How to get to real improvisation?

[alltunes]

Unfortunately, the answer may be you’re not inclined to be an improviser. I’ve been able to improvise and move my fingers around pretty well on a fingerboard almost within a year of starting to play. Whether it’s good or not is a different story :-) but I found that some people just don’t have the imagination to even think of something they want to play. First step is to invent something in your head and hum it, sing it, and then execute it on the guitar.

[joe2758]

Unfortunately, the answer may be you’re not inclined to be an improviser. I’ve been able to improvise and move my fingers around pretty well on a fingerboard almost within a year of starting to play. Whether it’s good or not is a different story :-) but I found that some people just don’t have the imagination to even think of something they want to play. First step is to invent something in your head and hum it, sing it, and then execute it on the guitar.

What in the WORLD?

[WannaBePlaya]

Thanks everyone for all of the input. I can't possibly respond to all of the questions and suggestions in one post. I'm not sure I could respond to them individually either, but let me add some things here.

First, I hear a lot of suggestions around connecting my ear to the theory. That was my instinct as well and it makes sense. It really does seem impossible to be thinking about theory if you're trying to respond aesthetically and emotionally to a piece of music.

It might help to clarify where I am a little further. When I say I can improvise in my head or singing, I primarily mean that I can sing improvised lines when I'm in the car listening to music. I will make mistakes if I try to jump to something too far out, but I do have an ear for music after all of the practice I've done. It's not difficult to work out melodies or solos on the guitar. I can read and write music. My command of rhythm notation isn't great, but it's easy to find the notes and transcribe them. If I loop a 2 5 1 progression or a blues, I can play in a musical sounding manner as long as I'm not thinking about changing keys or scales. Blues scale over a blues quickly gets boring, as does a major scale and arpeggios over a 2 5 1, so I want to be able to do more. I haven't recorded myself, but if I did, there would be some missed notes for sure, and the improvisation would not be structured in a formal way. I wouldn't be thinking about harmonic movement because I'm avoiding it.

I actually do like jazz. I don't think I'd be trying to learn to play if I didn't really respond to the music. I don't love all of jazz, but I've listened to it since I was in my 20s. I just turned 70 btw. I particularly enjoy bossa nova for some reason and I love Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery. There are many others I hear but I can't give you names for all of them. I've listened to and owned records by many of the greats when I was younger. Coltrane in his melodic mode is a favorite. I love Johnny Hartman with Coltrane. All Blues is a favorite recording and I've just recently begun transcribing Miles solos on it. I love how simple his initial choruses are and yet how cool they sound. I haven't gotten to the more complex choruses yet. I think it's no accident I am drawn to the modal sound with it's less complex (or at least less quickly changing ) harmonic underpinnings.

I have done a little with chromatics and it sounds great to me. It just feels like jazz, which I love. I'm experimenting with leading notes, some more extended chromatic passages, combining them with arpeggios and scales passages. I'm improvising phrases at this point, not extended playing.

I try to learn some songs I enjoy, but I don't get much further than playing the chords. I'm working on Corcovado, Take Five, and All Blues right now. I work on an occasional chord solo as well, but they never seem to sound great. All the repetition required tends to kill the pleasure for me. I am now trying to stay with these longer so that I get more fluent and can focus on expression. I actually only rarely improvise because I'm trying to establish basic stuff like moving between the arpeggios over the progression or targeting the third of the chord. As I do that I can just feel that it won't lead to creative expression.

A goal for me is to be able to play the chords to a song I enjoy and improvise along the way. It's okay to loop the chords and play over them, but I really want to be able to accompany myself and play free form. I don't play with other musicians. I am not interested in performing. I just want to enjoy myself responding creatively to music I enjoy. I can see a little opening to doing that by playing rootless shells and improvising some melody on top with my free fingers, but I haven't really begun working on that yet. I think this might be a good place to start as it combines the harmony with improvisation without my having to think about patterns.

I can see that I am drawn to trying to learn too much before just making a little music. As soon as I think about improvising over small chords, I start working on triad and 7th chord inversions all over the neck and get bogged down in that.

I feel like I'm wasting your time here. I need a simple place to start. I can see that the moment I have to think about chord changes, it completely stops me responding creatively. It's like my mind can only do one at a time.

Anyway, thanks for all of your input. Maybe just writing all of this stuff down is helping me identify what I'm doing wrong and maybe a better place to start.

[Tal_175]

It's easy to overestimate one's fretboard skills.

Student: I've been studying jazz for a couple of decades. I’ve spent years practicing scales and arpeggios, but I still struggle with improvising in 8th notes.

Teacher: Let's pick a tune you know well. Play the scale up to the seventh over each chord. It's OK if you think the parent scale, just start the scale from the root of each chord.

Student picks a tune. They set the metronome to a moderate tempo (say 120). The half the form goes by before the student locates the first scale.

Teacher: Forget scales. Let's try chord tones. Play 5 3 1 7 over each chord. Metronome clicks in. By the third chord the student gives up.

Teacher: Let's simplify further. Just play the 3-2-1-3 pattern over each chord.

Again the student is still searching for the first chord's pattern when the tune has moved on.

Teacher: Why don't we set a super slow tempo like 80 and just play the thirds on beat one.

Still, by the second chord, the student misses the downbeat, lost in the hunt for the right note.

I've been in this situation myself.

These kinds of exercises are revealing. They expose whether scale and arpeggio practice has truly translated into functional fretboard fluency in a real jazz improvisation context.

[djg]

Don't condemn a beginner dude. That's pretty arbitrary.

OP said: "I'd really like to know how those of you who have accomplished it got there."

[alltunes]

What in the WORLD?

Too matter of fact? Not helpful? OK target the thirds and sevenths throw some blues in there

[joe2758]

A goal for me is to be able to play the chords to a song I enjoy and improvise along the way. It's okay to loop the chords and play over them, but I really want to be able to accompany myself and play free form. I don't play with other musicians. I am not interested in performing. I just want to enjoy myself responding creatively to music I enjoy.
.

keep that in mind when selecting the advice you take because there a lot of things that will be recommended that aren't applicable to your goal. Things like "Learn everything in multiple keys" or "or learn everything in all positions" etc I wouldn't be surprised if someone said "play with other musicians and perform"

[Strat-itis]

I feel like I'm wasting your time here.

You're not wasting anyone's time. This is what the forum is for. The problem is that people get all uppity and think they need to automatically criticize or condemn a harmless student to pose themselves as superior.

I need a simple place to start.

Based on your background, you should just get a teacher. You have a background listening to some jazz and you connect with it. You have basic knowledge of your instrument with probably some intermediate concepts worked out too. A teacher will help you tie all of this together and get you on a cohesive program that advances you in playing actual music. Then you can get better at picking up knowledge in other places like here. The problem is that the watered down jazz pedagogy of stick scale on chord is completely false. You need an accurate, holistic, musical approach, not just stick scale on chord like pop jazz mechanics says. I recommend Open Studio. If you pay for a year up front, it's $45 a month which is less than a single lesson with a private teacher. In OS there are 11 teachers.

[djg]

When I say I can improvise in my head or singing, I primarily mean that I can sing improvised lines when I'm in the car listening to music. I

people often claim this and i've found that it is usually not true. if it were, you could simply teach yourself the lines out of thin air. the concept is valid of course, aka the tristano school. it's just that it is no different than figuring out the lines on the instrument. i.e. you have to work/listen obsessively to make it happen.

jazz music is folk music. it must be learned as such. i think there must be an (unhealthy) obsession with the actual music if you want to play real jazz even badly. most are not that obsessed (and probably better off).

[grahambop]

I'd really like to know how those of you who have accomplished it got there.

When I got into jazz (age 20 or so) I already knew the basic scales and arpeggios because I’d had classical guitar lessons all the time I was at school. Also I didn’t have much spare time. So I didn’t see the point in drilling scales etc., it wasn’t what I heard on the jazz records (I could hear wonderfully flowing melodic ideas, and I wanted to play like that).

So I just learned a bunch of tunes by ear, and I figured out some solos by Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Dexter Gordon etc. (by playing them on a reel-to-reel tape deck at half speed - remember this was before the internet, computers etc!). This was enough to give me plenty of ideas and vocabulary to work with, I just kept applying those ideas to other tunes, adapting them to different chord changes etc. Eventually I wound up with some kind of ability to create my own solos on quite a few tunes (I also developed a pretty good ear from all that figuring stuff out).

I only had one book, the Joe Pass Chord Book, so that’s how I learned the common jazz guitar chord forms.

Later I did start learning more theory to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, but that was of secondary importance to me. Just trying to play the stuff like I heard my jazz heroes play it on the records was my top priority.

For me, just learning to play great phrases by people like Wes, Joe, Bird etc. was great fun, I loved doing it. I think if I’d spent hours just on scales and arps I would have got bored and given up.

Of course this was just my approach, whether it would work for everyone I don’t know.

[Christian Miller]

I find the OP’s question hard to answer because I’m not sure I’m a ‘real improviser’ or what that means. What I have done is learned to play jazz, and I’m still primarily interested in doing that.

There’s a conflation in people’s minds between playing jazz and improvising, and improvising and making stuff up completely fresh each time.

These things overlap a little but they are not the same. The vast majority of players are not inventing things completely tabula rasa each time they play a solo on a jazz gig. We are to a large extent calling on a repertoire of things we know incredibly well and applying to the situation at hand. Moments of true improvisation - where we play something we haven’t played before - do happen, but these are less common. OTOH you can become very skilled at spinning things out, embellishing simple material and combining elements in new ways.

Aside from free and so called ‘non idiomatic’ improvisation we learn to improvise in a musical style - and you can improvise in any idiom. Jazz is simply the best known as having an improvised tradition within it.

But it could be Blues, Rock, Turkish music, Persian music, Hindustani music, even European classical. All have improvisation traditions separate from jazz.

In order to improvise in an idiom or genre you do that you have to learn the idiom or genre really well, which is about learning music, just in a less linear way to the way you would learn a written piece. I actually think improvisation and composition is a fantastic way to get into written music and vice versa.

I’ve learned by learning music by ear, and then stealing, repurposing and developing things I like.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tal_175]

So I just learned a bunch of tunes by ear, and I figured out some solos by Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Dexter Gordon etc. (by playing them on a reel-to-reel tape deck at half speed - remember this was before the internet, computers etc!). This was enough to give me plenty of ideas and vocabulary to work with, I just kept applying those ideas to other tunes, adapting them to different chord changes etc. Eventually I wound up with some kind of ability to create my own solos on quite a few tunes (I also developed a pretty good ear from all that figuring stuff out).

Did you group your vocabulary into different chord clusters like tonic minor licks, altered dominant licks, half diminished licks etc. or did you just collect phrases and applied them to different chords differently? I tend to do the latter. I find that the lines flow more naturally this way than when stringing together licks dedicated to specific chords.

[joe2758]

I find the OP’s question hard to answer because I’m not sure I’m a ‘real improviser’ or what that means.

It looks like he wants to play standards in a solo/self-comping style in a non-performer scenario

edit: op I don't mean to speak for you, but that is a good example of a clear goal people here can help you better with

[paulkogut]

I got some good advice from John Abercrombie. He said he got tired of being a 'jazz-rock wildman" and wanted to get back to playing more standard tunes. He found it productive to play 'melodic bass lines', half notes, then quarter notes, simple melodies through the forms of tunes.

There's an instructional video he made that pops up on Youtube from time to time that has some good examples of this. He's playing a Sadowsky tele and accompanied by John Basile. Worth checking out...


PK

[grahambop]

Did you group your vocabulary into different chord clusters like tonic minor licks, altered dominant licks, half diminished licks etc. or did you just collect phrases and applied them to different chords differently? I tend to do the latter. I find that the lines flow more naturally this way than when stringing together licks dedicated to specific chords.

That’s a good question but I'm not sure I can remember now! I can remember very early on learning some mysterious phrases Wes played during a blues, and only finding out much later they were outlining an ‘altered dominant’ (I had not come across this expression in my classical guitar studies, or my teenage rock/blues guitar phase). So to begin with I probably learned to use those ideas at that specific point in a blues, for example.

But I can remember adapting major ideas to minor, and vice-versa. So it was probably a bit of both.

[grahambop]

I got some good advice from John Abercrombie. He said he got tired of being a 'jazz-rock wildman" and wanted to get back to playing more standard tunes. He found it productive to play 'melodic bass lines', half notes, then quarter notes, simple melodies through the forms of tunes.

There's an instructional video he made that pops up on Youtube from time to time that has some good examples of this. He's playing a Sadowsky tele and accompanied by John Basile. Worth checking out...


PK

Yes that is a good video, I got it as a digital download recently from Mel Bay or somewhere like that. Quite a few of those old instructional videos are becoming available in that format now, often in better quality than the original VHS.

[emanresu]

Heh. The OP was as close to my own experience as it could get. But I went for "all by ear" - absolutely completely doable.
No problem at all - just that it will take a lot of time. And tolerance for many, many mistakes at first and stumbling for ages...
But completely doable.

There is a pitfall - since it takes such a humongous amount of hours to practice "all by ear", it will numb out the playing completely.
So, kinda have to let go once again, gain some reason back, get fresh again etc. That also takes a long time.
Don't have any magical words here though.. I dislike my own playing still - but got some nice runs among the crappy ones.
But I feel that it is more likely to be some mental issue - hard to switch to the proper "mode" whenever needed.

Dunno if it is worth it like this. I was doing it out of curiosity or obsession. So, it was ok for me. Cannot suggest "all by ear" but neither unsuggest.

[Strat-itis]

jazz music is folk music. it must be learned as such.

Jazz is not folk music, it is art music. It has some folk roots, but also some structured, codified roots. Jazz's folk side came from blues and African rhythms, its codified side came from classical and gospel.

[alltunes]

To the OP I started this thread a while ago because I’m interested in exactly the same thing that you are (solo jazz self comping) don’t know if this is any help but here it is:

Solo Jazz Guitar Technique - comping for yourself etc..

as in any style, ultimately, I believe it’s in getting an arsenal of tools, tricks and licks

[WannaBePlaya]

I just sat down and played for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I say "played" rather than "practiced" because I didn't play any scales or arpeggios or other exercises. I thought I'd test whether I can really improvise over a progression without any reference to a lead sheet or any other information. I recorded a loop of the chords to Corcovado played rubato and then just played over it. They're not simple chords. Many are standard, but there are altered chords and other things that are not that easy to adapt to in real time.

I had more fun than I've probably had playing in a while. Yes, I can actually play musically. I will miss notes of course, considering I'm not tracking the progression in my head, just playing by ear. There is a sense of direction to the lines. I'm not just randomly moving up and down a scale. It felt wonderful just to be musical.

So what's missing from this? Well, I can't play arpeggio ideas much because it's hard to find them instinctively and of course I have no idea what chord I'm playing over! I could slip in some chromatics, but they're pretty random sounding since I have no idea where I am in the scale or harmony other than which direction I want to go and where I want to play with tension and when to resolve. I'm also unable to target a note in an upcoming chord, since I don't know what's coming. And of course I miss notes since I'm responding intuitively to the harmony as it comes without knowing what's coming.

So clearly there is a need for theory or at least an understanding of the progression and form. The ability to use more complex figures like arpeggios, chromatics, enclosures, octave displacements, etc. all depend on at least knowing what the chord is.

So I keep returning to that sticking point. How can I track the progression and use practiced shapes and devices while keeping that intuitive response to the music? I don't seem to be able to do that. The moment my mind is on what the next chord is and where the root or fingering of the arpeggio is or where the third is or whatever, all contact with the music is gone.

I ran across a video yesterday when I was looking into online instructional stuff. It's Marc Andre Seguin, Jazz Guitar Lessons.net. I've actually spent some time with his program over the years. He had a video on a very simple way to begin improvising while making the changes over a progression. He suggested starting with just playing the third of each chord on the first beat of the measure. Then he wants you to make a simple approach to the third in the beat or two prior to the new chord. Could be as simple as a single note above the third, or a scalar progression of a few notes. Then, of course, you can complicate things from there.

I like that you could start with very simple ideas. It seems like it would be easy to track the progression and you wouldn't need to think too hard about longer phrases initially. I can envision this leading to adding arpeggio and chromatic ideas that make it sound a little jazzier without getting overwhelmed.

Does anyone have suggestions for a way to progress from simple ideas to a richer vocabulary while retaining a connection with your musical instincts?

[alltunes]

check out Tim Lerch’s True Fire course “Solo Jazz Pathways”

[starjasmine]

Does anyone have suggestions for a way to progress from simple ideas to a richer vocabulary while retaining a connection with your musical instincts?

Learn the melody and then embellish it. Add little fills. Experiment with changing one or two notes here and there. As you get more confident, work with more elaborate ideas, like replacing one bar of melody with some notes that you take from an appropriate scale or arpeggio.

How can I track the progression and use practiced shapes and devices while keeping that intuitive response to the music? I don't seem to be able to do that. The moment my mind is on what the next chord is and where the root or fingering of the arpeggio is or where the third is or whatever, all contact with the music is gone.

Don't be discouraged... This is something EVERYONE goes through! There are a few steps to getting past this:
- Keep working on learning those shapes so well that you don't have to think about them. If you have to think, the chords you were trying to improvise over are gone by the time you are ready to execute your idea.
- At risk of repeating myself, learn your theory IN SOUND. For me, taking harmony classes at a community college was the low-cost, effective answer. The teacher played EVERY theoretical example on the keyboard, so it wasn't just dots on a page or some weird-sounding name like "Mixolydian mode." We learned the SOUNDS of those dots, modes, chord substitutions, etc. If you don't know what something sounds like, it's impossible to connect your theoretical knowledge to your ears. We learned to identify intervals, chord qualities, bass notes (i.e. inversions of chords), common progressions and song form.
- Practice keeping your place in a tune as an isolated task, separate from actually playing it. Listen to songs while consciously asking yourself what you are hearing: what chord is this? what scale degree is the melody note in relation to the chord? Where am I in the progression? where am I in the overall form of the tune? what's coming up next? One way to do this by yourself is to listen to songs and follow along with the chart. Another valuable exercise is to stop playback at random points and ask yourself those questions.
- Practice with an ensemble, either musicians at your same level (so you can all help each other) or musicians who are more skilled than you are (whenever you can.) When the soloist or the band gets lost, stop and determine what went wrong. Recording the practice session is a great way to identify what actually went wrong, because "the tape doesn't lie." It is very common for other people to lose their place when one does ... then the errors cascade throughout the band, causing a train wreck. Your end goal is to know the song and the skills required to play it so well that you keep your place and play correctly even if the entire rest of the band trainwrecks.

[rpjazzguitar]

Play the chords and scat sing.

When you get something you like, put it on the guitar.

Or, play to a backing track by scat singing and playing what you sing, right then.

If you can't scat sing anything you like then you have some ear-training and vocabulary building to do, which is another thread.

[pauln]

I just sat down and played for an hour, maybe an hour and a half...

This thread's value to you is really incumbent on a recording of your playing.

[grahambop]

Bear in mind that most jazz standards contain many ‘chunks’ of common chord progressions, the most common probably being ii-V-I for example. If you can develop some vocabulary for these ‘chunks’ and learn to recognise them where they occur, then it helps reduce the amount of the ‘chord-by-chord’ approach. And you can transpose this vocabulary around the guitar quite easily to cover the same ‘chunks’ in different tunes and keys. I certainly found this a very useful approach quite early on.

A tune like Autumn Leaves (for example) consists of little more than 2 such ‘chunks’, repeated a few times.