style of performing. Which leads to... what does one want to achieve with their playing, or where is it going.

Who has the time...LOL

hey RLetson.... you have some interesting views. I'm only saying this because it just doesn't make sense personally. Not that that means anything. But we are talking about Jazz right?

[Slapthatplank]

watching that vid almost makes me want to pick up a sax again. But I barely have time to practice guitar, and I've been wanting to get better at piano too. I just need to quit my job and become a professional amateur musician.

[RLetson]

Reg--Jazz is just another art, and tastes vary, which is why there's more than one artist, more than one style. My late father thought that Kenny G was a terrific jazz artist. Me, not so much. Dad wasn't wrong--he just wasn't me. (I'm a Zoot Sims/Paul Desmond/Ben Webster guy, whatever that winds up meaning.)

My initial post had to do with what I've seen teachers do to get students comfortable with soloing and improvising, and much of that had to do with breaking down some attitudes and assumptions about what might constitute an interesting and satisfying solo. Among young men in particular, there's a tendency to equate loud/fast/complicated with interesting, and the teachers I resonated with encouraged exploration of other variables--notably the uses of space and placement. This was particularly good for students who were either actually technically limited or who were uncertain about their chops. And I think the teachers who suggested not giving in to the temptation to fill up all the space with notes were addressing a real artistic-technical issue with young-guy playing. Speed/facility is a tool, not a rule. (Not that art has a lot of rules, beyond "Don't stink up the room.")

[GuyBoden]

What is Improvisation?

[RLetson]

It's annoying that he starts from such a straw-mannish position--no instructor in my hearing ever claimed or implied that improvisation is "just making stuff up." I'm not conventionally trained in matters musical, but I learned the first part of this (what improv ain't) years ago in various workshops. So that "you were lied to" stuff is marketing clickbait.

And as a one-time English teacher and still-a-writer, I can assure everyone that his language example of "making stuff up" is not quite apt--when we improvise linguistically (which we do constantly in ordinary conversation), we fit together semantically appropriate words in frameworks determined by the rules of grammar and the various sociolinguistic usage/decorum systems that constitute style. (There also may be non-trivial distinctions between how and when we acquire language and musical skills, but that's a question for the developmental psychologists.)

On the other hand, he's not wrong about how any body of skills (musical or linguistic) are acquired (imitation and repetition) or about the existence of families of conventions, traditions*, styles, and the expectations of audiences and the need to fit one's improvisational novelties into a framework of those expectations.

* A tradition is a set of received conventions. Conventions are sets of practices that are linked by agreements (explicit or tacit) between practitioners and audiences--that is, by expectations. In the course of performance/creation, expectations can be satisfied, extended, inverted, denied, and generally messed with. Note my use of the aesthetics term-of-art, "messed with." But I wax taxonomic, so I'll let Roth wax the dean for a while.

[GuyBoden]

It's annoying that he starts from such a straw-mannish position--no instructor in my hearing ever claimed or implied that improvisation is "just making stuff up." I'm not conventionally trained in matters musical, but I learned the first part of this (what improv ain't) years ago in various workshops. So that "you were lied to" stuff is marketing clickbait.

And as a one-time English teacher and still-a-writer, I can assure everyone that his language example of "making stuff up" is not quite apt--when we improvise linguistically (which we do constantly in ordinary conversation), we fit together semantically appropriate words in frameworks determined by the rules of grammar and the various sociolinguistic usage/decorum systems that constitute style. (There also may be non-trivial distinctions between how and when we acquire language and musical skills, but that's a question for the developmental psychologists.)

On the other hand, he's not wrong about how any body of skills (musical or linguistic) are acquired (imitation and repetition) or about the existence of families of conventions, traditions*, styles, and the expectations of audiences and the need to fit one's improvisational novelties into a framework of those expectations.

* A tradition is a set of received conventions. Conventions are sets of practices that are linked by agreements (explicit or tacit) between practitioners and audiences--that is, by expectations. In the course of performance/creation, expectations can be satisfied, extended, inverted, denied, and generally messed with. Note my use of the aesthetics term-of-art, "messed with." But I wax taxonomic, so I'll let Roth wax the dean for a while.

It's in the beginners section of the forum, so it's for beginners.

[Reg]

Reg--Jazz is just another art, and tastes vary, which is why there's more than one artist, more than one style. My late father thought that Kenny G was a terrific jazz artist. Me, not so much. Dad wasn't wrong--he just wasn't me. (I'm a Zoot Sims/Paul Desmond/Ben Webster guy, whatever that winds up meaning.)

My initial post had to do with what I've seen teachers do to get students comfortable with soloing and improvising, and much of that had to do with breaking down some attitudes and assumptions about what might constitute an interesting and satisfying solo. Among young men in particular, there's a tendency to equate loud/fast/complicated with interesting, and the teachers I resonated with encouraged exploration of other variables--notably the uses of space and placement. This was particularly good for students who were either actually technically limited or who were uncertain about their chops. And I think the teachers who suggested not giving in to the temptation to fill up all the space with notes were addressing a real artistic-technical issue with young-guy playing. Speed/facility is a tool, not a rule. (Not that art has a lot of rules, beyond "Don't stink up the room.")

Thanks.. again I'm just another musician.... but playing slow and leaving spaced requires much more technical skills.
Like ballads etc... the tempo of Jazz is still there. We are always subdividing.... that's what helps create the feels, styles and all the good stuff... I'm now thinking... that's what you were writing about.


There really isn't a beginner section with Jazz. I guess that why there so many examples and discussions about play just tunes... as compared actually playing in a jazz style.

[GuyBoden]

Learn 'Groovin High'

For Beginners, process for learning Jazz Standard melodies by ear.

Good beginner video on learning the 'Groovin High' melody step by step by ear. For Beginners.