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Anyone tried, "Improvise for Real" (IFR)?

BassChuck

BassChuck

Nov 15, 2005
5,101
2,507
Cincinnati
#1
I'm way beyond thinking there is a silver bullet to learning improv, but this might have some good ideas. And really, a couple of good idea might be all that is needed.

Anyone try this? Thoughts? Worth the money/time?

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#2
Didn't read the whole ad, but skimmed through and didn't see anything about HOW the system works. Just that it's the best thing since sliced bread.

You would probably be better off with a good teacher. One of the things these online programs can't provide is feedback on what you are doing wrong or right.
 
#3
I did sign up and downloaded the E-book. Was it helpful? Yes, 190 + pages of information. Best thing since sliced bread...... that's a little much, however, what is offered has value for any musician, not just for a bassists.

It is based upon the skip a note principal of finding the notes of a chord. That was a little different method than what I was using and I had a few questions in the beginning - you have an E-mail address to go to. My questions were answered quickly.
 
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#4
BassChuck said:
I'm way beyond thinking there is a silver bullet to learning improv, but this might have some good ideas. And really, a couple of good idea might be all that is needed.

Anyone try this? Thoughts? Worth the money/time?

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Click to expand...

You play in a big band and a musical pit orchestra, presumably a good reader?
 
#6
BassChuck. What this offers is see or know the chord then play the chord tones of that chord, i.e. using skip a note as the means of obtaining that chord's notes. If the chord is......

  • The tonic root your skip a notes will be the 1-3-5-7 scale degrees of the parent scale. Of course we already knew that.
  • if the chord is the ii your skip a notes will be the 2-4-6-8(or 1) scale degrees of the parent scale. That's a little different than R-b3-5-b7. That right there is what this skip a note method offers. It skips over all that R-b3-5-b7 stuff.
  • if the chord is the iii your skip a notes will be the 3-5-7-9(or 2)
  • If the chord is the IV you skip a notes will be the 4-6-8(or 1)-3
  • Yes -- just take it on out from here. One thing I picked up on is if we are speaking about the IV chord your safe notes are going to be 4 then one note down or/and two note up -- repeat one of them and you have a safe bass line measure for 4/4 time.
  • If your song is in one key it's pretty well cut and dried. You still have to see A, B, C's and relate them to 1, 2, 3's or I, ii, iii's etc. then skip a note for a safe bass lines or melody note lines. It works for improvising a bass line as well as a melody line. But, it's still see the chord and draw your notes from the chord's notes. Just another way of looking at it. As I mentioned it skips over all that R-b3-5-b7 stuff I spent months learning.

I can see it being helpful with full jazz bass lines. As I do not play jazz I really do not use it. But, it did give me another way of thinking about improvising chord tones - within my beloved major scale box...
 
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#7
BassChuck said:
Yea, I don't have any real troubles reading. (2 music degrees and 36 years teaching band, orchestra)
It's the jazz thing that hassles me. I get calls to do small ensemble gigs and I have learned how to get by, but I'd like to cure the problem rather than just use band-aids.
Click to expand...

I'm really going down the rabbit hole here but I think that we are in the same boat- can play, can't improvise so well.

I was merely going to suggest some Aebersold stuff since you can read but having since read the entire IFR site and since you are already a well-advanced player, it seems that for the refundable cost of one private lesson it's worth a look, and presumably in an easier format than the Aebersold stuff. If it's as simple as skip-a-step like Malcolm suggests then you will continue to not be where you want to be- as I'm sure that you have already figured it out given your extensive experience in gigging jazz and from having been a teacher for so long. IFR does seem to endeavor to teach more than patterns which skip a step essentially is, though. On the other hand, Aebersold is totally jazz focused and doesn't teach patterns (well, not from the perspective of learning patterns as fretted instrument players refer to fingerboard box patterns). I'm guessing that you probably already know about Aebersold anyway.

I'm not a teacher and you are much more experienced than I am but since I have had many false starts with the same endeavor as yours: books; videos; scales; modes; teachers; and having since done much research I now know what I have to do and I'm guessing that you need to do it to so maybe I can motivate you or reaffirm what you already suspect.

Since teachers aren't banging down the door to opine here and since I suspect that you are like me in that you learned to read (follow the dots) but didn't learn to listen and hear how each note interacts, both harmonically and rhythmically (I have learned that you can do a tremendous amount of stuff with just a few notes and a boatload of rhythm, not just durational rhythm but through accenting various subdivisions of the beat as explained in the Fuqua link below), both with the other notes you are playing and with the overall harmony of the tune, I will throw in my 2 cents in the grand scheme of things. The problem with materials like this, including Aebersold or any method or even a teacher, is that they don't/can't possibly emphasize enough that YOU MUST LEARN TO HEAR BETTER. To be sure, Aebersold emphasizes it but it really is impossible to emphasize it enough so one must motivate one's self to get the most out of it. Never mind that a lot of teachers/players have such good ears that at this point in their lives they don't even remember what it's like to be us, or they never even were in our position as they were born with the ears.

You really have to hear. Have you read REALLY Learning a tune (Fuqua)

In a nutshell, the above link demonstrates that one must really grind stuff in but not just mechanically/patterns-wise- one must actively grind stuff into the ear. Of course, I'm sure Ed Fuqua didn't wait to start gigging before he had done all of this extensive homework for every dang song that he ever played:) so there must be some keys to start driving before you have an actual, proper license:

Weird scales. I think that someone with the mechanical skills and harmony understanding that you must already have could, indeed, go a long way further with your "couple of good ideas" idea. I think it would be learning some of the weird scales that jazzers use and then learning how/when they are applied. You can cheat by playing them by pattern for now while you grind stuff into your ear. It's those "weird" notes that all of the good improvisers can pull out of thin air that will separate them from us no matter how much other stuff we know. They are frequently using notes from crazy scales. I am learning that there are so many crazy ways to play all of the "wrong" notes. A lot of guys probably don't even know what they are doing as they just hear "out there" and a lot of guys probably don't like sharing their secrets for free (and I don't blame them). In fact, I play (in non-jazz settings) with a guy who can do it all- I'm talking Larry Carlton "out there-" and I like to pick his brain. If he thinks real hard about it he can explain a lot of what he does but the truth is that he doesn't think about it anymore when he is playing, he just hears it. And some stuff he can't even explain because he just "invented it" for himself and hasn't bothered to analyze why it works. For instance, he told me once "next time you go to play any pentatonic scale fill of some sort, play the first two notes a half-step lower than what the scale calls for then play the notes of the scale." That alone makes a huge difference and I'm sure it could be analyzed into being some scale; in fact, without having analyzed it, I note that if this were played from the minor pentatonic box it is very similar to the Super Locrian or altered or altered dominant or jazz melodic minor scale (I still haven't got all of these terms straight but I think all 4 of those are actually the same thing- and THAT nonsense alone is PART of the jazz "problem"). Here are a couple of links that someone of your ability should grasp and be able to apply rather quickly but don't forget the Fuqua work on hearing and don't forget that working on accenting different beat subdivisions can go a long way toward making just a few notes sound way more interesting.

This one is insane- one pattern in one position covers 4 keys. The same pattern in 2 different positions covers the other 8.

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Jazz scale - Wikipedia (pay special attention to the altered dominant scale)

I'm still learning how to more interestingly apply this stuff but I've had major break-thrus in the past few weeks that escaped me for years before. In just a couple hours you can learn to apply some crazy stuff. One is unlikely to just noodle upon these far out scales- the guys who do that are already just playing and not asking questions like we are. Damn them!:) By the way the Aebersold stuff very methodically increases in difficulty within any Volume and, at least in the jazz improv books, does give extensive scale-type recommendations for given chords- I note that in his books and in other places, particular attention is paid to the V7 as if its the one that best allows you to go way off the reservation- this is just my casual observation and by no means gospel. It just keeps popping up.

Best of luck. Feel free to give me ideas or feedback!
 
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#9
Thanks for posting that Malcolm, that helps me see what the course is about.

I've dealt with all kinds of musicians in the last 40 years. When I first started playing I was with some guys very much older that I who could seemingly play very well. They didn't even know the names of the notes, but somehow had related the sound to fingerings on the sax and trumpet that they played. They seemed amazing to me, but in time I learned that if they were confronted with a new song, or for some reason the song needed to be in a different key.... big problem. So their knowledge was song based, deep, but not broad.
A few years later I was playing a musical and one of the trumpet players, a very fine jazz player with some national reputation suggest to his students that they 'play the table of contents' of their fake books. Just read the title and play the melody. I've found this to be a very instructive task; you really have to know the melody well and the bridge and all of it. That takes some listening. And if you don't know the tune, you can quickly look it up.
Another 'good idea' was given to me in a lesson. The guy just said, "Anything worth playing is worth knowing in all keys". Pretty simple, and as electric bassists quite a bit easier than for horn players.
Jamie Aebersold lives near Cincinnati and gets here often enough that we get to hear him. I've talked with him a few times and he is a great example of a musician who has worked very hard to solve problems and understands them in a way that allows him to present them very easily (the definition of genius by the way). That said, I've heard some musicians who have learned the scales that the chords represent and frankly, they present a fairly boring solo. In a lot of ways it's like listening to someone read a recipe, but you never get to taste the food.
Lately I've been going back and forth between the ideas the Ed Fuqua presented in learning a song very well and very completely and just 'playing the table of contents'. In the end if you don't have the ability to get your instrument to sound the ideas you have in your head, you're lost. Melodies I think are the answer. Good walking bass lines are constructed the same way as good melodies... the rhythm is just simpler.
 
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#10
I have the book.

Save your money.

There are a couple of interesting ideas, but not anything particularly new.

Improvising is really just a question of two things: imagining interesting ideas and finding them on you instrument.

The first is really not most people's problem. Can you hum or sing a line over something? Yes? Then you're all set.

If you can't then you need to simply listen to more music and steal better until you have ideas pouring out of you.

The second part is where everyone is lacking to some degree. A lot of people are forced to let their fingers play for them instead of knowing where the sounds in their imagination are found on the bass.

The thing that has helped me the most in this regard has been thinking in numbers instead of note names and then, through some different exercises, running all the various intervals through the cycle and some different progressions. I do the same thing with chord tones as well, which helps me hear harmony better. Besides that I am working through easy melodies like familiar children's songs, figuring out the intervals being played, and then transposing.

Just doing this made more progress for me in the last year or so than I made in the previous decade.
 
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#12
Lanky Tunes said:
A lot of people are forced to let their fingers play for them instead of knowing where the sounds in their imagination are found on the bass.
Click to expand...

Many fail to recognize that the point of practicing scales/arpeggios/modes is not so you can play them, but so you internalize how they sound, and they become choices
 
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#13
mambo4 said:
Many fail to recognize that the point of practicing scales/arpeggios/modes is not so you can play them, but so you internalize how they sound, and they become choices
Click to expand...

It is to internalize the sound AND the LOCATION so that they are choices that you can PLAY when you choose to.

The problem is that instead of learning a map of the fretboard people learn finger patterns. The big difference is what you do while practicing them, although how and what you practice matters a great deal as well. You must be ACTIVELY THINKING while practicing, and more importantly, thinking in intervals, if you want to be able to transpose.

A lot of this comes from wrong ideas about what practice is. It is a concentrated and mentally fully engaged thing. In many ways it is very different from playing and nothing like noodling, which is what most people tend to do when they "practice".

Being fully aware and critical while practicing is what sets you free while playing though.

You can either "worry" about what you're playing during practice or during performance, but it will be one of them (at least).
 
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#14
MalcolmAmos said:
if the chord is the ii your skip a notes will be the 2-4-6-8(or 1) scale degrees of the parent scale. That's a little different than R-b3-5-b7. That right there is what this skip a note method offers. It skips over all that R-b3-5-b7 stuff
Click to expand...
I'm not sure I'm seeing a huge distinction. R-b3-5-b7 is all odd numbers so obviously also skipping every second note.
MalcolmAmos said:
If your song is in one key it's pretty well cut and dried
Click to expand...
But what if it's not? Simple example: what if it's a blues progression with all 7th chords?
MalcolmAmos said:
But, it's still see the chord and draw your notes from the chord's notes.
Click to expand...
This is where I really don't understand the IFR idea. I already know what notes go in chords, so if the IFR principle is to use the chord's notes I can already do that without learning a different way of naming/numbering them.

I'm not trying to be difficult here, I genuinely don't understand the advantage.
 
#17
This was a fantastic thread. And I’m happy that nnnnnn picked it up after it was abandoned for a few years. I never heard of IFR until a 03/2021 and I saw Jimmy Page with the Yardbirds and then with Led Zeppelin two years later.

Name dropping aside, IFR’s use of melody paths has me wondering if they’re offering a visual presentation of what is otherwise an abstract theory. And for some that’s rather helpful.

Again, thanks to all who contributed to this thread. If you can recommend any more like it please do.
 
#18
I discovered IFR a year ago or so; I like it. I'm my view it's not so much about chord notes, but getting the sounds recognized in your brain. And both ways; recognizing the sounds that you make up in your mind, and be able to 1. recognize what number it is in the (current) key of the song and 2. play it on your instrument.

It's nice to see there is a logical part of the brain, and a musical part of the brain, and they both are often disconnected. Meaning you can sing a nice melody from the top of your head, but you don't know what you're actually singing (if you had to write it down on paper in numbers). This is something you need to train, to hook up both parts. And even further, to hook up the singing part of your brain to your fingers playing. Which takes the logical part of the brain to study, but the end goal is to take the logical part out of the equation again and make the process of singing-in-your-mind to playing-it an unconscious process mostly.

IFR helps me in recognizing the sound of notes 1-7 (and later b3/#4/b5/b7) and playing those. That gives you a nice basis for improvising with embellishments.

As for nnnnnn's R-b3-5-b7, in IFR that's just the shifted major key (shifted by b3) which is R-3-5-7 again. So A minor is dealt with like 6-1-3-5 instead of R-b3-5-b7.
 

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