Methods of Improvisation

Today I want to talk about the various methods of improvisation. This outline will break down things to practice so you can become a better improviser. It will cover the advantages and challenges of each approach.

Improvising By Scales

One thing most instructors teach pretty earlier are scales. Something like the pentatonic scale.  However, one of the most common self-critiques is “it sounds like I’m playing scales.”  While I do teach scales in the beginning, I don’t think they are the best or easiest place to start.  Why?  Not every note in that scale is created equal at all times on all chords.   What will inevitable happen is one hits the wrong note at the wrong time or you fall into unmusical patterns. 

Playing by scale is an easy way to approach a song that only has chords in the key.  For example, you could play a C major scale if the chord progression went Cmaj-Dmin-Emin-Dmin-Cmaj.

Advantages are it requires less thinking.  Once you know the scale, you simply run up and down it as you see fit, making up things.

Disadvantage:  As you are improvising with the scale, you are apt to get lost in the chord changes because you aren’t necessarily thinking about them.  As you improv with the scale, you have to remember where you are in the FORM of the tune.

I find one can improvise better via scales after one has an idea about some of the other approaches.

Improvising By Licks

This approach is pretty straightforward.  You memorize a lick and you plug it in.  Before I break this down, let me say that the danger with the approach is if you only play by licks, every song you play sounds the same.  You aren’t using unique melodies for each song.  Another issue is how many licks can you memorize?  20? 50?  At some point, your memory runs out and your material becomes limited based on the number of licks you can memorize.

Considerations with this approach:

One issue that can come up is a student memorizes the lick over a D major chord; however, they can’t use it on a F major chord or an Ab major.  This is where practicing a lick over each chord you’d encounter is helpful.  It’s not enough to simply memorize a lick, one also has to move it around over various chords. 

My approach to practicing licks: I tell students practice isn’t performance. In practice, plug in the licks as much as possible until you have them under your fingers and ears.  They have to get to the point they require absolutely no thought whatsoever.  In performance, you must dial this back to be tasteful.

Let’s suppose we have a lick that fits a D major chord.  Suppose we have a chord progression that goes D major- F major – A major -D major.  You would take that lick and plug it in every single time you could (In this case, transpose to D/F/A). 

One thing you’ll notice among even great musicians is they do indeed have different licks for different keys and chords.  However, if one practices licks in a variety of keys and types (major/minor), this frees up the musician to use these ideas anywhere they would like. 

Going deeper:  When you learn patterns/licks, you shouldn’t only learn the licks.  You need to understand why it works or how it works.  If you do this, you can then create your own licks from the lick you’ve memorized.  This gives birth to more and more patterns.  Take a lick, change one or two notes of it and now you have another…

Melodic Improvising

Melodic improvising is one of my favorites.  You are essentially using the MELODY to create variations.  You play things that are related to the melody.  Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins was really great at this.  Understand this can include rhythms alone.  Imagine Beethoven’s 5th, ba da  da DUM.  You could take that rhythm, changing the notes and improvise with it. 

Next, let’s suppose you have a melody that goes D-E-G (First notes to “Amazing Grace”).  You would create small variations like:  D-E-E-G or maybe D-B-D-E-G.  The underlying melody of the tune is still there, you have just added to it or changed the rhythm of the notes.

The great thing about improvising like this is you don’t lose your audience.  They can follow along, even if they aren’t musicians.  You can’t go wrong with this approach.

It’s both simple and difficult.  It’s simple to understand; however, it can be difficult to implement on the fly.  

What normally happens is people sit around create VARIATIONS on a melody.  Let’s say they have four different ways to play a melody.  They shuffle those around in different orders as they play.  This creates a feeling of spontaneity. 

Yes, there are great players that can do this sort of thing on the fly without pre-planning; however, these are people that have been playing a long-time and usually have played that particular song many times.   Most have spent considerable time learning and memorizing their melodic variations. 

Advantage:  The best thing about this approach is it teaches you to keep your place in the song.  You will hear the song as you are improvising; this makes it less likely you get lost.

If you’d like more information on this, I recommend looking up “Lee Konitz’s 10 step method to improvising.”

Playing the Chord Changes

Here is another one of my favorite approaches.  Going back to my chord progression from the scale approach (C-Dm-Em-Dm-C).  This time, instead of playing a C major or C major pentatonic through all of those chords, we are going to target CHORD TONES.   These chord tones are going to spell out the chord changes.  You would want the person listening to be able to hear when the chord changes even without accompaniment.  Whereas, if you are only improvising using one scale, the listener couldn’t hear the chord changes without the accompaniment. 

Here are the chord tones or arpeggio for each chord: C (C E G), Dm (D F A), Em (E G B).  Therefore, maybe I play something like this (all quarter notes)

| C C G E | F A A D | E E B…| F A A D | C G C C|

I have targeted very specific notes for each chord, making sure it sounds like the chord being played by the accompaniment.  This approach tends to sound less like ‘noodling’ or rambling.

However, the challenge is you REALLY have to know your chords.  You have to know which notes are in which chord.  One needs to start slow.  I’d take something like Dmin-C and practice arpeggiating it over and over until I could remember the notes for each chord.  Go up and down the arpeggios and then practice improvising with them.

For jazz, one of my favorite videos for CHORD TONE improv is Mike Stern’s demonstration that can be found here

One thing with this approach is it might seem limiting in the beginning, that’s because you are only limiting yourself to 3-4 notes.  However, if you use only chord tones, it forces you to think RHYTHMICALLY.  To make your solo interesting with only a few notes, you have to change up the rhythms!

Summary

I’m sure I might be able to come up with some other approaches, but I feel like this summarizes them.  Understand, great improvisers use all of the above.  I remember working on a Charlie Parker solo with my instructor many years ago.  The whole thing he was playing off the chords but then there were these two measures, I was like, what is going on?  My instructor looks at me and says, “He is just playing in the key and playing blues dude!”   

I think the key to being a great improviser isn’t only knowing all of the above approaches.  It is BALANCING them.  Probably the easiest thing in the world to do is to become a ‘lick player’ or the guy who only runs minor pentatonic.  You don’t want that.  You want to understand your instrument so you are liberated from playing only one way.  Good luck.

As always, I teach improvising on guitar, violin, banjo, or any instrument anywhere in the world via ZOOM.  Contact me and I will help free up your improvising.