Category Archives: Practicing Improvisation

Deep Listening: Thoughts from a Master Improviser

One of my all-time favorite musicians is pianist, composer, improviser and educator, Ran Blake, who has been teaching at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music for over 40 years. He has also amassed a significant body of recorded work that is simply stunning.

The first time I heard his music, the most formidable impression it made upon me was how startlingly unique it was, in combination with it being so clearly conceived and masterfully executed. The first recordings I heard were of him improvising over “standard” songs. I’d never heard anything like it before in my life.

I remember thinking, “How does he ‘hear’ things this way?” Where does all this come from?” He made me imagine what Charles Ives might have sounded like if he were a jazz musician. Yet even that doesn’t begin to describe his very personal approach to improvising music.

Well, the short answer to my two questions above has to do with one very specific thing: Ran Blake plays the way he does largely because of how he listens to and hears music.

Recently I read a copy of his book (first published in 2010), entitled, Primacy of the Ear. What a wonderfully apt title! Primacy of the ear, the “ear” being the most significant organizing mechanism in creating music.

To musicians, the word “ear” means so much. Everything from how accurately we perceive pitch, to how we conceive of form and structure, to how we hear and interact with other musicians, to how we imagine music yet to be played. And much more.

Even as an Alexander Technique teacher who specializes in working with musicians, I continue to learn more and more each day about how explicitly the “ear” impacts coordination, skill and expression. It’s huge.

So I was intrigued by the idea of perusing the thoughts on this topic from such a master.

In this book, Mr. Blake shares his wisdom and knowledge in both a theoretical/philosophical way, as well as practical one (with very specific exercises and activities to work through).

I’d like to share what I consider to be a few of the most significant ideas put forth from this book that resonate most with what I’ve discovered in my own explorations (both as teacher and performer) with respect to hearing and listening to music:

On the primacy of the ear in creating a personal music style:

Your single most crucial ally in this personal exploration is the ear. When you listen, the ear reacts before the brain has time to process; it is an honest broker. When you play, the ear pulls you to a sound faster and more confidently than your brain; it is the part of you most in the clutches of the muse.

(Scientifically speaking, the ear doesn’t “react” before the brain, as your ability to “hear” is a function of the brain. But I think what he means here is that you can hear something even before you become cognizant of what it is you hear. Hence, the word “primacy”.)

And this is true in so many ways. Ultimately, all expressive music is “played by ear” (deeply internalized and imagined), whether improvised or notated. I think this is what saxophone legend Sonny Rollins experiences, in part, when he is “accessing his subconscious”.

On listening to live and recorded music:

Not all listening experiences are equal, of course, and Mr. Blake describes several categories of consciousness when listening to recorded music, from “background” listening (completely passive), to what he calls “quiet listening” (giving your full attention), as well as “listening while falling asleep”, etc.

He also talks about the importance of repeated listening and analytical dissection in listening, and gives specific advice and guidance about carrying out these activities in an effective way.

On listening to recorded music as an artistic discipline:

This is a major area of discussion in this book. Mr. Blake believes (and I do, as well!) that active, intentional listening should be a daily component of musical study for any serious musician. It should be approached with the same care, strategy, documentation and edification as any other part of daily musical practice.

As a performance coach and teacher of improvisation, I’m still amazed by the percentage of musicians who come to me for help who are not listening to music in this intentional, strategic manner.

For aspiring improvising musicians in particular, this is often the missing piece of their study routine that is creating the kind of frustration that leads them to seek my help in the first place.

Deep listening means listening to everything, not just the pitches being played by the soloist. It means studying the color of the soloist’s sound, inflections, dynamics, use of space, and more. Not to mention listening specifically to what each member of the ensemble is doing in response the “whole” of the music being created.

On avoiding “ear fatigue”:

Yes, discipline yourself to listen deeply and purposefully, but respect your ears. Mr. Blake mentions that he consciously limits his intake of kind of “background music”, and treats his ears with the same care any instrumentalist should have with respect to avoiding overuse and getting adequate rest.

He advocates for designating periods of absolute silence to help “restore” the ear. (This is another thing that too few of the people who come to me for help do, as well!)

On the importance of singing:

From a practical performance point of view, this is probably the essence of this book’s message. For anything you express to be truly yours, ultimately it must be heard (imagined) vividly and precisely.

Mr. Blake has recorded a large portion of his work with singers (most notably, the brilliantly personal Jeanne Lee!) He states that one of the things he likes best about working with singers is that you’re only ever hearing what they hear. (He loves the immediacy of that of that phenomenon!)

There are no filters, no buttons to rely upon, no “muscle memory”, etc. When somebody is singing, you are hearing their imagination in its purest form.

And that’s the ultimate goal for virtually all ear training. Being able to immediately play what you imagine.

Bear in mind that being able to recognize a sound accurately (interval, scale, chord voicing, rhythm, etc.) is not at all the same skill as being able to re-create it from aural memory. You must sing everything you practice if you wish for it to become accessible to your muse!

This book is filled with lots of exercises, explorations, and strategies to help you “discover” and cultivate your ear. As somebody with a fair amount of experience studying “brain science” (neuroscience), I didn’t always agree with the author’s description and/or understanding of certain phenomena (as mentioned earlier on in this post about the ear and the brain, for example), but I most sincerely cherish the wisdom, insight, inspiration and immensely practical advice from this marvelous work.

Here’s a gorgeous rendition of the hauntingly beautiful song, Laura (composed by David Raksin), as played by Ran Blake and sung by the magnificentJeanne Lee. Enjoy!

Optimizing Practice: Giving Consciousness Priority Over Repetition

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Anybody who knows me as an Alexander Technique teacher knows that I’m not a big fan of what is commonly referred to as “muscle memory”.

Besides the fact that the name itself is misleading and overly simple (it’s not so much your muscles “remembering”, as it is your brain changing how it communicates with your muscles), it tends to invite mindless repetition during practice sessions.

In following the “muscle memory” mantra too far, the best case scenario is that you just don’t use your time optimally when practicing something (yes, even long tones!) Sure, you accomplish something (the ability to carry out a particular movement or activity below consciousness), but you get it in an imprecise and inefficient manner.

In the worst case scenarios, mindless repetition in the pursuit of muscle memory leads to poor technique, erroneously conceived pedagogy, misdirected effort, and even injury.

A good deal of my job as an Alexander Technique teacher is in helping my students learn to optimize their thinking when they practice.

This by definition means bringing consciousness and intention into everything you practice.

Trumpeter, Alexander Technique student, Tyler Pfledderer sums it up beautifully and succinctly here:

I do not repeat a passage of music because I want it to be ‘muscle-memory’. I repeat it after I first ask myself ‘where should I place my attention this time?’

“Where should I place my attention this time?”

I ask myself multiple variations of this question dozens and dozens of times in each of my practice sessions.

It is the essential question to ask in the pause I choose to take between repeating anything I’m working on.

Asking this question brings consciousness into what I’m doing and clarifies my intentions each moment I practice.

And this helps me cultivate efficiency in time and effort, effective problem solving strategies, continuous improvement, and immense satisfaction.

Frustration is largely non-existent when I practice with this kind of mindfulness. Anything that rises as a problem can immediately be addressed in a most constructive way.

So where do I “place my attention” when asking this question before repeating a particular passage I’m practicing?

The answer is quite simple:

It depends upon what I was conscious of when I played that passage.

“What did I notice?”

“What did I like?”

“What didn’t I like?”

“What would I want more of?”

“What would I want less of?”

“How am I ‘using myself’ (this is an Alexander Technique concept) as I play this passage?” (the ‘more of’ and ‘less of’ mentioned above are absolutely called into question here!)

“How (where!) am I hearing my sound?”

“How am I conceiving of the time/rhythm/pulse?”

“Am I really ‘hearing’ this clearly in my aural imagination?”

Etc….

And finally:

“Am I finished with this passage, or should I repeat with my new, redirected thinking?”

My challenge here in describing this thought process is that it truly does take more time to “describe” it than it does to “think” it.

The pause I take between “takes” when practicing something is, in reality, quite brief. Seconds, not minutes.

And those are some of the most valuable seconds of my entire practice session!

No matter how little time I have to practice, I always give “pausing for conscious thought” the highest priority. Pausing to redirect my thinking is never a waste of time. (Though sometimes thoughtlessly repeating a particular passage in pursuit of “quantity” usually is.)

Even practicing things I’m highly familiar with, I will accomplish far, far more with three or four mindful takes of a particular item than I would with 20 mindless takes “in front of the television” (or with an otherwise divided attention).

Consciousness instead of mere repetition.

With this approach, practicing saxophone has become a form of meditation for me. Truly.

So how conscious are you when practicing? How mindful are you each time you decide to repeat a passage or an exercise? How clear are your intentions?

Are you engaged with choice, or are you running on your unconscious “auto pilot”.

Work on being mindful, developing your own questions concerning “where you should place your attention” between takes. Not only will you improve more regularly, but you’ll also develop confidence in your “process”, and in your problem solving skills in the practice room.

And as a bonus, you’ll finish your practice sessions feeling connected, integrated and satisfied.

I’ll leave you with something paraphrased from the trumpet virtuoso, Rafael Mendez, who was known for spending long, long hours each day practicing. It went something like this:

As a younger man, I used to practice 8 hours or more every day. Now I practice half that much in a day, but I really listen to myself as I do so.

So enjoy the pause. Think a bit more. Play a bit less. Continue to grow.

The “Other” Essential Skill You Should be Consciously Cultivating in Your Daily Practice

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Your sound.

The sound you imagine and create on your instrument is the defining element of who you are as a musical artist.

I’ve yet to encounter a serious musician who doesn’t consciously dedicate a certain amount of time daily exclusively to the exploration and cultivation of their sound.

A beautiful sound is perhaps the essential skill for any musician. It’s your voice.

A very wise bit of advice I’ve often encountered goes something like this:

Make everything you practice a study in producing a good sound.

In other words, consciously play everything you play with your best possible sound. (The word “consciously” being key.)

I couldn’t agree with this more. (In fact, here’s a post I wrote about daily “sound meditation”.)

But I encounter far too many musicians who are not, on a daily basis, consciously cultivating what I consider to be the “other” essential skill in playing music:

Time.

Specifically, your sense of time and pulse as you play your instrument.

Your perception of time (and how you interpret that as a continuous “pulse”) is not only an immensely important musical component (some might say most important), but it is also foundational to your skill and coordination in playing your instrument (yes, even in producing your sound!)

And ultimately, your technique is only as good as your sense of time.

In my Alexander Technique teaching practice , I’m still taken aback by the percentage of musicians who come to me for help who don’t devote a specific amount of time in their daily practice toward the cultivation of their sense of time and pulse.

Many times, it is this lack of “vivid time imagination” (as I sometimes think of it) that is at the heart of the problems that brought them to see me in the first place.

Any coordinated effort (or intention) is dependent upon a sense of time in order for it to be carried out. (As I mentioned above, even how you produce your sound.)

And the foundation of a vivid musical imagination is time and rhythm. Whether you’re improvising or playing composed music, the more vividly you conceive of pulse and rhythm, the freer and deeper your musical expression will be.

To be clear, I’m not just speaking here of the importance of making sure you’re playing with a good sense of time whenever you’re practicing (or performing) whatever you’re practicing.

I’m speaking of setting side a certain amount of daily practice time with the specific intention of challenging and improving your sense of time. (A “time meditation”, if you will.)

So if you’re not already doing this, but would like to start, here are a few things to aim for and/or keep in mind:

Address your specific needs-Take time to develop exercises for yourself that take you out of you comfort zone. What presents a challenge for you? Look for the things that give you trouble. But…
Keep it simple-Use melodic patterns (for example, scale or arpeggio patterns) that are very familiar to you as you challenge your time skills. Don’t get distracted by the sequence of pitches.
Work only with a metronome-Don’t use a drum loop or backing track. (See below for why I suggest this). Just the simple (but make sure it’s loud!) click of a metronome is the only tool you’ll need. (Drum loops and backing tracks are great practice tools, by the way, just not the best for our purposes here.)
Aim toward minimum clicks-This is the essential tool for improvement. In order to develop an accurate sense of time and a lively sense of pulse, you need to develop your “temporal imagination” (as I call it). This means increasing the “notes-to-clicks” ratio with the metronome. I rarely get my metronome over 40 beats per minute when I’m working on my time. If I’m playing eighth notes in 4/4, for example, I’m going to have the metronome click only on the first beat (i.e., eight notes per click). As I progress the tempo upwards, eventually the eighth notes are “transformed” into sixteenth notes (i.e., sixteen notes per click), and so on. Always be listening for (aurally imagining) where the next click falls. (See below!) When you’re playing with a drum loop or backing track, it is the loop or track that is “feeding” you the time and feel, rather than having you imagine it.
Imagination is key-What you should be working toward is “hearing” (aurally imagining) the rhythmic component of whatever you’re playing (continuous eighth notes, for example) as an even “pulse within a pulse” (i.e., your eighth notes as a pulse that lines up with the slower pulse of the metronome). The better you get at accurately anticipating the metronome clicks, you’ll find that you’re rhythmic pulse (i.e., the continuous eighth notes, in this case) becomes more uniform and even. (Really!)
Work daily to address and challenge yourself with these three components time:

1. Perception of time (as stated above, how accurately and vividly you “imagine” time passing and how you feel “pulse”)

2. Rhythmic complexity (placing ever-increasing demands upon rhythmic combinations as you feel these combinations against the pulse of the click, including simple and complex polyrhythms).

3. Meter (increasing your capacity to conceive of and hear various metric subdivisions within a given metric frame , for example, learning how to “hear” 3/4 over 4/4; as well as displacing the click of the metronome to the other beats in the measure).

Pay attention to your reaction-(This is me being the Alexander Technique teacher.) When you challenge your perception of time, it can be tempting to stiffen and compress your body. Make a conscious choice to check in with yourself frequently so that you’re not compressing your head onto your neck, or stiffening your shoulders, or locking your knees, etc. You’ll find that if you stay in a relatively fluid state of balance and mobility, your perception of time will noticeably improve.

Here’s a simple exercise you can begin with to challenge your sense of time. (It’s also a useful way to discover where you are with your “temporal imagination). Take a simple major scale pattern in eighth notes and play it with the metronome clicking on beat one (the “X” above the first note signifies the metronome click:

Aim for playing this pattern as slowly as you can, completely legato. Start with the metronome set at 40 bpm, and begin by listening to the clicks for a while without playing. Practice imagining precisely and vividly where the click falls amongst the silence, then try to “hear” the space (the silence) between the clicks. Think of the metronome and your imagination working together to form a sort of “rhythmic drone”.

Next, imagine the sound of the pattern (again, without playing) as it lines up with the clicks. When you’re able to do this with a reasonable amount of consistency, pick up your instrument and play.

Start working your way downward on the metronome to at least 20 bpm, or slower. Listen to each note you’re playing as you repeat the pattern, as you also anticipate in your imagination where the “C” and the “D” line up with the click. Don’t go to a slower tempo until you can play it with considerable precision, consistency and confidence.

Once you’re confident you can do that at the slowest tempo possible, play the pattern I’ve presented below (sixteenth notes) at 40 bpm and work your way down to as slow a tempo as possible, aiming for evenness, vivid imagination of sound and pulse, and precise matching with the metronome click:

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t play the double-time pattern right from the start. Just stay with the eighth notes until you gain more skill and confidence. Keep things within your reach.

After you’re able to play these patterns accurately at as slow a tempo as possible, you can add a new challenge by playing the pattern with the metronome clicking on beat “2” (again, the “X” signifies the metronome click):

as well as:

And so on…

If you’d like to work more specifically in challenging your sense of time, meter and rhythmic imagination, I’ve made available for purchase two e-books:

Rhythmic Dissonance: Exercises to Improve Time, Feel and Conception, is a methodical approach to challenging your perception of time, as well as expanding your ability with polyrhythms. It starts off easy and gradually gets very challenging. It’s like strength training for your “rhythmic muscles”.

Essential Polymeter Studies in 4/4 for the Improvising Musician, is a methodical approach to “hearing” and understanding the basic subdivisions of 3 (3/8 and 3/4), 5 (5/8 and 5/4) and 7 (7/8 and 7/4) against 4/4. If you’re an improvising musician, working from this book will liberate your improvisational concept and expression.

So here’s to encouraging you to find time in your daily practice routine to delve specifically into building your rhythmic skills. Exploring time and rhythm is a vast, interesting and edifying universe. Enjoy the journey!

Improvising Music Is…

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…a beautiful human phenomenon.

It is as equally complex as it is immediately expressive and natural.

I’ve been seriously studying improvisation for over 45 years, and consider the process of improvisation to be one of the greatest blessings of my life.

As a musician, I see myself as an improviser first and foremost, and secondarily as a tenor saxophonist. (I take my role as saxophonist quite seriously, just so you know!)

And though I enjoy playing jazz (and many of the sub-genres within and associated with jazz), I have also studied and enjoy lots of other types of improvisation, from open-ended time-based improvisation, to purely textural, “out-of-time” modern classical expressions, to a variety of other musical traditions that are improvisation-based (like the music of the Roma from the Balkans, for example).

My “definition” of what improvisation is continues to change the more I study, and the older I grow.

After reflecting upon it this week, I thought I’d share what I currently consider musical improvisation to be (for me, that is) in the simplest sense of the word :

Improvisation is the act of spontaneously discovering melodies, and experiencing how these melodies relate to one another, across time.

Spontaneously discovering melodies. That, for me, is something that is at the same time thrilling as it is reassuring.

Thrilling, because…well, there is virtually nothing more energizing to me than my (subconscious) muse manifesting itself to my conscious self. It’s a process of self-discovery that expands and integrates me as a whole being.

Reassuring, because it is a true principle that I can rely upon to bring me these thrilling experiences.

And I say that this is my current definition in the” simplest sense”, because when playing with other musicians, this definition must expand, by design.

It then becomes a matter of “discovering” these melodies as they manifest themselves in communicating with the other musicians with whom I’m improvising.

My muse both impacts, and is impacted by, a beautiful process of sub-verbal communication with these other human beings. (The similarities between music and speech are stunningly obvious here!)

And I also have a very clear aesthetic principle (an aim, as it were) that seems to arise within me whether practicing improvisation, or actually purely improvising, no matter the context or style:

I aim for freely melodic play.

Freely authentic, freely melodic (as defined, ultimately, by me) and always playful and curious, no matter how “serious” the music may be.

And of course the process of “spontaneously discovering melodies” is (and continues to be) the result of lots and lots of conscious study and intention as an improvising saxophonist. Lots of focused, well-organized study and explorations of the “materials of music”: rhythm, harmony, form and meter, to be most specific.

(In fact, the e-books that I’ve made available are really just documentation of some of the areas I’ve put serious study in as an improviser.)

To move in the direction of allowing my subconscious to speak freely requires lots of regular practice in order for me to be able to immediately call upon the materials of music I’ve spent so much time working with.

This is of course necessary in order to transcend any kind of self-conscious “agenda” when improvising. Being “freely available” to follow and release my muse is my wish.

But being freely available to my muse also requires lots of reflection, listening (to myself and legions of great improvisers and interpretive musicians) and reassessment and redirection of effort.

Trusting my ears, and learning how to “move” around my instrument as I utilize the materials of music to take me there…

If you’re new to improvising, you (like me when I started) might be approaching the study of improvisation as a process of acquiring lots of licks and patterns that you can memorize and call up as you blow over a tune.

That’s a fine place to start. And making choices about when and how to use your memorized licks is certainly within the process of improvisational expression. (You are making spontaneous, in-the-moment choices.)

But at a certain point, you’ll discover yourself playing things that you’ve never played before. Maybe only slight variations on a lick that you’ve memorized. But most decidedly different from the actual lick. (Or maybe something that you’ve never even heard before!)

Where do these things come from?

They’ll be coming from a very deep and natural place within yourself. That’s your music. That’s your melody. That’s you. Uniquely you.

Once you discover that, there’s no turning back.

But wherever you are along the path in studying improvisation, I encourage you to trust yourself, warmly invite your muse, welcoming whatever comes out of you when you play. And study, listen, question (be confused sometimes, even!), and enjoy your continued journey of self-discovery and expression. Such a gift, improvising is!

Improvising, in Contrast to “Practicing Improvisation”

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The other night while giving a practice coaching session on Zoom to a very good jazz guitarist, an interesting issue arose.

Though he had been putting in long hours of practice, diligently and intelligently working on the specific skills he would like to develop as an improviser, he found his actual experience whenever improvising oddly unsatisfying, sort of “uninspired and disconnected”, to use his words.

I asked him how often he was playing with other musicians on average, and he said usually once or twice per week. I said that that didn’t seem like much, based on how devoted he was to playing jazz.

He went on to say that he had purposely put himself into “woodshed mode” for a few months, to really get his “playing to another level”, and was avoiding jam sessions and some other playing opportunites that he previously participated in.

As I began to ask more questions (about his practice routine, time spent practicing, goals ,etc.), it dawned on me that, although he was practicing improvisation at a furious pace, he was doing very little actual pure improvising.

Allow me to explain.

He had been devoting the vast majority of his practice time to growing his improvisational skills.

For example, he had been practicing:

Improvising over a variety of harmonic forms, as he consciously connected particular dominant 7th chord substitutions via half-step voice leading.

Improvising over an entire chorus of a standard song (in 4/4) while subdividing his ideas metrically in 5/4.

Consciously applying a pre-determined set of altered scales (harmonic major pentatonic, in this case) over the basic iii7-VI7-ii7-V7-I sequence.

And so on.

All of this is good work, no doubt. Great ways to explore the materials of music in improvisation! Practical ways to practice improvising.

But practicing improvising is not entirely the same as purely improvising.

By purely improvising, I mean there is no agenda while improvising. No subtext. No particular goal to consciously aim for. No clearly defined rules to self-consciously abide by. No self-imposed limits.

You see, when improvising just for the sake of improvising, your brain is working in a fundamentally different way than when you are consciously practicing improvisational skills. (And of course, none of this even takes in account the entirely different process of improvising with other people; here I’m just addressing the daily, “by yourself”, practice regimen.)

When purely improvising, you are not so much “thinking like a composer”, as you are reacting, to your subconscious impulses to rhythmically and musically organize sounds as a form of deep self expression. (All of your hard work has been a vital tool to help enable this, of course!)

When practicing improvisation, you are still improvising, but at a less visceral, immediate level. In essence, you now are “thinking like a composer”, more or less. Connecting the dots, creating with a more specific intention, assessing, judging, editing, etc.

And again, that’s good, absolutely essential to progress.

But it in of itself is not sufficient for calling upon your brain to go into that magical world of “accessing the subconscious”, as Sonny Rollins puts it.

For that you need to improvise. Every day. With nothing to aim for except the experience of improvisation itself.

And not only every day, but quite a bit every day.

I recommended to my client that he spend at least 50% of his practice time for the next month just improvising without working on any specific “skills”. This still allows him plenty of time to work on “practicing improvisation” to continue to boost the skills he is hoping to cultivate.

The guidelines I gave him are simple. Here they are:

Follow your desire. Let your curiosity decide what kind of time feel, tempo, mood, etc., you’d like to explore. Let your whim, in the moment, decide.

Stay simple and familiar. Choose something you know really, really well. Maybe a standard you’ve played so many times, you could easily put it in any key you like at will. See that you’re not distracted by the form, but rather, are supported by it (and can trancend it).

Avoid an agenda. Have no particular conscious aim in mind. Leave your “composer’s mind” at the door. Let your muse run free.

Quiet your critical mind. As much as possible, don’t dwell (or even care!) on “how you are doing”. Just see if you can follow your impulses as you improvise over this “old friend” of a form. Let your feeling for moving with the music guide you.

Spend some time each day improvising with no form in mind. Improvise freely over a mode, a groove, a simple motif, a drone, or nothing at all. Let the music have a chance to emerge from you with virtually nothing in mind.

Trust your process. Realize that the skills and experiences you’re building are for the actual, in-the moment act of improvisation.In fact, you are still “practicing” even when you are “purely improvising”. Specifically, you’re practicing the psycho-physical state of being that is most conducive to the act of freely expressive and cogent improvisation.

Enjoy! (Play from a place of love, and let the beauty flow through you.)

And that’s it. I’m curious to hear back from my client in a couple of weeks, but I predict he will have good things to say about his new process, as he learns to more optimally balance his skills and practice efforts.

So how much do you actually improvise each day, versus practicing improvisational skills? Both are of equal importance.

Here’s a nice little video of two great innovators in modern jazz, Warne Marsh, and his teacher, Lennie Tristano, talking about the musical skills of improvisation (Warne Marsh’s comments), and the actual act of improvising (Lennie Tristano’s comments). Enjoy!