Real improvisation

[Christian Miller]

Dance and movement thinks a lot about embodiment.
A lot of practice is just about one's physicality to the instrument. It doesn't mean you're learning patterns that you will then regurgitate. It more means that you build and maintain a physical sense of what you can and can't do on the instrument. The end goal is that the physicality will become invisible, and what comes out is music and not impressive finger stunts.
Does anyone else feel off if they don't play an instrument for a few days? It can really affect me. When I travel I always bring something to make music on, just to keep that mind-to-sound channel open.

Sometimes I play better lol.

[pauln]

Some players are more creative than others.

Yeah, the most obvious and primary thing we notice about musicians, but may be the least understood, where it comes from, how you get it, how you develop it, what are its practical bounds, potential possibilities...

[lawson-stone]

Some stuff snipped

Many people seem to see 'advanced' playing as a sort of divorce from these basic processes and while I can certainly see the value in particular saying 'no' to things that are automatic and glib and seeing what else may emerge there's an aspect to this which I feel can be misunderstood. We are still always grounded in this physical connection. Out society tends to devalue intuitive tacit knowledge and venerate academic explicit knowledge even in something a hands-on and experience based as improvised music, which I think is a profound mistake.

Have you read Michael Polanyi on tacit knowing?

[emanresu]

Yeah, the most obvious and primary thing we notice about musicians, but may be the least understood, where it comes from, how you get it, how you develop it, what are its practical bounds, potential possibilities...

I can figure out most of it, how to get to play a working solo. Plenty of different things to do, different angles, sounds, aspects.
Yet I have no bloody clue when it went really really well... and why did it happen. How to recreate that. Dunno even if it is possible to figure out.

All I got so far is that yeah, focus on music or musical meaning (whatever that is) and it probably will work fine. The tricky part is that the focus has to come from somewhere. That part in the mind - dunno how to switch to that "right" place.
I know when it is the "wrong" part of the mind pretty clearly.

Oh sad.

[Tal_175]

I don't want to change the direction of this discussion but I feel like asking another question to those who are convinced that "TRUE IMPROVISATION" exists: do pianists and guitarists improvise chords?
Do you think it is possible to play a chord with a "new" fingering that has never been studied BEFORE playing it on stage?

Ettore

I see your point but that depends on how you work on harmony on the instrument. I see chord voicings as categories as much as grips. That allows me to sometimes play a voicing I have never played before on the fly. Those who work a lot on the borrowing notions within the 6th diminished scales of Barry Harris can certainly create voicings on the fly. That's the same notion as categories which comes from big band arranging. But that still requires building a certain fluency with practice. You gain the flexibility to arrange new chord voicings within the limitations of the framework.

[RLetson]

"Muscle memory" is probably a metaphor for whatever neuromuscular processes allow us to perform various activities without "thinking"--that is, without consciously and deliberately directing the body to execute. And the limits of what the body can execute is certainy bound up with how much it has already "practiced" a given repertory of behaviors. Dancing certainly seems to work this way. I didn't social-dance between high school and age 51, but at a music-and-dance camp the box-step-based foxtrot my mother taught me around age 13 came back to me without any conscious effort. (I never "got" her lindy-hop steps, so I still sit out those tunes--and nobody does the dances of my late high school years any more--the Twist or the Frug--at least not in public.)

I've had similar experiences in my guitar playing, though they tend to be of the "who's moving those fingers?" variety. And, like my dance experience, these moments reflect behaviors that I've acquired and repeated over a long period. They happen more often in the folk-country mode that I spent the longest time in, but after 24 years of playing standards and swing tunes, my hands seem to know their way around a lot of those conventions, even when I'm learning a new-to-me tune from a Real Book chart, even in B-flat.

[Christian Miller]

Have you read Michael Polanyi on tacit knowing?

Well I'm familiar with the gist of his ideas, but I wouldn't say I've read him. I should!

[wolflen]

People get really snotty about muscle memory


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

ahh..thats mucus memory...

[princeplanet]

...

Right I’m off to get grumpy about people saying ‘begs the question’ when they mean ‘raises the question.’ Grrrrrr

Grrrrr indeed. FWIW, I prefer "prompts the question"...

[Tal_175]

Scott Henderson said on his podcast something along the lines of "You should pick your vocabulary carefully because you'll be stuck with them for a long time whether you like it or not." He had hard time getting rid of some of the habitual lines he didn't like. So hey still come up in his playing occasionally.

[Tal_175]

One of the most underrated improvisation resources IMO is Sid Jacob's "Book of Jazz Guitar Lines and Phrases". He shows about nine pages of very idiomatic short jazz line segments. Then he gives examples of how you connect them to create longer lines in various harmonic contexts. The purpose of course is for the student to learn some of those idioms and work on creating lines in the context of the tunes they know until they get fluent with them.

[lawson-stone]

Well I'm familiar with the gist of his ideas, but I wouldn't say I've read him. I should!

I think you'd find his work really reinforces some of the things you've mentioned. His books The Tacit Dimension and Personal Knowledge was really significant for my thinking on a boatload of issues from religion to relationships to language to music.

[lawson-stone]

Grrrrr indeed. FWIW, I prefer "prompts the question"...

Oooh the misuse of "begs the question" is one of my major pet peeves!

[Christian Miller]

ahh..thats mucus memory...

Well done. You win JGO for today.

[pauln]

Improvisation... I'm going to attempt explanation of how I do it, with the alert that I may not be doing it right, or that my grasp of how I do it may be incorrect. I am mainly saying that a certain kind of intuitive rigorous randomness of selection and sequence allowed or injected below the level of which I navigate a tune is how it feels to me.

When I perform a tune, there are dimensions and sub-dimensions that form a branching structure within which I make some choices up front. Those choices are informed by where I'm playing, who I'm playing for, the tune I'm playing, and with whom I'm performing it. These general parameters represent:

- "jazz house" venue vs "general music" place
- "jazz crowd" vs "general music crowd"
- period tune, popular tune, original tune
- my trio or another band where I'm sitting in

All of that comprises a primary dimension "Approach" which has three sub-dimensions:
Truth (authenticity)
Goodness (appropriateness)
Beauty (allure)

Somewhat connected to the Approach is a secondary dimension "Mechanics" which has sub-dimensions:
Position vs Movement
Internal vs External target vectors
Selection/Sequence Randomness

Authenticity is a nod toward the original way the tune was performed, or may be toward a particularly popular version that "made" the tune.
Appropriateness is matching the tunes manifestation to the current audience .
Allure is basically how lush or mesmerizing to do the tune.
All three elements' weighting is based on the present context (the tune and crowd) and environment (the place and band).

"Mechanics" is guided by the "Approach" to provide the right execution.
Position vs movement (including using a single string) means, I may play the melody line for Blue Bossa or Cheek to Cheek on a single string because it expresses a sense I want for the Approach.
Targeting internal vs external vectors means deciding the locus of the beginning and ending of phrases with respect to the chord or chord change or chord sequence.
Selection and sequence randomness is right in the heart of how I improvise. All my feeling of execution when improvising are at a level or two above the level of individual note selection and sequence. At the lowest level, I never "hard code" the absolute selection nor the absolute sequence of notes. The most I do is chose at the phrase level; the starting note of a phrase with the final target in mind. Between those, my experience, musical intuition, and my "muscle melody" make the path. My hands themselves have acquired a great deal of freedom and internal musical intelligence selecting and sequencing the notes of a phrase.
Playing straight, e.g., to approach "authentic", I chose at the lowest level with the selection/sequence randomness dialed down or turned off; other constraints of approach and corresponding mechanics apply to other situations too numerous to expound.
I hope some reading this recognize what I'm trying to explain in their own playing.

[charlieparker]

I believe this has been posted before, but here is an interview with Chick Corea on improvisation. He seems to be advocating that improvisation is often involves taking previous melodic fragments/patterns that you know work over a song and then making decisions how to combine and alter them.

Chick Corea on Improvisation - The Steel Guitar Forum

Also, he demonstrates some exercises here for improvisation,

[wolflen]

Improvisation... I'm going to attempt explanation of how I do it, with the alert that I may not be doing it right, or that my grasp of how I do it may be incorrect. I am mainly saying that a certain kind of intuitive rigorous randomness of selection and sequence allowed or injected below the level of which I navigate a tune is how it feels to me. .

Thanks for your insight on your approach to this mysterious process.

The right /wrong way in an over view of the process is paradoxical to me..one could hear the same attempt and say it is very creative and upon a second hearing
say it is god-awful. So there is that aspect..the same holds true for the musician..how they feel about what they just played..did it convey what they were trying
to say..even though the performance was pristine..the musician did not feel it was the best they could have played.

To me it is a combination of many moving parts meshing in a synchronized melody/harmony/rhythmic interpretation of a well known tune or
a composition just created.

And then there is the aspect of the "in the zone" .. to many this is the outcome of years of practice and performance
and the almost mystical feeling that you can fly.

[equenda]

Much of what I read in this thread is interesting and useful.
It's normal for some to believe that it's possible to really "improvise" without playing what you've rehearsed/studied/copied before.
It is also true that many believe that man never went to the moon (5 times).
And other people believe that the earth is flat.

However I remember a workshop with Joe Diorio, an Artist and an extraordinary Man who I miss very much.
In 1995 I understood English even less than I do now but Joe said something similar to this:
"If you really want to improvise, take your guitar and change the tuning of all the strings...no more EADGBE but something different. Then play. You will definitely be improvising because everything you studied...will no longer work."

Ettore

My website

[emanresu]

Much of what I read in this thread is interesting and useful.
It's normal for some to believe that it's possible to really "improvise" without playing what you've rehearsed/studied/copied before.
It is also true that many believe that man never went to the moon (5 times).
And other people believe that the earth is flat.

Dunno. A bit strange way to express an opinion.

[lawson-stone]

Much of what I read in this thread is interesting and useful.
It's normal for some to believe that it's possible to really "improvise" without playing what you've rehearsed/studied/copied before.
It is also true that many believe that man never went to the moon (5 times).
And other people believe that the earth is flat.

However I remember a workshop with Joe Diorio, an Artist and an extraordinary Man who I miss very much.
In 1995 I understood English even less than I do now but Joe said something similar to this:
"If you really want to improvise, take your guitar and change the tuning of all the strings...no more EADGBE but something different. Then play. You will definitely be improvising because everything you studied...will no longer work."

Ettore

My website

Actually I think we have maybe one or two flat earthers on this forum. But I think they swing hard and play well.

[emanresu]

All the proof of the Earth being round comes from TV and the Internet!

edit: I'm not the one that swings hard and plays good.