How does one turn scales and arps into music?
It takes years to develop a personal style.
Start by varying the dynamics and using register changes, blue notes and other expressive devices.
think of your solo as having a beginning, a peak of intensity, and an obvious conclusion.
As you learn more songs, you find that your ear improves.
Try the following procedures when learning a composition:
1. Internalize the melody.
2. Study the harmony and form
3. Write a solo on the form of the tune
This is helpful to clarify what you are hearing in a song.
Beginning students in improvisation find that even though they are improvising within the correct key center, their melodic lines do not create a sense of tension and resolution cuz they are not hearing the implications of chord progression.
As one grows musically, the ability to improvise inside the chord changes and define the harmonic structure of the song deepens.
Professionals take the process one step further — they hear the chords in their heads but choose to play outside of the harmonic structure. This approach works well when the improvised lines hav a strongly defined rhythm and periodically touch base with important chord changes such as the V-I relationships. A discreet listener will hear the dissonance as intentional and the results can be very exciting.
Everyone can improve their ability to recognize melodic and harmonic relationships.
1. Sing a phrase and play it on the piano
2. Play call and response with another musician.
3. Play melodic, harmonic and rhythmic dictation exercises.
4. Transcribe melodies, bass lines, chord progressions, and improvised solos from recordings.
5. Learn to play chord progression on piano.
6. Play along with an unknown chord progression using only your ear to pick out the desirable notes.
As your powers of inner hearing grow there will be a marched change in the quality of your improvisation.
Kenny Werner describes the process:
‘I never try to play anything I’m practicing. I’m only interested in the effect practicing has on my playing.”
Practice as slowly as necessary in order to play the most difficult passages cleanly and in rhythm.
Most players make the mistake of trying to play things too quickly. This reinforces bad technique and poor rhythm.
Start slowly and gradually increase the tempo.
An alternative to this slow, gradual approach is to practice at fast tempos but only a small portion of the exercise, gradually adding more notes until the entire passage is learned.
Extend the range, change the rhythm or create your own variations of each exercise.
Experiment with a variety of rhythmic accents and expressive devices.
Do not try to practice too many concepts simultaneously. It is better to thoroughly master a few patterns that appeal to you, rather than to superficially practice a large amount of material.
Whatever you choose to practice, work on it until you can play it without having to think about it. Only when you have learned something at this deep level will you be able to merge in an unpremeditated manner during an improvisation.
Sing while fingering the instrument without playing.
Also try practising away from the piano while imagining yourself playing.
Knowing Chord-scale relationship simplify the harmonic demands of the tune.
Many chord progressions are: 1 6 2 5
I vi ii V I
Many such chord progressions utilize the same notes in their respective scales.
So when you recognize these relationships, you can reduce a multiplicity of chores to a few basic key areas.
For example: All the Things You Are
the chord progression is:
Fm7 — Bbm7 — Eb7 — AbM7 — DbM7 — Dm7 G7 CM7
these chords can be analyzed as:
It is important to hear to hear these theoretical relationships, not just understand them intellectually.
Rhythm is the most important component of jazz.
Melody and chords are less important.
Duke Ellington standard: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t go that swing.”
African American musical styles: blues, gospel, rap, funk and jazz — place a strong accent on the 2nd and 4th beat of the measure. These are considered weak beats in western art music traditions.
When the rhythm swings, an uneven division of the 8th note is used.
In medium to slow tempos, 8th notes tend to be played like triplets with the first two notes tied.
As tempo increases, relationship between teh notes tends to even out. And within these parameters, each artist finds his or her own unique interpretations. Usually the first beat is played long while the offbeats are frequently accented.
It is like doo-BAH
When accenting the offbeats, and de-emphasizing certain notes, an underlying polyrhythm and infectious sense of swing is created. When too many downbeats are accented, music sounds corny and square.
Some artists have come up with the following 8 practices that you need for improvisation:
1. Internalize the rhythmic nature of the music
2. Understand jazz theory (forms, harmonic progressions, scale/chord relationships)
3. Practice scales, arpeggios, patterns, phrases derived from the vocab of jazz
4. develop the ear
5. transcribe improvised solos by the masters
6. Memorize jazz compositions and standard repertoire
7. Listen and respond to other musicians whom you are playing with
8. Become attuend to the inner workings of the mind, the realtionship between your inner self and the music you create, and play spontaneously without undue premeditations
Each piano student must deal with what works best for them.
I’ve seen some courses working magic for some students yet they do nothing for others.
What makes the difference between one course to another?
It has to do with the individual talents and learning style.
Our learning style changes as we progress. As a beginner, we might prefer a certain regiment learning style. We want to practice the material backward and forward.
But as one grow and develops one’s talent, the learning style also changes.
What I practice today is certainly not what I practiced years ago when I began improvisation.
While books, courses, and teachers are valuable catalysts in developing our musicianship, ultimately each one of has to become attuned to one’s particular needs,and the ability to discern our strengths and weaknesses. We need to be able to diagnose the areas we are weak in and devise strategies to overcome them in a constructive manner.
Ultimately we need to become our own teacher and teach ourselves. As we grow, we gain insights to know how to teach ourselves. In the process, we have understood the path of understanding in such a way that we know how to teach others also because of what we have been able to experience ourselves.
The following are questions asked by beginning students who want to improvise:
How do I get started?
Where do I begin? (Sounds familiar)
What do I practice?
Can improvisation be learned?
Is it spontaneous that there is no skill involved?
How did the pros learn to improvise?