Category Archives: Practicing Improvisation

Something You Are Always Practicing When You Practice Music (Whether You Know It Or Not)

One of the biggest frustrations that many of the musicians have who seek my help as an Alexander Technique teacher is with consistency.

Sometimes this seems to be within the practice cycle itself (some days you have it; others you don’t). And sometimes it seems to be the gap between the practice room and the performance.

There are many reasons for these variances in consistency. But one of the most often neglected reason is this:

No matter what you’re practicing at any given moment, you are, for better or for worse, practicing a state of being.

A state of being. Let that sink in for a moment.

This is beyond merely what some might call “a state of mind” (though it sure starts with that). Your state of being when you practice includes what you are doing with your entire self.

It includes how your thinking is impacting your movements (skill and coordination), your choices, your hearing, your receptiveness and your learning, to mention just a few things.

(This question of the quality of “my state of being” was presented to me on a daily basis as I trained to become an Alexander Technique teacher.)

And this state of being has a profound impact not only on how and what you practice, but also, how you’ll perform.

You might notice that when you’re playing well, you’re also in a fairly easy state of being. Your thoughts seem clear, you feel light, mobile and responsive, perhaps even joyful and playful. You feel present. (There are a few exceptions to this, which of course, makes it the rule.)

Often, when I observe and ask questions to a musician frustrated with inconsistency, I’m met with very telling answers. Lots of negative self talk. Lots of bodily tension. A narrow perception of what is “right”. An inability to stop and redirect thought and effort. A rigidity in pedagogical approach. A lack of play and exploration. And more.

The great news is that if you practice improving your state of being, you’ll improve your practice and performance. You’ll more consistently work toward your potential.

So ask yourself as you practice, “What is my state of being?”

The answer to that question you could include other questions:

How am I using myself? Are my neck and shoulders tense or free? am I bracing myself? Am I breathing freely? Am I letting the ground support me (This is where the Alexander Technique is particularly helpful.)

Where is my focus of attention? Is it narrow and exclusive or broad in inclusive? (e.g., are you overly focused on one aspect of what you’re doing, like your embouchure, bow grip, etc.) Or does it allow me to hear, feel and think in a flexible, responsive way?

What kind of energy is motivating me? Am I approaching this practice session (or performance) with love and interest in the music? Or is it more fear, boredom, or perhaps dread? (Let love lead the way, always, no matter how difficult the music may be.)

Do I let myself take chances? Do I let myself be wrong to explore finding something new, maybe something even better? Am I playful and flexible in my attitude? Can I let myself sound bad for the sake of trying to do something differently?

Do I allow myself to stop? Do I give myself a chance to regroup and get my bearings when something goes wrong, so that I can improve my chances in my next attempt? Or do I just rush on to the next failed attempt, spiralling toward frustration and inefficiency?

Am I kind to myself? Do I discern, i.e., do I objectively recognize a problem or challenge that rises up in my playing, approaching it with kind, helpful thinking? Or do I immediately judge, i.e., subjectively jump to negative, useless self-evaluation the moment something goes wrong? (If you practice speaking kindly to yourself during practice, not only will your practice become more effective, but your performances will be more consistently satisfying.)

And you can take the idea of practicing your state of being outside the practice room, as well. As you stay present with yourself, moving easily and lightly, taking time when you need to, breathing easily, speaking kindly to yourself, and finding love and joy in what you do, you continue to develop two of the most fundamental qualities a performer can have: poise and confidence.

A Highly Effective (And Really Fun!) Way To Improve Your Ears

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There are so many resources available now for improving your ear, both for general musicianship, and more specifically for improvisation. One simple little device that can be immensely helpful is a drone. (I’m of course talking about a device that makes a continuous humming sound, not the aircraft.)

In the past few months, I’ve been spending a little time each day of my practice session using a drone. Besides the improvements I’ve gained in my harmonic imagination, intonation, etc., I’ve simply been having a blast playing with it, and wanted to share some of my ideas and experiences with you.

There are three main skills in which practicing with a drone will help you improve and expand upon:

Intonation
Harmonic recognition/imagination
Rhythmic imagination

Let’s look at these one at a time.

For intonation, playing long tones, melodies, overtones, etc., with a drone is far more effective than practicing with a visual tuner. Learning how to hear and respond immediately to the necessary changes in voicing is fundamental to any wind instrumentalist. (Notice that I said “hear”!)

By practicing long tones with a drone you rely completely upon your aural senses and let your brain know what to do to voice the note most effectively. It’s almost fail proof. All you have to do is play with the drone and cancel out the unpleasant waves you hear. You don’t even need to know specifically what you did physically to make the changes. Just trust your ear and your brain.

A great and really fun way to improve the accuracy of your harmonic ear (as well as to expand it!) is to practice simple improvisation explorations with a drone. By perceiving the drone as a particular point of reference, you can systematically (or randomly, if you prefer) give yourself the experience of hearing how different pitches relate to it.

Here are a few examples of how you can practice this way:

Use the drone pitch as the root of an assigned key center. For example, if your drone is a concert “C”, practice improvising simple melodies with the various tonalities of “C”: major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, Lydian, harmonic major (pentatonic scales, including major, minor and harmonic major), etc. Play around with changing key colors in your improvisation (e.g., going from major to Lydian; melodic minor to harmonic major, etc.) Listen, and enjoy, as you connect intention with aural precision.

Perceive the drone pitch as various degrees of a particular scale. So think of a “C” drone as the root, 2nd, 3rd, etc., as you improvise in a particular “C” tonality. You’ll learn to hear and imagine scale degrees in relation to your melodic statements.

Explore the drone as various altered tensions. You can do this with a scale or chord in mind. For example, you can perceive your “C” drone as the raised 11th of the key of F# major (as a B#, actually), or as the flatted 13th of an E7 chord. By playing around with these tensions this way, you’ll develop a more vivid harmonic imagination, turning “altered tensions” into an actual aural experience instead of a just a theoretical idea.

Drone over a standard song. Choose a tune that is both harmonically complex and enjoyable to improvise over, and set the drone as the tonic root note. Practicing this way will help you to really internalize the modulations found within the harmony of the song.

Have no specific key center in mind. Yes, just improvise/explore freely, noticing how certain combinations of notes work over the drone. Learn to get comfortable with (and recognize) various degrees of dissonance. Just let your mind run free and see what you discover. Or maybe make variations on a simple intervallic pattern.

Practicing with a drone can also really open up your rhythmic imagination. The constancy of the drone sound acts as a kind of support for you to push against, yet provides no specific rhythmic stimulus. At first, this can seem kind of challenging, as perhaps no kind of rhythmic movement comes immediately to mind.

But after even just a short amount of practice, you’ll find yourself imagining and playing multiple rhythmic pulses. As you spend even more time, you can explore various types of odd-metered groupings and time feels, modulating tempos and more. Practicing this way will make rhythmic variation much more available to you as you improvise.

And if you like, you can also practice with a drone and a time source (either a drum loop or metronome) at the same time. This is not only immensely helpful in opening up possibilities, but also, is very meditative, engaging and calming.

It’s not hard to get access to some good drones, these days. Here are a few resources:

I use two different smartphone/tablet apps. I have an iPad, and my favorite is RealTanpura, which simulates the four-stringed drone instrument used in Indian classical music. I like it because it has a beautiful sound, and I can change the pulsation of the drone, as well as choose various other modes (harmonic organizations), speed, pluck rate, etc.

The other app that I use from time to time is Scale-Master, which is a synthesized drone, but comes with various features that are useful, like being able to create specific intervallic drones, and a large range of frequencies.

Recently I’ve been using DroneTone, which has a sampled cello sound. Rich in overtones, it has been particularly helpful for dialing in my intonation/voicing on saxophone.

Whichever you choose, if you start daily practice with a drone, you’ll discover all kinds of new ways to think of and hear music. Your ear will improve, and you’ll have lots of satisfying, highly enjoyable playing experiences.

And if you know of, or use, an app that you think is particularly good, please let me know about it!

New Book: Rhythmic Dissonance

Something You Do When You Practice That Is Always A Good Use Of Your Time

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If you practice patience in one moment of anger, you will escape one hundred days of sorrow.

-Chinese Proverb

Serious, daily musical practice is something that is loaded with speculation and second-guessing. Lots of “should’ve, would’ve and could’ve”, as my father would say.

Whenever I’m giving a practice coaching session to a musician, the topic of practice efficiency is always punctuated with concerns of “wasted time”:

“Maybe I should’ve spent more time on this, instead of that.”

“If I would’ve done this, instead of that, I could’ve achieved my goal sooner.”

And so on…

And this is a fair concern to have, for obvious reasons. Aimless, misdirected practice neither satisfies nor improves a dedicated musician.

But practice efficiency is, in of itself, a lifetime quest. It’s not something you master. It’s something you just get better and better at (if you’re dedicated to improving your process).

I would say that I practice with a high degree of efficiency these days: clearly defined goals, with an effective prescription and implementation of work to attain these goals. I can accomplish a good deal in a relatively short time during my practice session.

Yet I still occasionally find myself, if not “wasting my time” on certain things, at the very least, not working as efficiently as I could and would like to.

Having said that, there is one thing I do in every practice session that is always a good use of my time. I do this many, many times during any given practice session, yet I still don’t do it often enough.

What is it I do?

I stop.

Yes, I simply stop. I pause.

I practice (as the Chinese Proverb above states) being patient.

Now, to be clear, I don’t hesitate. I pause. There’s a difference.

Hesitation is not a choice. Pausing is. Hesitation is usually accompanied by doubt, tension and restriction. Pausing is accompanied by clarity, release and freedom.

What do I do when I pause? Mostly, I redirect my thinking. This redirection can take shape in a variety of ways.

Sometimes, I just need to take the saxophone out of my mouth, and to put my entire self back into neutral for a moment.

I do this when either:

I sense myself accumulating more tension than I’d like to have as I practice a particular thing. Or, when I’ve lost the clarity of purpose, the clarity of thinking, that I know is necessary for me to gain something useful from whatever I’m practicing.

Just letting go of the instrument, letting my arms fall lightly to my sides and asking for my shoulders and neck to release back into length. Very simple.

It’s absolutely amazing how easily I can get back on track, and get right back to constructive, mindful effort during my practice segment by taking time to do this.

So how long to I stop for? However long it takes. Usually it’s a matter of just a few seconds.

But whenever I choose to stop, I always keep the promise I made to give myself time. To not jump right back in without redirecting myself. To bring myself back to choice, instead of reaction.

I’m not talking about taking breaks here in your practice routine. You know, 20 or 30 minutes of practice, punctuated by 5 or 10 minutes of rest. That’s all good, too. And that is a big part of my practice strategy/process.

What I’m talking about is the ability to pause many, many times during, let’s say, a 20-minute practice segment.

As an Alexander Technique teacher, learning to stop and choose is a fundamental skill that I encourage and teach to all my students. It’s essential for change.

I too often observe musicians making a mistake (or another unwanted response) as they are practicing something, and then jump right into again without any change in thinking. When this happens, they tend to just do the same thing they did before that led to the unwanted result.

Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind here:

Doing the same thing over and over again, the same way, but expecting a different result.

As you can discern, that’s not exactly the most efficient use of time and effort.

Whenever you pause to release unnecessary tension, to refresh your thinking, to reaffirm your intention, you are cultivating the conditions in yourself that are most ideal to learn and to play music. You are moving back into the heart of practice efficiency.

I’ve never gotten to the end of a practice session and said to myself, “I shouldn’t have stopped so much.”

But I do sometimes get to the end of a practice session and say to myself, “I probably should’ve stopped more.”

Often when I stop, I realize, too, that I’ve done enough work for the day on the particular thing I’m practicing, and that it’s time to move on. It’s safe to say that as I get better at stopping, I make fewer and fewer repetitions of any particular exercise. I wouldn’t be able to realize this without giving myself the choice to pause and check in with myself.

And it’s not unusual for me to observe a new client practice for the first time and see all the unnecessary, mindless repetitions that are being made.

Rather than 20 or 30 unclear tries at an exercise in order to develop the elusive (and often misleading) idea of “muscle memory”, replace 30 inefficient, mindless tries with 5 clear and well-directed tries. Not only will you save time, but also, you’ll optimize your efforts.

But a big bonus for me is that all the work I’ve done in getting better at stopping has significantly impacted how I improvise.

Just knowing somewhere in the background of my consciousness that I can stop at any moment if I wish, fundamentally changes my phrasing, as well as my note choices. I discover the music as it flows through me, instead of trying to force it to go somewhere. This always allows me to find surprise and delight as I improvise. A beautiful thing, indeed.

So give yourself a chance to pause more. Work on it consciously. Make it a skill that you dedicate yourself to developing. It’s always time well spent. Let me know what you think!

Improvisation: Developing Your “Other” Ear

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It’s an exciting time right now in modern jazz. There are some younger artists (younger than me, anyhow!) who are cultivating unique, highly personal voices.

As a tenor saxophonist, I think of artists such as Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Melissa Aldana, Matt Otto, Bill McHenry, Ben Wendel, Joel Frahm and Donny McCaslin (to name but a few) as examples of an ever-expanding lexicon in the great jazz tradition.

All of these artists are very sophisticated harmonically, pushing the boundaries of extension and substitution over song forms. Usually when I hear other musicians marvel at their sophistication, it usually starts and ends in the realm of pitch choices.

But these artists have another thing in common: They all have a highly cultivated rhythmic imagination.

I say highly cultivated, because it’s unlikely that this happened by accident. That is, it’s more likely that there has been conscious attention (through practice and study) brought to the rhythmic aspects of their improvisational languages.

Whenever I listen to a Mark Turner solo over a standard song, I’m struck by the unpredictability of his phrasing. It’s as if time gets suspended as he’s playing in time. Lots of phrases “ignoring the bar line”. Lots of rhythmic complexity, such as polyrhtythm, polymeter, metric modulation, etc. Lots of freedom…

And the beautiful part (to me, anyhow) is it sounds like he’s just playing, just expressing himself in the moment. His rhythmic approach sounds so highly developed that it seems unconscious. It is something that serves his spontaneous self-expression.

There is a huge amount of emphasis on ear training (for pitch) in jazz improvisation, and rightly so. The idea, like Sonny Rollins said, is to “access the subconscious” when improvsing. To do this, you have to practice things until they go so deep inside you that you don’t even have to think about them to use them. You imagine, you follow your ear, you play.

This takes lots of discipline, time, reflection and commitment. Any serious student of improvisation knows this.

Most jazz ear training involves learning to identify (and play back) lots of pitch-related things: intervals, scale colors, modes, chord qualities, harmonic movement, passing tones and more.

So it should come as no surprise that the serious improviser (you?) will spend lots of time developing this part of your ear, perhaps by transcribing solos, singing scales and chords, memorizing melodic patterns by ear, and more.

But you have “another ear” that you might not working on as consciously: your rhythmic ear.

Sure, if you transcribe a solo, you’re transcribing everything. But if you analyze this solo, are you giving enough time and attention to how the solo is constructed from a rhythmic standpoint?

Where do the phrases begin and end? How is rhythm used to build meaning and give cogency? Are there any metric modulations? Is there any tension and resolution that is built specifically upon rhythm, rather than pitch?

If you’re not asking these (and other) questions when analyzing a solo, you should. Here’s why:

The most remarkable, most revolutionary thing about the great Lester Young was not his pitch choices. It was his beautiful, floating time feel and his rhythmic sophistication.

A lot of Lester Young’s solos ebbed and flowed with tension and release via the rhythms more so than the pitches. (Don’t get me wrong, he had a beautiful melodic sense, and could aways choose the loveliest of notes.)

He, too, “floated over the bar”, as he used polymeter, metric modulation and other devices to stretch and compress his phrases in unpredictably beautiful ways. It’s no mystery that he is considered the precursor to the “modern jazz” era that began with bebop.

And as bebop developed, there was, of course, a harmonic revolution. The rules for dissonance and consonance, tension and resolution, were fundamentally shaken up in the jazz world.

But there was also a rhythmic revolution. Fast tempos, asymmetrical phrases, metric modulation, polyrhythm…all this became part of the modern jazz language.

Yet, to this day, the rhythmic innovations seem to take a back seat to the harmonic ones.

And that’s too bad, because one of the most identifiable aspects of any jazz artists (besides sound) is phrasing. If you’re just spitting out continuous series of eighth notes as you improvise over a song, that could get old soon, no matter how harmonically sophisticated you play.

But if I can’t predict your phrasing, can’t predict how you stop and start, can’t predict how you connect your ideas, can’t predict what kinds of rhythms are giving life to your ideas…well, then, I for one, am at the edge of my seat giving you all my attention.

So how do you develop a rhythmic vocabulary and a more sophisticated rhythmic imagination (your “other” ear)?

They same way you do your sense of pitch. You listen, analyze and practice. Just like you have to “feed your ears” for pitch, you need to do likewise for rhythm.

Here are five things you can do:

1. Pay attention-Start by changing your approach. As I mentioned above, if you’re analysing an improvised solo, make a conscious decision to do a thorough rhythmic and form analysis. Notice as specifically as possible how rhythm (including space) is used to build tension and move the story along.

2. Seek out the jazz masters-Look for the improvisers whose rhythmic sense is extraordinary. You can’t go wrong starting with Lester Young, and you can go so much further.

3. Look outside of the jazz idiom-Find some improvising musicians in other genres whose rhythmic sense seems so complex, it’s almost baffling (Balkan folk music, for example). Listen to the point that you can sing along. Once you can sing along, take out the metronome and analyze. Then play around with these rhythms (see below).

4. Practice using specific rhythms as you improvise-Choose a rhythmic pattern that isn’t readily available to you when you improvise (maybe something from one of the masters mentioned above) and use it to improvise over a set of chord changes, or a mode, scale or motif. Limit yourself to one rhythm at a time. Though it might seem awkward at first, it will go into your subconscious (if you give it enough time and effort) and will become part of your natural musical expression (just like the harmonic material you’ve practiced).

5. Understand the math-Become good at polymeter, polyrhythm and metric modulation. Know how to land on your feet when you go into new, asymmetrical rhythmic territories. For example, If you don’t know how to imply 3/4 subdivision patterns over 4/4 without losing your sense of where the downbeat of beat one is, you’ll never even give it chance to show up in your playing. (I’ve written a very thorough eBook of melodic etudes to help you with this, as well as one to help you with polyrhythm.) Just like you need to understand the “anatomy” of harmony, you need to understand the anatomy of rhythm.

So work on developing “both” your ears as an improviser, and enjoy the surprising changes you’ll hear in your playing.

And if you need help, I offer a highly effective, methodical approach to both improving your sense of time and feel, as well as cultivating your rhythmic skills and imagination. It’s called Rhythm Coach, and it can put you on the path to continued growth and improvement in these areas.