I think improvisation is overrated

[joelf]

Was it Branford Marsalis who said the thing about jazz being swing, the blues, and improvisation, and in that order of importance?

He talks too much.

Good guy though, and hell of a musician...

[pamosmusic]

He talks too much.

Good guy though, and hell of a musician...

Lol. Sounds like projection.

[Christian Miller]

I do think it’s interesting that if you ask a person why they’re attracted to jazz, most of them will say “improvisation” or creativity or something like that. Which I tend to think is almost certainly not true. Loads of improvisational music that doesn’t attract listeners so readily (free jazz, being an obvious example). Anyway … it seems like it should be a no brainer that people tend to find themselves attracted to jazz because they like the way it sounds. So it would follow that folks might be well served by trying to sound like jazz before getting too hung up on improvising.

That’s usually what people can’t do anyway. They can noodle till the cows come home but not a note of jazz.

I tell them to transcribe and ways to develop language and they play good sounding stuff that they’ve worked out. and then they get impatient and cross with themselves that they can’t improvise that stuff, and I just think ‘I’m glad I’m not that harsh on myself anymore. One thing at a time is plenty.’

Again looking into improv in another idiom is really helpful at reliving this stuff. I think it helps me teach. Because it’s not really learning how to improvise. It’s actually about internalising and hearing music.

This coming from someone (me) who loves improvising in just about any context and thinks that’s by far the most fun part of playing. Trying to sound like what you like tohear is still the best way into improvising, whether you call idiomatic jazz playing improvising or not.

the improv was definitely appealing to me. Probably central

I did obsessively listen to a compilation of more reflective Trane stuff in last year of high school. I already loved blues. This was just an extension of that to me, with a wider palette. I fell in love with the music too. I wish I’d focussed more on that when learning to play, but the scale guys got to me and confused me with their shiny geegaws.

Improv has less mystery now perhaps. I still enjoy it most when I play something new. It does happen….

one thing that’s rarely talked about on this and similar forums is the listeners journey and yet I think that’s the most transformative. It all seems to be about inflicting ones improv on others (play this on this!) and less about checking stuff out.

[joelf]

Lol. Sounds like projection.

I know I must be good with words, cuz everyone's always telling me to shut up...

[Jonah]

Though improvization can be also a distinctive feature of genre... I think on the indivudual level the conceptions 'composer' vs 'improvizer' exist in both classical and jazz traditions.

Bach was a great improvizer but his mentality was definitely the one of the composer to me.
Chopin was a great composer but I can see distinctive improvizational spirit in his music.

Julian Lage can improvize for sure but I feel like he thinks much more in terms of compozition.

I.e. it is more of a mentality, approach, indeology than just a technical tool - in practical sense on high level they can do both but you can still hear what is actually their way of thinking.

Mostly in discussions on forum I notice that we often try to extrapolate the impression we have form the work of the great/extremely gifted people (and I believe that the talent exists) to an average people experience that can be fit into more or less objective pattern of education and training. But it does not work like that imho.
So average musicians can be traimed into becoming good masters to maintain and support general movement in style or genre but the real vehicles are outstanding personalities and for them those qustions just do not exist, they do not make those concious choices or specualte about it - they just act.

As for education it is obvious for me that classical music has advantage of being predominantely written tradition for hundreads of years and though improvization always existed the composition was still kind of 'real thing' there.
Writing down and fixing was a highest value thing even in the time of relatively improvizational and loose performance practice.
Writing music down even had a kind of sacred meaning (invention of Guido's notaion system was really treated as a kind of spiritual thing.
I think partly it is coming from the tradition of the Book/written that was so important in the European culture and was probably a mix of Hebrew (where the written text always had extremely high importance) and Greek-Roman traditions.
One cannot improvize La Divina Commedia - it should be written down, published, read and studied
Improvization of poetry was also common but already by the time of Dante the highest thing was the book.
The most disturbing thing for European culture is non-preservance. Though improvization was highly valued as an art the work fixed down in 'stone' was almost always a higher achievement.
And when music came out of the position subordinate to poetry - it just inherited this tradition. Like - you are a good improvizer, great, but you are really serious about it - compose and write down and publish.
It was also conneceted with the 'consumer's market', there were those who took pleasure in reading poetry and reading written music.

It is a well known fact that at the beginning when music publushing process started many composers tried to avoid it first because they were afraid that there art can be 'decoded' and stolen once it is available for everybody.
I think partly it was because music was not much independent yet as an art and was conneceted with practical purposes - accompanying something (a text or a ritual)

I think I also read something similar about jazz players when recording became more common. And jazz was also very practical thing at the beginning rather accompanying events than being an art per se.

It gave a solid foundation for creating educational systems.
It is like when you have a a fixed and 'legitimate' Bible and a scope of works of the Fathers of the Church etc. as traditional written texts you have a foundation to form a fixed educational setup: a seminary with program, classes, methods, teachers, theologists etc.
If you have only oral tradition you just have to go to particular master to learn from him. And the you own a secret.

[joelf]

...but the scale guys got to me and confused me with their shiny geegaws.

Shiny geegaws?

Shiny geegaws?!

SHINY GEEGAWS?!!!

Slowly I turned, and step by step, inch by inch....

[pamosmusic]

one thing that’s rarely talked about on this and similar forums is the listeners journey and yet I think that’s the most transformative. It all seems to be about inflicting ones improv on others (play this on this!) and less about checking stuff out.

Yeah this has already been said before but the real improvising I think usually happens in the interaction between musicians. And *that* is what audiences get into.

Though I also think it’s really instructive also to think about what you’re playing through the frame of what a listener is hearing. For example, you can talk about vocabulary but I think listeners usually just hear that as logic and have little attention to spare for the mechanisms. The person sounds like they know what they’re doing or not. Or good time and rhythm. People don’t identify that, they just hear it as someone who sounds like they mean it or someone who sounds like they’re just noodling.

Interesting to think about things that way.

[joelf]

It is a well known fact that at the beginning when music publishing process started many composers tried to avoid it first because they were afraid that there art can be 'decoded' and stolen once it is available for everybody.

This is antithetical to what Miles Davis and Mullgrew Miller called 'social music'---and I'm in agreement with that.

In Europe there was always a pronounced separation between performer (and composer) and listener. In Africa, and I believe Asia and with Native Americans, but definitely Africa, music was and is integrated into the social fabric. Music had a purpose and was part of daily life and ritual. This continues here in the black (and white) church, but so does that separation, and not just in classical music but a lot of pop too. The bigger the arena the more separate and further from the performers the audience.

And jazz was also very practical thing at the beginning rather accompanying events than being an art per se.

This is more what I mean. It's important for listeners to listen but when they sit there, hands folded like they're hearing a deadly serious sermon, it gets out of that social milieu/integrated mode. There was one club in NYC that continued this practice: Fat Cat. The music was part of the mosaic, only part, but if anyone wanted to only listen and not mill around, play games or hang at the bar they could sit up close. This tended to relax the performers and made the listeners more like equals.

This was once common in the black communities here in the USA. Everyone knew everyone and there was more of a blue collar or service mindset among jazz musicians. I don't see it so much any more. Black folks don't come out to support the music and be part of the total experience so much nowadays. I did find one community around an hour and a half's drive from me: Hartford, CT, where that is still viable. Here's hoping there are more.

*Edit: I couldn't seem to separate the post I responded to from my response so I put my responses in bold...

[Christian Miller]

Shiny geegaws?

Shiny geegaws?!

SHINY GEEGAWS?!!!

Slowly I turned, and step by step, inch by inch....

and oojamaflips

[joelf]

and oojamaflips

And I Brung You Finjans for your Zarf---Tal Farlow tune title after he visited Scandinavia.


Oop Bop Shabam a Klook a Mop, MF...

[Christian Miller]

And I Brung You Finjans for your Zarf---Tal Farlow tune title after he visited Scandinavia.


Oop Bop Shabam a Klook a Mop, MF...

that’s just nonsense

[joelf]

that’s just nonsense

As opposed to Nunsense...

[Tal_175]

I can think of a bunch of jazz singers that do not scat or improvise or do you not consider singers to be musicians?I'm guessing you are only talking about instrumentalist's.

Yes, I meant instrumentalists as I do think singers fall into a different category when it comes to improvisation than the instrumentalists. Voice is the only instrument that can sing the lyrics. If a trumpet player says they only play the head and don't improvise, he or she will likely be told they better figure out how to get the lyrics out of the trumpet otherwise the band would rather hire a singer.

[lawson-stone]

Yes, but also at a high level of listening.

Otherwise you got 3 or more Florida-sized egos talking over each other to show how badass they are (or think they are).

Remember Cream?

It's also true-- and I suspect you'll agree-- that a great rhythm section/band can carry a mediocre soloist and make the whole thing sound fantastic.
I speak from my extensive experience as a middling soloist! I played for about a year every week in a "house" ensemble that had a superb drummer, bassist, and pianist, and they let me in because I knew a lot of chords and the pianist liked the idea of switching off with me for comping. But there were many evenings when I played an "okay" solo but the crispness, the listening, the cohesiveness of those other three guys literally lifted me off the floor and carried me. I punched considerably above my class with them behind me.

[lawson-stone]

One interesting thing about learning to improvise in a different idiom is that it has taught me a lot about what it is to be an early stage jazz learner again. So much of it is idiom and vocab at the early stages. You want to sound generic and obvious before you can then reject that stuff. ‘Find your own style? You can’t play yet’

So I think people get bent out of shape. Improvisation is so natural it takes years of training to stop people from doing it. Of course in terms of actually being able to improvise in a tradition or improv - that’s a much longer process that involves contact with the music, and actually learning music, which all serious jazz players are of course very serious about.

We are in danger of looking at music through the filters and hang ups of classical musicians. This was somewhat inevitable in the 1950s but not really today.

every tradition apart from modern classical has this sort of informal ‘improvised’ penumbra of practices that don’t involve scores and invites participation of performers in the construction of the music. Some are more identified with improv than others - for instance Hindustani music is more improvised than Karnatic- but all involve points in this continuum. (Modern Classical performance practice being its own weird little special case that we treat with a lot of attention because of its cultural hegemony.)

I think it’s healthy to see not a binary between composition and spontaneous improv but a continuum. I think a type of ‘casual composition’ for want or a better word is where a lot of the practice actually lies. This can absolutely be true of non idiomatic or ‘free’ groups btw. And some times the strangest or most original sounding music (such as Monk) is actually highly composed.

If I’ve learned one thing by working on Konnakol, free improv (which often involves a rejection of jazz, something I found a struggle at first), classical historical improv, non idiomatic improv with composers and so on, is that jazz is not synonymous with improvisation and it’s kind of rude to make out that it is haha.

As my Konnakol teacher (himself a performer of both Karnatic music and jazz) jazz musicians are not the experts on improvisation - although they think they are. Jazz musicians are experts on jazz.

OTOH he pointed the actual amount of improvised notes in a working jazz band might be less than you think. But in his (high level professional) opinion improvisation itself is less about the notes and more about the spirit.

In fact in my experience in working jazz groups, unexpected elements are often very unwelcome as I’ve found over the years (ask people and I suspect they might tell you I’m a bit of an improvisational loose cannon and a pain in the behind. I get bored easy.)

‘the secret of improvisation is that it is not improvised.’

In the end I’m partial to Pete Bernstein’s ‘jazz is a decorative art.’ I think that takes care of the lot of the problems identified above. Pete of course centres the song. A lot of improv worldwide is decorative. Ornamentation is underrated.

In a letter to me, Joe Pass once said to start playing the melody, then start playing fills in the spaces between the melodic phrases, gradually reducing the melodic phrases until your own stuff dominates, with just enough of the melody in there to keep focused. When I've really kind of focused on that, I've been happier with my playing, though my current ability hardly constitutes a marquis for this approach!

Ornamentation is the Mother of Improvisation?

[lawson-stone]

I have no idea what’s good for my music but I do have some idea of what’s good for my mental state on a day to day basis. I’m naturally self absorbed to the point of obsession, neurotic and egotistical. What helps with that is focussing outward, on someone else’s music for instance. I have come to realise my best of me as a person is found in looking outwards, not in.

I don’t believe this is opposed to self discovery, I think it can lead to it in fact. Otoh I think it is entirely possible to think you are embarking on a journey of self discovery only to end up trapped in your own navel. I’ve had a fair bit of that over the past few years.

This really resonates for me. I have done my best playing, even my best improvising, while I was working on playing Jimmy Raney's solos in that old Aebersold book, or while I was trying to learn Bird's solos on "Donna Lee." I might not have gotten those solos down perfectly, but somehow I found that immersing myself in someone else's playing--that I admired--enabled me to find some good ideas when I was not trying to play their stuff.

Giving up on oneself might just be one of the very best ways of finding oneself.

[Sam Sherry]

Frank Sinatra. Singer. Doesn't scat.

Sinatra winked at his own inability and/or choice not to scat. Check out 1:51 here:

[joelf]

It's also true-- and I suspect you'll agree-- that a great rhythm section/band can carry a mediocre soloist and make the whole thing sound fantastic.
I speak from my extensive experience as a middling soloist! I played for about a year every week in a "house" ensemble that had a superb drummer, bassist, and pianist, and they let me in because I knew a lot of chords and the pianist liked the idea of switching off with me for comping. But there were many evenings when I played an "okay" solo but the crispness, the listening, the cohesiveness of those other three guys literally lifted me off the floor and carried me. I punched considerably above my class with them behind me.

Yeah. You're always lucky when you get a good rhythm section.

But strong players, even just 1, can lift the stand and 'carry' a weak link. Drag when they have to though...

[John A.]

that’s just nonsense

Nope. It means "I brought you little handle-less cups (finjans) for your ornamental cup holder (zarf)" in a mash-up of slangs. It's how an alter kaker drinks a glezel tei.

And improvisation rools. I'd have wished the OP to the cornfield for saying otherwise, but he seems to have done that himself.

[joelf]

Nope. It means "I brought you little handle-less cups (finjans) for your ornamental cup holder (zarf)" in a mash-up of slangs. It's how an alter kaker drinks a glezel tei.

And he mixes 2 languages, ladies and germs! (Cue wild applause).

[Oscar67]

As a listener, I want to be moved. Period.
As a player, I want to be in a nice ‘flow’ where I’m in the moment and play well without thinking.
When players improvise and produce cohesive, exciting stuff on the fly then that is riveting. But it’s rare. Metheny comes to mind. But I can be moved just as much by a great rock player doing a much-anticipated solo that I know is coming. Or a classical orchestra doing a wonderful rendition of a piece.

What I’m missing a bit in this discussion is the song. Whether standards or original compositions, there are a bunch of songs on the setlist (though there are jam bands out there that improvise everything for two hours each night). I’m of the sort where I feel I’m there to serve the song, not the other way around. The song is sacred. The whole band taking solos on every track is not my idea of fun. It quickly becomes obligatory and stale. Joe Pass was a master of riding that fine line IMHO. He respected the song but brought something fresh and meaningful to it every time.

[CliffR]

I tell them to transcribe and ways to develop language and they play good sounding stuff that they’ve worked out. and then they get impatient and cross with themselves that they can’t improvise that stuff

Man, I thought teacher-student privilege prevented you from saying this stuff!

[joelf]

...Metheny comes to mind....

What I’m missing a bit in this discussion is the song. Whether standards or original compositions, there are a bunch of songs on the setlist (though there are jam bands out there that improvise everything for two hours each night). I’m of the sort where I feel I’m there to serve the song, not the other way around. The song is sacred. The whole band taking solos on every track is not my idea of fun. It quickly becomes obligatory and stale. Joe Pass was a master of riding that fine line IMHO. He respected the song but brought something fresh and meaningful to it every time.

Good points, well written.

I'm like you in wanting to serve the song. I do lots of research getting it correctly before taking them where the muse may lead.

I really believe in melody, and when that element in improvising or composing isn't present it just doesn't seem whole to me. (But, in the interest of growth, that's also a comfort zone I need to push myself out of---take it out and stretch in ways I haven't. I'm quite happy with that as a foundation and gift, though).

If we're really being honest in assessing which jazzers are popular with listeners and why it's generally the melodists, with a strong rhythmic pulse right along with it. The Miles Davises, Stan Getzes, Chet Bakers, etc. always resonate and reach people. Maybe it's Western culture and the influence of West Europe? (B/c African culture is more oriented toward rhythm). Whatever the reason(s), melody is properly up front (though in the last 50-60 years harmony has almost superseded it as a key improvising element. But even analyzing that, Coltrane, the primary early progenitor of this, was 1st and foremost highly melodic, and with an understanding of the value of simplicity and blues power).

Yeah, Pat is highly melodic when he wants to be. He also can play solo and make a song sparkle. Russell Malone is good at it too, (and, hell, I'm not too shabby myself).

It's a good thing to believe in and get down. You really can't go wrong and will never lose your listeners that way...

[RLetson]

Yes, I meant instrumentalists as I do think singers fall into a different category when it comes to improvisation than the instrumentalists. Voice is the only instrument that can sing the lyrics. If a trumpet player says they only play the head and don't improvise, he or she will likely be told they better figure out how to get the lyrics out of the trumpet otherwise the band would rather hire a singer.

Linear/lead instrumentalists can do pretty much anything that vocalists do outside of delivering the actual lyrics--a melody line invites all manner of play with phrasing even without changing the notes of the head. Right now I'm imagining different ways of delivering the melodic armature of "I'll Be Home for Christmas," varying only the time elements. If I were singing the words rather than humming the tune, the semantic/grammatical content and articulation issues would make some choices more or less likely, and while delivering semantic content adds a whole layer to the musical experience, the notes themselves are remarkably elastic and potent.

There's a Ruby Braff album title, "Adoration of the Melody," that suggests the core of this aesthetic. It's not everything, but it's a really big thing. When I hear Braff play a tune, I hear very much the kind of layering that Joe Pass described.

[Bop Head]

And he mixes 2 languages, ladies and germs! (Cue wild applause).

A alter Kacker trinkt a Glaserl Tee.

I found out that Yiddish is easy to understand for a Bavarian after once Youtube's autoplay algorithm had forwarded me to sad songs like My Yiddish Momme and My Shtetele Beltz while I had fallen asleep.