Practicing Improvisation: Aim Mostly For How to Move, Not For What to Play

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Virtually all music disciplines share one thing in common: The movement of sound. This of course involves time and rhythm, even in the most seemingly out-of-tempo and arhythmic music.

It could be said that the improvising musician’s skill lies in having the ability to sponataneously turn artistic impulses into ideas that manifest themselves into moving sound.

Students of improvisation (from beginner to pro) approach this reality in various ways. Some spend huge amounts of time memorizing stylized patterns, licks, solo transcriptions and so forth. For sure this leads to maintaining and cultivating the ability to “move the sounds” to create the music.

If you’re working constantly on these things, more music comes out of you when you improvise. This is largely because you know “what to play” as you improvise a solo.

If you approach improvisation this way, your solos will most likely sound consistently controlled, melodically sound, stylistically accurate, cogent, and full of clear intention. All good things, without a doubt.

But if you ever want to get to a deeper level of playing, a more personal level, you need to shift your emphasis from “what to play”, to, “how to move”. I’m talking specifically here about taking a step back from working with pre-formed ideas (licks, patterns, etc.) and instead aiming at working with the materials of the music on a much broader level. Diving deeply into the materials of the music to expand your ability to move the sounds with ever increasing spontaneity and surprise (both to the listener and to yourself).

Now, it could be argued that the memorizing of licks, patterns, transcriptions, etc., leads to all this. To a large degree this is entirely true. Studying these things to the point of absorbing their logic, and ultimately transcending them, is a worthy aim for the serious improvising musician, and can set a foundation strongly rooted in the tradition of the art form.

But if you want to significantly increase your chances of playing something fresh each time you improvise, you’ve got to start lessening your use of the pre-packaged stuff. You’ve got to leave the formulas alone and start looking toward two broader targets: Increasing your rhythmic imagination and control, and re-thinking and expanding how to organize pitches.

In an eye opening interview with saxophone legend, Joe Henderson, by Mel Martin (himself a formidable and highly gifted saxophonist, improviser and composer), Joe addresses this question of “formulas” quite well:

Mel Martin: Everybody wants your formula. How many students have come to you and said, ‘Joe, what are those patterns?’

Joe Henderson: And those are the kind of students I don’t take. I want to effect the part of their brain to create these things. When you think about this in a certain way, there is no formula.

Mel Martin: What they hear as formula is actually something you created spontaneously out of all the resources that you have at your command. (Brilliant!)

Mel Martin’s comment absolutely sums up what I’m talking about here. Joe could move the sounds differently, gloriously, surprisingly, every time he played. Melodically, harmonically and rhythmically magnificent without exception.

Here are some things you can do to help you shift your focus from specifically what to play, to playing (again quoting Mel Martin from his comment above) spontaneously out of the resources that you have at your command:

Make rhythm primary-Rhythmic variation literally has no limits. It is the thing that makes music, music. More so than anything else. It is the language of the universe. Yet it’s amazing that many jazz improvisers have a rather limited rhythmic conception and base from which to draw ideas. Start moving away from practicing all your tonal material in symmetrical patterns of eighth-note, sixteenth-note and triplet patterns. Aim for three things: Polyrhythms (e.g., 5 eighth notes over 2 beats), polymeter (e.g., organizing eighth note melodic patterns in 4/4 to imply 3/4) and rhythmic displacement. Becoming masterful at rhythmic displacement is a key element in all this. Take any melodic idea you have in mind and practice starting it from various places in the measure (e.g, up beat of 1, down beat of 2, upbeat of 2, etc.) Gaining this kind of rhythmic control and imagination will consistently help you find new ways to move the sounds. And of course, practice in odd metered time signatures. Every day. Break that “4/4” predictability (though if you practice this way often enough, your 4/4 playing goes to a whole new level of creative possibilities).

Turn everything you practice into melody-Rather than playing mindless scale patterns from the bottom of your range to the top, create patterns and ideas that sound melodic to you out of these scales (or chords, etc.). Make the organization and movement of the notes be always interesting and pleasing to you aesthetically. Work toward using your musical materials in ways that connect you to your creative, expressive self. Develop your technique to become the servant of that expression.

Rethink tonality-There really is no such thing as “mastering” the scales, chords and intervals. There are always new ways to organize this material. This was a big part of Joe Henderson’s approach. A great way to explore familiar tonalities in unfamiliar ways is to extract and regroup. For example, you can take a symmetrical, non-tonal scale like the diminished scale and organize the notes into tonal (major and minor) triad combinations that still have the tensions of the diminished scale, but have a very different color. Thought, curiousity and exploration are all you need to find seemingly limitless new tonal ideas.

Broaden your sense of time feel and articulation-If you’re a jazz musician, stop swinging everything. You can always go back to that feel anytime you want. But getting stuck into one time feel sort of locks your brain into thinking one way about organizing and moving the sounds.Try improvising over a song or a set of chord changes without your swing feel, and you’ll find many new ways to organize and move the notes. Same with articulation. Practice improvising with many different specific articulation patterns. It’s especially helpful to practice an articulation in an odd rhythmic grouping (e.g., 5) against an even time signature (4/4). Yet another thing you can do to really help broaden your rhythmic imagination.

Improvise slowly-I can’t emphasize enough the importance of slow improvisation (I’ll be writing an article about this specifically in the near future). By improvising on tunes, changes, themes, modes, etc. at very slow tempos (I’m talking about quarter note equals 50-70) you give yourself the chance to discover many new ways to work with your musical materials, many new ways to move.

Shift your thinking from the more specific “what to play”, to the more general “how to move”, and (ironically) you’ll never be at a loss for what to play. What worked for Joe Henderson just might work for you.

The Difference Between Playing Music Normally And Playing Music Naturally

Is The Art Of Improvisation A Relative Thing?

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Many musicians define themselves (or could otherwise be categorized) as being primarily interpretive musicians, or primarily improvising musicians. In other words, their main creative impulses lie either in interpreting the musical thoughts of others, or in composing their own music right on the spot. When you put it this way it seems like an either/or situation. You are, or you aren’t. Or you’re both.

But is it as simple, as black and white, as that? To me, it begs the question, “What is improvising?” I don’t doubt that lots of musicians (and critics) have very clear and ready answers for that question. Strangely enough, I don’t.

I do know that when I’m improvising, a very unique and beautiful process is taking place. For me, it’s a form of meditation, a way of finding my way back to my own internal temple of peace and joy.

I also know is that I’m making countless creative decisions (almost unconsciously) moment to moment in order to let something release from within me. But it doesn’t feel to me as if I’m creating the music, creating the flow of pitches and rhythms. It’s more like I’m just following them.

These days, I spend about half of my music listening time with classical recordings. Interpretive musicians at play, as it were. One of the things that thrills me the most is to hear the stunning differences in interpretation between various artist performing a given piece.

Even though these artists are only “interpreting” the music, I’m amazed at the seemingly endless creative choices they’ve made with the music. They, too, sound as if the music is rising up from within them, being created in the moment. It sounds improvised to me.

When I attend a great classical concert performance, it seems as if the artist is making some of these choices moment by moment, feeling the unfolding pulse of the music. Risks are being taken. The sound of surprise.

And ironically, I can go to some jazz performances where the so-called “improvised music” doesn’t sound or feel to me at all improvised. It sounds canned and far too premeditated. No risks are being taken. The sound of craftsmanship, skill, taste, cogency….but not really the sound of surprise.

So it got me to thinking, is the act of improvisation an absolute thing, or is it a direction on a path that can be followed? And are dynamic interpretive musicians, to some degree, improvisers or simply creative in another way?

If there is a continuum, a direction, toward improvisation, I think it mirrors closely our tendency toward verbal communication. It’s ironic that sometimes in the most potentially heartfelt moments (like at a wedding, funeral, or graduation ceremony) some speakers can stand up and say something that sounds absolutely pre-packaged, as if it were lifted right off of a Halmark greeting card. “I wish you health, long life, happiness and eternal blessings…..”

Nice sentiments, for sure, but are they genuinely expressed and created specifically in the moment for that occasion? More important, do these sentiments rise from that creative, emotional well within? Is it improvisation, or a regurgitation of something previously heard?

Don’t get me wrong, I think these kinds of sentiments are often sincere, they’re just so unoriginal, and thus sound startlingly impersonal. Contrast that to somebody who gets up, with no public speaking polish or experience, and speaks from the heart, improvising a moving speech. Speaking personally. The sound of surprise.

I think we’ve all had similar experiences when we’ve heard musical performances. You can’t plan magic. It just happens, or it doesn’t.

In the realm of modern jazz improvisation, there is a continuum from the mainstream, to the more progressive, to the (for want of a better word) avant-garde. Yet within each of these approaches, styles, genres…whatever you want to call them, there are degrees of true improvisational originality.

I tend to lean toward the left when it comes to jazz and improvised music, yet I’ve been on the bandstand with some really “free” players who turn the entire set into a Hallmark greeting card moment.

I’ve also experienced creative transcendence and spiritual power playing with, I guess what you might call mainstream stylists, sometimes just playing standards. To me it has less to do with the music than it does with the musicians. (I’ve also experienced the opposite phenomenon many, many times.)

If you transcribe or read through enough Charlie Parker solos, you’ll find he had many pre-packaged musical ideas (licks). On the other hand, if you transcribe a Sonny Rollins or Joe Henderson solo, you’ll be harder pressed to find a “lick”. Take down a Warne Marsh solo or two and I doubt that you’ll ever find anything like a lick.

Does this mean I think that Rollins, Henderson and Marsh were superior improvisers compared to Parker? Not at all. Parker, in my opinion was as spontaneous as they come. That music just hits you right in the soul when you hear it. It still excites me every time I listen to it.

It’s just that Charlie Parker had codified some of his own musical thinking into components. Yet he always created surprise by stepping in and out of these components, naturally, sincerely and spontaneously. And in practically any of his solos, you’ll hear absolute, first time creation of many musical ideas. The sound of surprise.

What makes Charlie Parker ultimately brilliant is how he combines these codified ideas, how he organizes them in any given solo. The variations and permutations he makes, that he discovers for the first time as he plays. Creative decisions being made by the hundreds in each solo. Again, the sound of surprise.

Warne Marsh, on the other hand, had a different approach, a different impetus with the material of improvisation. He had deeply studied and absorbed solos from Lester Young, Parker, and other greats. He’d spent a huge amount of time working with patterns, inversions, substitutions, rhythmic freedom and displacement.

But his aim wasn’t to codify his work into concrete, packaged ideas. In fact he was careful not to. His brilliance lay in the spontaneous manipulation of his musical materials as he followed his muse, rather than in the reorganization of codified ideas. Creative decisions being made by the hundreds too, just in a different way. The sound of surprise.

So where are you on the improvisational continuum?

Do you have tons of licks memorized in all keys so that you’re never at a loss for what to play? So that you never the possibility of sounding wrong or unsure? Or do you let yourself find the music anew each time you play, without any safety net? Or are you somewhere in between?

Wherever you are, one thing is for certain: to improvise more deeply, more genuinely, you need to give up the idea of playing it safe, of always sounding like you wrote out your solo. In short, you have to let go of the idea of always knowing.

I remember hearing a story by Chick Corea about Thelonious Monk. Chick’s band was on the same bill as Monk’s band at some concert in New York. Monk played first. The band starts with the iconic, “Rhythm-n-ing”. They play a stunning performance. Chick is astounded. Then Monk launches into the second piece of the concert. Rhythm-n-ing again. Chick says the second version is nothing at all like the first, all the musicians playing completely differently (yet equally brilliantly) than on the first version. And then into the third version of the same piece. Monk’s band ends up playing “Rhythm-n-ing” four times, each version stunningly different than the previous. That’s the entire set. Chick Corea is completely edified. (I was edified just hearing the story for the first time!)

In my opinion, that’s improvising at the very top of the creative spectrum. That’s the sound of surprise.

Easy Precision

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One sure fire way to get somebody to tense their bodies up is to tell them to hold a particular position. As soon as you say, “Good! Exactly like that. Now don’t move a muscle”, you can bet that they’ve stiffened themselves up and stopped (or at least significantly interfered with) their breathing, in an attempt to hold the perfect position. This clearly is never helpful for optimum musical performance.

Yet this is the same kind of mental direction many musicians employ when trying to play with a certain preconception of precision. You can even see in performance sometimes as a musician transitions from playing the “easy” parts in a piece to the ones that he or she perceives as difficult. From balanced, present and mobile, to tense, anticipatory and held. All because of a shift in thinking.

There’s no single thing, no single stimulus, that puts musicians in that “precision” mode. It could be fast tempos, challenging dynamics, elaborate articulation, breathing demands, or a host of other things.

For an improvising musician it can also be such things as unfamiliar or challenging time signatures, asymmetrical (or otherwise non-conventional) forms, harmonic complexity, etc. In these moments you can hear an artist go from intuitive and expressive to unyieldingly craftsman-like and mechanical (and that’s often when it goes “well”).

If you observe their bodies, you’ll likely see lots of holding and bracing as they try to “make the changes”, or whatever else they might be distracted by.

But if you ask most musicians (whether improvisers or interpretive musicians) about their best performances, they’ll often convey a different experience. You might hear talk about being in the zone, having an effortless freedom to play with remarkable precision.

From a neurobiological point of view this makes sense. What happens in these “in the zone” situations is that the player is simply letting all the training and practice fall into place unimpeded by the often distracting over-desire to play everything precisely. This allows the brain to most effectively send out the right messages to the body to carry out the demands of a highly skilled activity such as music. The music almost seems like it plays itself when this happens.

There are, in the simplest sense, really only two things necessary for this to happen: an intention to play the music (obviously), coupled with the clarity in thinking to send the most helpful messages from your brain to the rest of your body to fulfill this intention.

In Alexander Technique jargon we call this good direction. Specifically, using your thinking in the best way to support the best outcome.

When you ask a musician (or athlete, or any other type of performer) what they’re thinking when they’re in the zone, you might hear something like, “That’s just it! I’m not thinking at all.”

But that’s not quite true. (As long as you’re not unconscious, you’re always thinking). What these people are really talking about is that their thinking is seamlessly integrated into their performance. In essence, they don’t notice their thinking. More important, they’re not distracted by it.

Now of course, any good performance is dependent upon good preparation. And even in practice (or especially in practice!) this issue of rigid precision is a challenge that must be dealt with. It’s a matter of how you think when you play. And a key principle in helpful thinking is this: Ease supports precision.

When people say the masters make it look easy to play, they’re quite right. To the masters, playing music is easy, precision and all. It mostly involves, balance, release and clear musical intentions.

Here are a few things to aim toward in helping you find your easy precision:

Notice your thinking and notice your reaction-When you are trying to play something that seems to demand from you great precision, take note of your thoughts. Where does your attention go? What is your self-talk like? What are you aiming for specifically? Then notice your bodily reactions. Do you stiffen your neck and shoulders? Do you hold your breath? Do you lock your knees? Do you tense your hands? What happens to your balance? Whatever your habit is, remember that it is preceded by your thoughts. Change your thoughts, change your habits.
Let yourself move-If you’re playing something that tends to put you into that “held” precision mode, see if you can change your response from rigidity to release. If you watch the great classical virtuosi, you see this time and again during performance. Let yourself move. That doesn’t mean you have to move in any particular way. Just allow for the possibility of movement. Allow yourself to respond to the demands of the music, to the ebb and flow of the music. You might move a little, a lot, or hardly at all. It’s all good as long as you’re not bracing yourself into place.
Take in the bigger picture-If the precision demands of the music seem to involve one particular part of your body (like your fingers for example) don’t fall into the trap of putting all your attention there. Sure, you need to be cognizant of the particular part, but you also need to expand your awareness to take in other things: the rest of your body, the sound of the music itself, the response of the other musicians you’re playing with (or the click of the metronome), etc. As a musician it is imperative that you actively practice building an inclusive, expanded awareness as you play (as opposed to a compartmentalized hyper-focus that works against your brains best functioning).
Don’t try to get past the precise part-Don’t let yourself get wrapped up into trying to get to the end of the difficult part. That should never be your intention. That just takes you out of the present moment, out of the zone. Always stay with process. Process means putting the quality of how you make the music at top priority. The process that will help you the most is what I’ve outlined above: managing your reactions, aiming toward release and easy movement, and utilizing an inclusive attention. If you practice staying with the process, the end result will always take care of itself in the best possible way. Always.

In reality, it might seem like this so called easy precision is elusive, inconsistent and difficult to find. In principle, it is available to you at any moment. And it’s all starts by changing your thoughts.

Melody And Clear Intention

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When is a musical idea melodic? What makes it so? These are questions that musicians could debate for an eternity. If you’re an improvising musician these questions are particularly pressing because they not only reflect how you play, but also, what you feel, hear and imagine. They bring your deepest aesthetic impulses into the light for all to know.

There is a conventional wisdom in jazz circles that certain artists were/are more melodic than others. For example, many would say without a doubt that Stan Getz was a far more melodic improviser than John Coltrane. (These very same folks might revere both artists equally, or might even prefer Coltrane over Getz.)

I personally don’t think Stan Getz was any more, nor less, melodic than John Coltrane. I think both of them provided great melodic content in their respective improvisational work. It’s just that their melodic conceptions were different from one another. If Coltrane wasn’t melodic, I don’t think he would have ever touched people as deeply as he did.

But you might say, “What about Coltrane’s ‘sheets of sound’? What about all that harmonic and sonic exploration? What about all those patterns? What about all those notes he played?”

To me, that was the melodious John Coltrane. Why? Because Coltrane improvised with the very quality that makes all great improvisers sound melodious to me: Clear intention. He simply took the materials of music he’d studied and let them come through him in purposeful self expression.

Sure, Coltrane was always pushing the bounds, working things out on the spot as he improvised. He even apologized in an interview once that his music wasn’t “more pretty”. But like human speech, where there is intention, there is meaning (even if it’s not so apparent to everyone listening).

So I guess the question is, How do you hear his music? Do you hear melody?

In a rather remarkable book by musicologist, composer, and advocate of contemporary music, Nicholas Slonimsky, titled The Lexicon Of Musical Invective, you can find evidence that melody doesn’t always sound like melody when people first hear it.

In The Lexicon, Slonimsky presents various reviews by respected critics from different periods in classical music. Here you can find such great composers as Beethoven and Brahms being skewed for their lack of melodious work. “Barbaric” is the way one critic described Beethoven’s conception of melody.

Yet nowadays you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody (even if they don’t like classical music) who would say Beethoven’s work is not melodious. They might call it boring, but they could still easily hum the themes to his symphonies.

When I first started playing jazz in the 1970’s I remember being dumbstruck when meeting several older jazz fans who thought Charlie Parker permanently ruined the music, because he destroyed any semblance of melodic expression. “I only like jazz that’s melodic”, said one of them. (Charlie Parker not melodic!?! Seriously!?!)

All melodic content follows certain laws of nature. There is the building of tension, the sustainment of tension, and the release of tension. Yet there is no order, formula or rule that this necessarily follows. Even the perception of these elements is hightly subjective to the listener. But it rarely is to the great improviser. As time goes by, it’s often a matter of the listener finally being able to hear the melodious intentions of the improviser.

One of my favorite jazz improvisers of all time is the tenor saxophonist, Warne Marsh. I always find it interesting what other musicians say about Warne when they hear him for the first time. If they don’t like him, then of course it’s because “he’s just playing notes, not making any melodic sense”. Or, “his sound is just weird.”

But even some of the folks who respect Warne don’t find him to be a particularly “melodic improviser”.

One of my dear colleagues once told me, “His harmonic and rhythmic explorations were incredible..not particularly melodic, but highly interesting, and clearly demonstrating a high degree of discipline and skill.” I had to chuckle to myself when I heard that, because to me, Warne played nothing but melodies. That’s sort of all he did, letting one beautiful idea influence and flow into the next. Sometimes at lightening speed, but melodies no less.

Maybe the role of the great improviser, of the innovative improviser, is to lead us into new ways of hearing melody, of comprehending meaning in this human endeavor.

So how can you become a more melodic improviser? Simply clarify your intentions so you can broaden your own definition of melody. Here’s two things you can do to help you with this:

First, stay on a continuous quest to explore the elements of music (rhythm, harmony, tonal organization, intervalic shapes, genres, forms,etc.) and to expand your conception and command of them. Always strive to find new ways to organize the musical material…new patterns and new approaches. Build your own language in a way that makes melodic sense to you.

Second, learn to clearly hear everything that you practice. Make singing a big part of your daily practice. Every time you start to study a new pattern of any sort, make sure you spend enough time learning to sing it easily, readily and clearly. Strive to hear the patterns you create as melody, as something you draw upon with intention. As I get older, I find myself singing more and playing less when it comes to exploring new material.

So let’s keep those questions about “what makes a musical idea melodic?” open to exploration and interpretation. And maybe, ultimately something sounds melodic because it sounds familiar enough to seem so. No matter the reason, aim for learning to play whatever you play like you mean it.