To me the most fundamental skill for an improvisor to have is good time. Specifically, being able to perceive and control tempo. It’s probably impossible to create rhythmic interest and thematic development without first having a strong internal clock as a point of reference. (You never hear a beautifully improvised solo where the player’s time is unsure and squirming all over the place, do you?) Even when you’re playing with some kind of outside time keeping source (whether a rhythm section, conductor or metronome, or?) you have to be able to internalize and respond to the time.

Good time in music is always flexible of course. If you’ve ever played with a rigid, metronomic drummer, you’ve probably found the time to be less than inspiring, and even somewhat suffocating. The tempo needs to be clear,  but it needs to be able to breathe, too. That said, the good time keepers have a tremendous internal sense of the default tempo of the piece they’re playing and don’t stray too far from it, always seeming to come back to it. Doing so helps maintain the integrity of the music.

For the improvisor, one of the fundamental skills is to seamlessly integrate melodic thinking and construction (pitch choices) with the perceived (internalized) tempo. Of course, playing with other musicians means being able to be primarily responsive to the collective tempo by the group. This, too, demands the ability to hear and imagine the collective push and pull of the time.

If you listen to Thelonious Monk, you can often hear the rhythm section pushing against his very strong sense of tempo. Monk was a master of finding the tempos in the “cracks” (you know, those tempos that are either a metronome setting too fast or two slow to stay at comfortably). Whereas most players would default up or down with the tempo to get out of the cracks and back into the “comfortable” (familiar is more like it) tempo, Monk would just sit there in the middle of it. This is what often created such excitement in his music and often characterized the piece he was playing.

To develop this kind of strong internal sense of tempo you have to be able to clearly perceive time as it passes inside your body and mind. That is a matter of imagination. Imagining how the time passes is what it really means to “internalize” the beat.  I’d like to offer three exercises (games, really) to help you to imagine the time more vividly (and accurately). They involve working with a metronome, with and without your instrument. I’ve presented them in a sequence, the idea being that you build one skill solidly before you proceed to the next. Here they are:

1. Canceling the click-Set your metronome to about 80 beats per minute. Listen for at least a minute to the clicks. In your mind, really try to hear each oncoming click before it actually arrives. Now clap your hands on each click. If you can hear the click, you’re either early or late. If you hear nothing but your hands clapping, you’ve landed precisely in the middle of the beat, thus “canceling” out the sound of the metronome. See if you can clap for at least 30 seconds without hearing the click. If you can make it to 30 seconds, slow the metronome down to about 76 and try the same thing. Each time you’re able to cancel the click for at least 30 seconds, lower the tempo setting more. See if you can make it all the way down to 30 beats per minute (this might take weeks to master). If you can imagine the time at this slow tempo, you will have really strengthened your internal clock, and your sense of time will become noticeably better.
2. Finding the cracks-Take a standard song that you know well, or choose a mode or theme to improvise over. Start at the most comfortable tempo and play a chorus or two (or if it’s an open ended form, just play for a minute or two). Next, move the tempo down one metronome setting and play a chorus. Notice if it’s any less comfortable to play at this tempo. If it is, then stay at this tempo and improvise for a while until you find comfort. Then keep moving the tempo down in increments until you find the tempos that are difficult to internalize. Make a note of these metronome settings. You can do the same as you increase the tempo. Obviously as you increase the tempo upward you’ll run into other challenges with technique and with improvising good quality material. The aim here isn’t to see how fast you can play. You’re just trying to see if it’s (for example) more difficult to improvise over Confirmation at 182 beats per minute as compared to 186 beats per minute.
3. Fading the click-Find one of those “in the crack” tempos that is challenging to internalize. Set your metronome to click on beats 2 and 4 (in 4/4 time) in that tempo. Improvise for about 4 or 5 minutes in that tempo. Then, turn the metronome off as you continue to improvise in real time, not missing a beat. Improvise for about a minute or so, then turn the metronome back on to see how close you are to the original tempo. If you can stay fairly close to the metronome tempo for a minute, work on increasing your time away from the metronome. The more vivid your imagination of the tempo becomes, the longer you’ll be able to improvise with a solid sense of the original tempo.