What is Improvisation?

[Johnny L]

In the "First Jazz Gig" thread the assertion that improvisation is a necessary ingredient for jazz music appeared.

But what is improvisation?

Is it the articulation of new words and language that only the mystically-charged can understand? Is it the well-studied utilization of useful scales and arpeggios underneath spontaneously offered chord progressions? Is it the ignorantly placed series of wrong notes within an accidental background of noise?

Or could it be nonsensical baby-talk?

I remember Ornette Coleman's name being mentioned to me some weeks ago. I had heard of him before and knew he grew up in Ft. Worth, Texas...knew he was a "free jazz" player...so I picked up one of his albums with Charlie Haden on it (who I haven't ever heard) and found it quite enjoyable to listen to.

Hope that's not a sign that I'm totally clueless about music or something LOL

Anyway, when I think of improvisation I think of something like this...where there isn't some conscious effort to prove that I'm a good listener and have a good ear and so on. To me, improvisation is about tapping into that unconscious collective where the mechanisms that drive us instinctually reside. Everything else to me, like knowing what scales or modes to apply to a chord or chord progression and immediately speaking some personal melody and so on, is a sort of fake, delusional effort at improvisation.

So when I spend time studying and woodshedding scales and chords and arpeggios (this is all I do in my practice), I'm striving to hone that consciously structured and articulated part of what music is...so when someone calls for, say, Mr. P.C. I can one day do an acceptable version of that song. And if I were to do a solo on it and I leaned on the appropriate scales (even bebop and chromatically flavored versions), I wouldn't really think of that as improvisation. I'd think of it as just playing a quick series of notes that may or may not seem melodic to the listener.

O.K. so this is my (possibly somewhat naive and) subjective attitude towards improvisation and what it means in the context of jazz music.

Alright let's debate this thing and have some fun!

[Bruce Lindfield]

It's playing in the moment - responding to what's going on around you - as opposed to playing something exactly how you intended, before you started.

This is the essence of Jazz to me and why I go to Jazz gigs every week, when long ago I got bored with most rock gigs!

So - the excitement of live Jazz, is for example - seeing/hearing the drummer throwing in a little rhythmic pattern that was totally unexpected and then the soloist taking that up and maybe the pianist expanding on it in his/her accompaniment, then the bass player setting up a counterpoint - etc. etc.

I see this kind of thing every week at my local Jazz club and it's what makes it a Jazz club, rather than a rock or blues or R&B (etc.) club!

[Pcocobass]

[sarcasm]Improvisation is the art of regurgitating tired old licks that you learned from a record that you could only find online where all the musicians are long dead.[/sarcasm]

[D McCartney]

Hey Pcoco, your browser has a sarcasm button?


I think of improvisation as a spontaneous activity or conversation; in our case, it takes place in the language of music.

[Pcocobass]

Originally Posted by D McCartney

Hey Pcoco, your browser has a sarcasm button?


I think of improvisation as a spontaneous activity or conversation; in our case, it takes place in the language of music.

[sarcasm]I can send you the plug-in if you'd like.[/sarcasm]

Pete

[woodsgirl]

Improvisation=making it up as you go along, but in the vein of the music your group is playing! I used to get into trouble doing this in concert band on my flute! Thus, I switched to jazz and blues at an early age.................. You do have to know what key you are in, either by it's name and/ or theory, or just by figuring out what notes are appropriate, and play within the confines of that structure, but other than that, you can play whatever you feel like at the moment.

It has come to my attention that everyone doesn't naturally do this, but some of us do! So whenever you play a song that you don't have the score for, you have to improvise. No one tells you what to play. It is that simple. It can be easy or it can be tricky, but that depends on your inclination. It helps to get away from the thought that eveything has to be practiced or memorized, and it is , for me, anyway, the most fun thing in playing music!

If you have a part that you are familiar with, but you don't have the music in front of you, just start out playing what you remember and then go from there. For instance, change your bass line a little each verse, and fiddle (?) around with it as you play.

You get in the "zone" where the music comes *through*you from that unconcious void or whatever it was you were talking about, rather than from your logical mind-yeah, you aren't thinking about music theory when you are improvising, at least I don't. but eveything you ever learned in your whole life plays a part.

It is the essence of jazz and blues, and it is where my original compositions come from, too!

[Johnny L]

Originally Posted by Pcocobass

[sarcasm]Improvisation is the art of regurgitating tired old licks that you learned from a record that you could only find online where all the musicians are long dead.[/sarcasm]

Yeah, motivic development!

If there's any bridge I see clearly between jazz and other forms of music, it's this willingness musicians have to honor other musicians who inspired them. I have that willingness too, and so I see coping jazz bass player licks as both an effort to improve my own musicianship and to pay honor to them.

If anything, I think the interest in improvisation has to do simply with allowing a portion of the music to embrace our individuality...to honor us in our dedication to music also. The rest, where improvisation is used as an arbitrary filter to distinguish or discriminate the legitimacy of a player's love for jazz, is total BS.

[mg15]

"Improvisation=Spontaneous Composition" as my teacher always tells me.

[hdiddy]

Originally Posted by M-16

"Improvisation=Spontaneous Composition" as my teacher always tells me.

[sarcasm] More like "Improvisation = Ability to Bulls#!t".

Don't forget, you have to also consider what is good BS'ing and what is bad BS'ing. [sarcasm]

[Johnny L]

Originally Posted by mg15

"Improvisation=Spontaneous Composition" as my teacher always tells me.

Hello mg15,

Yeah this is what I think most people think about when they consider the meaning of improvisation.

Sure, we can say that it's about getting good enough at composition that one can squeeze out lines at the drop of a hat. I just can't help but like the idea of turning improvisation into something more accessible, something not so elitist...something like how swing works, where you know you're swinging when your head is moving to the pulse of the song and everyone else around you is doing the same thing!

Hmm I think I'm going to nab John Coltrane's A Love Supreme and give it a listen.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I was fortunate enough to spend some time this past week watching Kenny Werner and Dave Liebman play concerts and give master classes. While what they play is vastly different, their message is similar: improvisation is about freedom earned through mastery. If a person plays with this sense of freedom, including the absence of qualitative judgement in the moment, new and spontaneous things will emerge, and the music will always be moving forward. Both espouse the notion that basics have to be mastered before they can be transcended, and that a player will only have freedom to control aspects of the music that he or she has matered with disciplined practice.

I get the sense that both focus on the transcendental aspect as the ultimate goal because they feel that the music has been broken down into a discipline to such a degree by the jazz education machine (of which we are all admittedly a part) that they feel it is best to try to balance the scales a bit. This is offputting to some and incredibly inspirational to others. I am one of the latter group. As long as you state up front that the degree of freedom to create in the moment is determined by the degree of "mastery" atained by disciplined practice, I think it's a hard point to argue. It's one thing to just sit and hear these guys talk, and quite another to hear them demonstrate - when they do this, the power of the fruits of their message is damn near undeniable. At the very least, their philosophy is working for them.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Chris Fitzgerald

improvisation is about freedom earned through mastery. If a person plays with this sense of freedom, including the absence of qualitative judgement in the moment, new and spontaneous things will emerge, and the music will always be moving forward. Both espouse the notion that basics have to be mastered before they can be transcended, and that a player will only have freedom to control aspects of the music that he or she has mastered with disciplined practice.

Your post made me think about something I was discussing on the way to/from playing with the pianist in the quintet I'm currently involved with...

So we enjoy playing and bouncing ideas off each other - Jazz can be great fun - but I don't think anybody in the group would claim to be anything like "master" of their instrument.

We appreciate that there is a huge gulf between ourselves and our Jazz teachers, who have put in the time on practicing, trancribing etc. and who have devoted their lives to the music.

So, is there any point to what we are doing - are we just fooling ourslves that we are playing Jazz...?

Should we worry about this?

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I don't think anyone ever really "masters" life or music. They're using the term to denote a level of control over some aspect or other of something musical that they're trying to get better at and add to their playing. In real life, you work to "Master" walking, talking, bathing, etc., so that you can do these things whenever you need to during the flow of each day without thinking of the mechanics of the act.

[Damon Rondeau]

...and don't forget that music is like food and playing music is like cooking. Everyone eats; a great deal of people cook. You don't have to be a master to make a damn fine meal. You may never get your own show on Food TV but hey, it's your ego: deal with it.

[Bruce Lindfield]

I suppose what I mean though is that if you are saying that the "essence" of improvisation is mastery - is there a level of mastery, below which, it doesn't apply and you can't be considered to be improvising...?

I think I've had my answer to this though, in a conversation I had with Jason Yarde (great Alto player/composer,producer,arranger) - in a class I attended, where we were discussing free improvisation.

So he was saying that both of us could improvise freely - but it would be a long time before he ran out of ideas, or things that would hold an audience's attention....certainly much longer than I could !!

[WalterBush]

My Jazz Improv teacher at college once told us that really, practically, only 1% of a (good) artist's improvised solo is truly, originally, improvised. Mostly, they're playing something they've practiced before.

Before we got too depressed, he pointed out that the same applies to language. We may be stating something we've never said before, but we're still using words, sentence structures, and a style that we've practiced and developed over the years. Rarely do we attempt to use a word or phrase that we haven't ever used before, but that doesn't mean that the overall meaning of our statement isn't new or fresh, just that the words we use are words we've had experience using. And, as stated previously, with a larger vocabulary, we can say more before running out of ideas to communicate, or say the same thing more often without repeating ourselves.

He taught, and I believe, the same thing applies to music, but it's better with music, because music sounds better with more than one person playing (as opposed to two people talking at once) and with music, we can "discover" ideas we hadn't before, spontaneously, much more easily than if I tried to conduct a conversation with random noises and made-up words with no meaning.

I'm not sure exactly what this contributes to the conversation, but it's something that stuck with me from that class long after the scales, modes, changes, etc I learned have been assimilated or forgotten.

[tZer]

If we reintroduce the 'music as a language' discussion, just like speaking, good imporvisation is directly connected to:

• Mastery of the language - how to properly construct and deliver a well-spoken and interesting statement. The better you understand all the components of the language, the better you are able to draw upon those components to make your statement the way you intend - the better you can express yourself. Like in public speaking, if you do not understand how to construct a simple sentence, you may still be able to express yourself, but you will be limited in the words you can use and the ways to structure those words. Imagine Abe Lincoln saying, "A coupla years ago some guys showed up here with a really cool idea..."
• The ability to contribute to the current conversation in a positive and evolutionary way - if people just randomly interjected statements that were not relevant to the immediate discussion, the conversation would go nowhere and mean little to anyone.
• Having something to say. Babbling and improvising are two very different things. One could argue that babbling could be used as a device to make a point - but babbling per se, is babbling. Improvising, riffing on an idea, grooving with the current rhythmic flow of the conversation at hand and enhancing it with your voice - that is improvisation.

[Aaron Saunders]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

I suppose what I mean though is that if you are saying that the "essence" of improvisation is mastery - is there a level of mastery, below which, it doesn't apply and you can't be considered to be improvising...?

I guess in this context, the answer is "yes." But this requires explanation from how I've interpreted Chris's posts:

You can only play with real freedom using that which you've "mastered," and hence, are improvising freely an uninhibited by any technical or harmonic concept at this level/context of playing. If you're trying to improvise over something you really have "mastered" or under your fingers/whatever, then you're not going to be able to say everything you want to, because there's just too many blocks in your way. Hence, your improvisations in that context would probably fall back on parotting licks you transcribed or just generally "talking bullsh**".

This is not to say you have to master every technical/harmonic/melodic/rhythmic concept to really speak freely on your instrument. It just means that there are certain situations or concepts that if you were to blow a couple choruses on, that SOMETIMES you could be playing over something you've mastered and somethings you haven't yet. Say you're still fairly fresh to jazz -- going into your first year of Berklee, say. You've got diatonic harmony nailed down, your ability to hear and play it is very high. Your technique is solid, not amazing, but solid. On an unaltered version of, say, Fly Me To The Moon, you'll probably sound pretty good. But because you haven't really had a lot of experience playing out other than a few transcriptions you've done and maybe 1 or 2 jams, you'll end up playing BS on "Gloria's Step."

EDIT: All of that said, I really dig Chris' posts and tZer's reintroduction of "music as a language." In any case, it's time to go expand my vocabulary, if you will (just got Mike Downes' book two days ago .)

[Johnny L]

Originally Posted by Chris Fitzgerald

As long as you state up front that the degree of freedom to create in the moment is determined by the degree of "mastery" atained by disciplined practice, I think it's a hard point to argue.

Firstly, I want to say thanks to everyone's contributions here. I really enjoy philosophical discussions and it was only recently that I realized how much improvisation could support this sort of dialogue.

Yeah when it comes to playing even jazz music, there does seem to be value in establishing and agreeing upon some common ground...and Western harmony is one of them. I myself can't help but get excited about learning more about it, especially after band camp.

But I'm still nagged a little about the question of music, of its source, of all the theory surrounding even jazz and the possibility that somebody like Ornette Coleman isn't making a very important point in attempting to dispel some illusion...as if he's been composing variations of a musical science fiction Matrix script.

And if it really is true, that we're chasing an illusion with the notion of improvisation-as-recognizably lawful-spontaneous-combustion, where do we go from there then?

PS yes that's right I don't have a musical instrument (not even my bass) in reach to play right now darn it LOL

[Sam Sherry]

Critic Thomas Conrad, in the April, 2004 JazzTimes, alludes to “the quality of immediacy [which is] essential to jazz. That quality originates, not from the assumption that the notes have never been played before, but from a sense that they have come into being, in real time, as urgent creative impulses.”

That's about it for me.