Your views of improvisation?

[SpawnofHastur]

This is, as my usual style, just a discussion- it is NOT a how too, not a 'my approach is THE approach' thread. Really, I just want to see your perspectives on this most murky of topics: improvisation, and 'how' people improvise.

To me, all players everywhere, no matter how free they claim to be when they are playing, have built up a series of...well, I won't call them 'licks' but perhaps, say, 'ideas'. They've got a wide-ranging vocabulary of ideas that they think sound good, improvise their solos by putting together these ideas, modifying them, and using them. Think a bit- have you ever heard a solo and just KNOWN who it is, because of how they're playing the solo? Everyone has a musical vocabulary, in my mind, and that's not a bad thing, although some people complain about solos being 'lick after lick'. To me, that's mostly like saying that a story is 'word after word'- while the licks or ideas might have been used before, the joy comes from the new combinations, the small modifications that the musician uses to make a new sounding solo that conveys a mood- in that view, music becomes almost exactly like poetry, where a lot of the joy is the emotion of the poem, the word play, the word choice. Almost every poem ever written fits the confines of a metre, and most poetry fans don't complain about the poems being recognisable word after recognisable word...

Anyway! That is merely my view; feel free to disagree and tell me I'm wrong, although I must admit that I would prefer it if you did so in a civil manner.

Cheers.

-Dave.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I don't see it as "murky" - as a big Jazz fan and someone who tried to play Jazz and who has been on many courses and workshops over the last 10 years - there are very clear and well-defined approaches to improvisation.

As an informed listener to Jazz - it is very easy to hear how much of a solo is improvised and is made up of licks or vocabulary - but the latter is all part of how you define a style like Jazz and improvisation is about collective response - listening to others and responding in the moment. It's not always about "you" and what you are doing. Maybe you just play one note continuously for a few minutes - but if that's what the music needs at the time and it holds things together - then that's what it needs.

To deliberately try to play something impressive and/or to satisfy your own ego - is IMO where it often goes wrong. Play for the music while listening to others and it's generally OK as long as you have put the work in.

But it's very easy to hear those who are playing for their egos and/or who haven't put the work in and have few ideas...?

 

[20db pad]

I agree with your view, and will add that I've been part of the "99% perspiration and 1% inspiration" school for a long time. To me, a defined structure, a recollection of things past, and a few new ideas seem to make up the finest moments of improvisation.

 

[SpawnofHastur]

Well, a good example of what I think is the advice a lot of people here on TalkBass give that, while quite good in principle isn't really that useful: sing it, then play it.

Everyone who has listened to music and played it for any amount of time has their own musical style and vocabulary- nothing as concrete as licks, but more 'signature elements' or, things that they think sound good and fit into specific songs. Say you practiced just experimenting over chords- sooner or later you'll find specific ideas and situations those ideas fit into; the same things occur with rhythm and harmony, too. But it's still your personal ideas and vocabulary: while you're not throwing out lick after lick, you ARE throwing out your own personal ideas that you have developed before, at least subconsciously.

To me, practice is the best way to get new ideas and such things.

 

[ghiadub]

I feel like the "free" part of improvisation is more the rhythmic interplay that happens over time.

You might start off with a lick you have played before, but once everyone interprets that, and you listen to the collective playing of the group, and then play that interplay, it might morph into it's own thing where new stuff can happen.

I improvise frequently buy solo rarely.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

Well, a good example of what I think is the advice a lot of people here on TalkBass give that, while quite good in principle isn't really that useful: sing it, then play it.

Everyone who has listened to music and played it for any amount of time has their own musical style and vocabulary- nothing as concrete as licks, but more 'signature elements' or, things that they think sound good and fit into specific songs. Say you practiced just experimenting over chords- sooner or later you'll find specific ideas and situations those ideas fit into; the same things occur with rhythm and harmony, too. But it's still your personal ideas and vocabulary: while you're not throwing out lick after lick, you ARE throwing out your own personal ideas that you have developed before, at least subconsciously.

To me, practice is the best way to get new ideas and such things.

Well - I think you have to add listening to a lot of stuff - especially improvisors - and transcribing it! Find out what they are doing and try to integrate those ideas - not as licks, but as concepts!

You are what you listen to - the more you listen to, the more you have to choose from and the less likely you are to sound like your influence(s)!

Listen to 5 people and you will be sounding like them! Listen to 500 or 5000 people and you are much more likely to sound like a synthesis of all those influences!!

 

[SpawnofHastur]

Exactly!

I've always felt that people aren't exactly 'original'. Instead, I feel that new ideas are the results of old ideas banging against each other in your head, and crossbreeding to create new results.

I think the best example of how I see improvisation is Charlie Parker. Bird was magnificent- he could make a solo really sing about how he felt when he was playing it, and he could practically speak through that horn of his. But if you look at the Charlie Parker Omnibook, there are a massive collection of 'licks' (I use that term to refer to repeated musical concepts and so on within his playing) that through combination and modification were put together to create some of the most organic solos in jazz.

I think an easy way to think of it is: say you've got a concept of moving from one note to another- it sounds good moving from, say, a C to an A. Then look at all the other possible notes that sound good when moving from a C- G, E, etc (the notes used are for example, not to actually imply that they sound good). Now if you add in the ideas from moving from all the other notes in the chromatic scale, add in runs of notes a few notes long, and rhythmic variation and the sheer varieties of solos and songs you can put together is completely monstrous. That, to me, is how most people improvise.

 

[JayfromDeeKay]

For me, I found the way to become a better improvizer is to do listening exercises, so I can recognize different intervals, and then linking that to where these notes are on the bass. That way, when I get a musical idea (say, the tune should jump to THIS note now), I'm more likely to hit the correct note on the instrument.

My ultimate goal could therefore clearly be said to be in the "if you can think it, you can play it"-genre.

I don't, however, think that this is in opposition to what you're saying, because musical thinking (or singing) isn't "free" from our playing/listening histories and/or the current musical context either. There is no reason to think that a tune I just conjure up in my mind right now is any 'freeer' than what I've learned (licks, etc.) on the bass. But that history is what gives us our particular style.

Great post, by the way, very interesting discussion!

 

[Otso]

To deliberately try to play something impressive and/or to satisfy your own ego - is IMO where it often goes wrong. Play for the music while listening to others and it's generally OK as long as you have put the work in.

I think there's a place for a bit of "showing off", like in the virtuosic pieces of the 19th century. Well, of course it works best when combined with a good musical idea, but IMO the virtuosity adds a lot to the intensity of the music.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I think there's a place for a bit of "showing off", like in the virtuosic pieces of the 19th century. ...

But that is hardly relevant to "improvisation" which is what we are talking about - 19th century virstuosos were playing written pieces and were not involved in collective improvisation, in the same sense as say, contemporary Jazz!

 

[Ed Fuqua]

As useless as you feel the "sing it, then play it" advice (I would have to add that the subtext to this is what many of us, me in particular, have been saying you have to work on HEARING what's going on) is, THAT is ultimately what is going on in the playing of folks like Bird, Prez, etc. They are NOT "thinking" about what notes will work, that are not "throwing in" notes. They HEAR what they are going to play as a cogent musical response to what's going on around them. They HEAR the harmonic framework, that suggest melodic direction to them (based on the depth of their vocabulary) and they PLAY THAT.

You also need to more specifically define what you're speaking about. You say improvisation, but then you start talking almost exclusively about improvisation in the jazz idiom. There's lots more than that going on- quwali singers improvise, gamelan players, music of the middle east, baroque organists, romantic era violinists etc etc etc. But the APPROACH to improvisation in each kind of music is pretty different and in many ways a lot more regimented or parameterized than jazz.

I feel pretty strongly about the conversational model for jazz improvisation. It's not just the soloist, EVERYBODY on the stand is making a statement that is malleable and responsive to input from any of the players. As long they can HEAR what's going on, in the moment. You used the word "original", did you create any original words when you typed your post? Well, no. Everything you used was an English word that existed already. Does that mean your post was either a reproduction or something you typed somewhere else or a pastiche of sentences that you cut and pasted? No, of course not. You had an internal conception of WHAT you wanted to say, you had a vocabulary that you could manipulate with some skill and nuance HOW to say what you wanted. Remove this exchange from a concrete, editable format (words on a page) and put it into free and open air with contributions by others made in time and you have a pretty good model for being on the stand with a group of improvising jazz musicians. And I don't know about you, but i don't sit at home writing possible conversational gambits on little cards or practicing my part of a conversation in advance of actually being in one. If somebody comes up and starts talking to me, I respond to them in a natural fashion, with the vocabulary I have the most nuanced control over, that communicates the meaning of what I intend.

 

[emblymouse]

While I've perhaps listened to '5000' sources, only a precious few resonate with me to the extent they make up my palette. Just as this input and selection is 'all about me' as the individual I am, so is the output of improvisation. This is how you can identify that player soloing after a bar or 2. I can be a part of a evolving conversation and still have a consistant take on things.

I consider improvisation one of my strong suits. I can only do it well when I stop conciously thinking about it.

 

[MalcolmAmos]

I bet a lot of us started running the minor pentatonic and calling that improvisation. Then we (I know I did) spent too long trying to do something with modes, but it still sounded like a scale exercise. Finally melody entered into the picture.

Then all those hours of running scale and mode patterns let our ear know what notes sound good and what notes do not and our fingers kinda knew where to go. None of that time was waisted, and we moved on to ......

Chord tones and pentatonic scales re-entered the picture and this time it began to sound like music. Harmonizing a melody line and the relationship between notes and chords became part of the picture. Phrasing entered about this time and I understood a string of notes is just sound and if I left some breathing room that string of notes took on a life of it's own.

Melody wave action - chord tones - three close note phrases - skips of more than a 3rd - melodic runs, things I know sound good now occupy my time.

Improvisation is a process, a journey. The great thing about that is we have something to occupy our time for as long as we want. In public I play the tune, at home I enjoy noodling just me and my instrument.

 

[JTE]

A. First thing I thought of reading the original post was a comment Ron Carter made. I don't have the exact qoute here, but the gist of it was that most jazz bassists are busy trying to come up with a line that'll make the sax player forget the lick he's been practicing all week.

B. Sing then play is something I espouse for people who want to learn to make solos. Why? Because they get so hung up on chords, scales, modes, licks, etc. They too often fail to get to the MUSIC. And that exercise of singing a what you want a solo to sound like, then sitting down and figuring it out exactly is slow and painful, but the only way to get to YOUR song. It totally removes the mechanics of the instrument from the equation.

C. Yeah, the great improvisors do use patterns. And I do agree that learning to solo also includes bouncing ideas around. Steve Howe said his "style" came about because he'd learn a bit of a Chet Atkins lick, and a bit of Hank Marvin one, and a bit of Joe Pass. But he'd not get them exactly right, and so they'd morph into something that was Steve. Then he'd be combining bits of Chet, Hank, and Joe, and those would get mushed up to being Steve. Eric Clapton has said the same thing. He'll hear something in one of his solos and know that one bit is Freddie King and another that's Albert King. But the part that links them is EC. Put enough of that together and you get a voice of your own.

But the larger sense is that being able to improvise a totally new from scratch musical idea, whether an improvised solo or a musical composition, is never totally "new". Why? There are only 12 notes in the world of most musicians, and a limited range of combinations that sound "right". So while Coltrane sounds like 'Trane, and Oscar Peterson sounds like OP, and Duane Allman sounds like Duane, they're using the same colors. They just build their pallets differently.

John

 

[derekd]

My take is, we all need vocabulary starting out. Kids show up for school at first grade knowing a bunch of words and how to string them together into coherant sentences. To me, licks are these words. We all need some vocabulary.

When we get to school, we get introduced (though some before) to the alphabet. It contains all the letters we need to create words, and understand how new words we encounter work. To me, scales are like the alphabet.

So just like you wouldn't randomly run thru the alphabet hoping a suitable word will pop out for the conversation you are trying to have, it doesn't make any sense to me to run scales in the hopes that some musical statement comes out.

However, this is what I see and hear from MOST bass and guitar players during solos. Joe Diorio (jazz guitarist/educator) is quoted as saying that on the very best nights, he is improvising maybe only 30%, and the rest is a mix of the ideas he has spent time working on.

So for a jazz master to say 30% is new on his best night, I am shooting for 5-10%.

 

[StyleOverShow]

...I feel pretty strongly about the conversational model for jazz improvisation. It's not just the soloist, EVERYBODY on the stand is making a statement that is malleable and responsive to input from any of the players....

Nicely put, particularly cogent words for the jazz context where you cannot be a silent partner.

I would also add that there are two components (at least) to improvising: harmonic or melodic, where you play off the melody or last riff played by the soloist before you; and rhythmic, where you can go with the groove or change it for your solo.

Whatever type of music it is you must serve the essence of the song in the motif of the moment. It's nice not to worry about it but just groove away like dreaming (singing or not).

-richard

 

[SpawnofHastur]

I am not arguing that the 'sing it, then play it' advice is useless in itself. But when it is used as a catch-all response to someone asking for instruction without giving anything to help the person asking achieve it (ear training exercises, for example- my own approach of playing lines over chords, just experimenting, and saying the interval that I'm playing as I play it to get the 'sound' of the intervals internalized, THEN singing the notes first and trying to play them- because you've got the notes internalized, it's more likely to be successful. I summarized it to myself as 'play it and say it, move to say it then play it, and then just play what's in your head).

It's good advice, but without giving people the means of figuring out how to play the stuff they're hearing, it's not particularly useful.

 

[uethanian]

You also need to more specifically define what you're speaking about. You say improvisation, but then you start talking almost exclusively about improvisation in the jazz idiom. There's lots more than that going on- quwali singers improvise, gamelan players, music of the middle east, baroque organists, romantic era violinists etc etc etc. But the APPROACH to improvisation in each kind of music is pretty different and in many ways a lot more regimented or parameterized than jazz.

totally...i met with a sitar student yesterday and it blew my mind what he was saying about improvisation. it is a lot more regimented than jazz, but in very different ways...things like for a particular raga you can only play ascending in a certain pattern, and only descending in another pattern (and the patterns aren't necessarily linear). so yes both are to be considered 'improvisation' but they are very different worlds intellectually.

 

[Ed Fuqua]

It's good advice, but without giving people the means of figuring out how to play the stuff they're hearing, it's not particularly useful.

I invite you to examine my posts and assess whether or not I provide "teh means"....

 

[SpawnofHastur]

Understand that I was not referring to your response in particular- it was specifically in terms of using the response as a cookie-cutter response.

Your response is a good one.