Your views of improvisation?

[Bruce Lindfield]

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.

Well that's the point - when we speak or sing, we do so in phrases or sentences that make some sense and have a shape.

We are not just plucking random letters and scattering them about in the forlorn hope of saying something meaningful - like monkeys with typewriters....

When you sing, you tend to shape phrases and get a sense of maybe a four bar phrase - how it feels etc. But you hear beginners to improvising - just playing random notes that are technically in the key or even if you're lucky - the chord being played.

But unless those notes are formed into meaningful phrases then they will always sound like beginners.

The nature of our instruments - the curse some might say - is that you can look at a fingerboard and think - ah I can pick any of those notes from that shape and they will work....

Which is something you wouldn't do if you were singing or talking...?

 

[Chris K]

Some of you guys, like me, might have played other instuments in the past.
My idea would be that people who play "melody" instruments, like horns, violin etc. have an advantage over bass players trying to improvise over melodies.
Guitar and piano players are better at harmonic improvisation.

Perhaps I'm only busting open doors, but I believe people who start with bass and keep to that should compensate for this disadvantage by giving lots and lots of attention to hearing exercises and to playing both melodies and chords.

 

[Dr_Funkdamental]

+1000. Thats one reason why when it comes to improvisation, I actually dont listen to alot of bass players for ideas. I listen to horn players. One reason is, playing bass, you get kind of stuck in "Root" thinking and the build of the chords, which makes alot of our solos sound fundamental-ish alot.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

Yes - when you hear a great Jazz trumpet player improvising - it's like a whole different world - and I think that's often related to the voice. So I have talked to a few Jazz trumpeters and they say they keep the melody and lyrics of a standard in their head when playing a solo and that it's very close to singing!

Bringing the thread back on topic!!

 

[SpawnofHastur]

Back on topic?

Hell no!

A thread on improvisation should be able to meander and go where it needs to go- as long as it's being informative and not just "NO U!"

Keep going, off-the-rails thread, keep going!

 

[Sbassman Scratch]

Some of you guys, like me, might have played other instuments in the past.
My idea would be that people who play "melody" instruments, like horns, violin etc. have an advantage over bass players trying to improvise over melodies.
Guitar and piano players are better at harmonic improvisation.

Perhaps I'm only busting open doors, but I believe people who start with bass and keep to that should compensate for this disadvantage by giving lots and lots of attention to hearing exercises and to playing both melodies and chords.

I've been studying some of the lines John Goldsby transcribes in his Jazz Bass book (most recently Red Mitchell FWIW) and it is pretty amazing to see the harmonic ideas some guys bring to their playing. As you suggest, the ones who do (many, not all) also play other instruments as well. They are clearly not grounded in the root, though they can go there when necessary.


I think the flip side of this is that they are playing with musicians of equal stature. You can't pull that harmonic stuff off if the soloist is not secure, or if you can't turn on a dime and remind everyone where they are by slipping into and out of the chord tones when needed.


As a side note I'd only observe that a lot of what gets called improvisation in lesser hands is little more than embellishment.