The three-legs of improvisation

[Rsilver]

It seems to me that the ability to perform improvisation rests on a three-legged stool where the legs are (1) musical imagination, (2) physical technique, and (3) good ears. Your imagination produces musical ideas “in the moment,” your ears translate the ideas to “places on the guitar neck,” and your technique supports execution of the ideas.

With this model in mind, you could design practice routines to learn a new “theoretical” concept, for example how a pair of particular triads relates to some chord type. By performing well-designed exercises around the new concept, you are building up physical technique and feeding your imagination with new sounds. Sometimes you may just want to focus on one leg of the stool, for example:

> scales to build up physical technique
> listening to music to feed imagination
> solfège to improve ears

But the best exercises touch on two or maybe three of the legs. For me, I find transcription to touch on all three if you try to play what you transcribed.

(Note that I don’t put “theory study” as a leg because so many players I admire (Erroll Garner, Django, Wes, Charlie Christian) seemed to do fine without that and just had huge ears, huge imagination + huge technique).

[Spook410]

Lots of famous improvisers did fine without scales beyond pentatonic or music theory.. though not in jazz.

That and I've played with musicians with great skills in theory, scales, sight reading, et al. But their solos were forever boring.

Improvisation seems to resist method and calculation and improvement may require some tailoring on an individual basis. Thing is, few are willing to recognize that they aren't all that creative and need to rely more on form and formula.

[Bobby Timmons]

Imagination and ears are the same thing. It's ears, technique, and theory. But I agree. It seems like musical players have built up skills in the trifecta. Though not always. For me, I'm certainly not betting on my genius to shine through. Definitely going to try to maximize the 3 areas.

[Rsilver]

Imagination and ears are the same thing.

Respectfully, I don’t agree. Especially in my early days, I could hear ideas in my head that I could not identify as playable. My imagination was better than my ears (ability to recognize what I was hearing so as to play it).

[bako]

My labels for what I call “Ways of Knowing” are:

1.Sonic
2.Mechanical
3.Descriptive
4. Personal

[emanresu]

Yeah, I've trained my ass off to get good ears. Thought that it would help to blast all my good musical ideas to the wide world.
It turned out that my ideas ain't that good.

There is that 4th leg.

[Spook410]

Yeah, I've trained my ass off to get good ears. Thought that it would help to blast all my good musical ideas to the wide world.
It turned out that my ideas ain't that good.

There is that 4th leg.

Honestly, I think your musical ideas are better than you think. If you are aware and smart enough to hear yourself and say 'that isn't quite right..' you are miles ahead of most players. If you are not satisfied now, I bet you will be later.

[ccroft]

...But the best exercises touch on two or maybe three of the legs. For me, I find transcription to touch on all three if you try to play what you transcribed...

Agree!! Especially if you're including playing along with recordings and learning tunes and heads that way, with or without actually writing it out. Which is also a very good for you, though maybe not directly related to improv quite as much.

I think this also touches on Eman's 4th leg to make it a chair.

[Bobby Timmons]

So you guys think creativity/imagination/personal approach is separate from ear/aural ability?

[emanresu]

Absolutely!

[ccroft]

So you guys think creativity/imagination/personal approach is separate from ear/aural ability?

I think I think that. I've done photography my whole life. Ears don't help much with that.

I think we bring creativity/imagination/personal approach to everything we do, provided we have some that is. Being creative in a different discipline will develop creativity in general, and will transfer to music.

There's also a feed-back loop: better aural ability will excite the imagination. In photography or music, better technique will do the same.

[Rsilver]

Yeah, I've trained my ass off to get good ears. Thought that it would help to blast all my good musical ideas to the wide world.
It turned out that my ideas ain't that good.

Self-criticism is a common occupational hazard of any artistic endeavor. I once asked a well known jazz musician what he’s thinking during performance and he joked that his most common thought was “what I’m playing sucks.” (it doesn’t of course.)

[Spook410]

So you guys think creativity/imagination/personal approach is separate from ear/aural ability?

Yep. Example: Following a thread on guitar as you play it. You don't always hear the finished lines in your head first. Actually, I rarely do. There are all those times when you are following what your fingers are doing and discovering as you go. I'm thinking ahead to what my choices might be with the chord progression but melodically I'm not thinking all that far ahead. (not that I'm all that great at jazz improv)

[Rsilver]

You don't always hear the finished lines in your head first.

I don’t think the goal is to hear first, then play. It is more of as simultaneous thing - like surfing on the chord changes. It’s an in-the-moment feeling when it works (which isn’t always). Of course everyone has “canned” moves to plug in when the imagination can’t keep up.

[Reg]

I found over the years... lots of years, that many times what I thought I was hearing was wrong. Not until I became aware, through understanding or just hearing from someone etc... that I was missing, didn't hear or was unable to hear something that I though I was able to hear. Hell I'm still learning.

It's not that it's wrong or right.... it's more like.... I just haven't open some doors LOL.