Pribek

I used to work with a steel guitar player who said; “While we were on break we had a couple of requests from the audience….Leave and Stay Gone.

But seriously folks, my old friend Pat Darnell, who also goes by moopig and a number of other aliases, left this comment on my chromatic guitar lesson post.

Hi Jack. My kids, all six of them, are impossibly unable to do what I call the “command performance.” Since I am a weakling in that area, I suppose I have to ask you if you know how you got to the point of improvised command performance…

What Pat is referring to here is musical improvisation. He wants to know how a musician develops this skill-I think.

How do you learn to improvise music?

Music is a form of communication. Improvising with other musicians is a musical conversation. In order to have a great conversation, one needs to listen to what the other person is saying and react to what they are saying.

The Physical Side Of Things

You have to have enough physical proficiency on your instrument to communicate your idea. If your musical idea is incredibly complex and requires a lot of notes, you have to have the physical ability to play those notes. Some players don’t need to use a bunch of notes to get their point across.

So, you have to do develop dexterity, muscle memory. This is accomplished by repetition. I have spent a lot of time playing scales. All types of scales in every key.

This is the cycle of fifths.

As a younger man, I would start the day by playing say, a major scale in C, then in G, D..etc., running through the cycle in a clockwise manner or, counterclockwise (4ths) until I had played in every key. I would do this same procedure with each of the five fingering positions. Then, I would go through each one again playing ascending and descending, triad arpeggios starting on each degree of the scale. Then I would play 7th chord arpeggios, then 9ths. Then, I would repeat this entire process with harmonic minor scales and melodic minor scales. This type of approach is not for everyone. It is very time consuming.

A common complaint is; “I don’t like so-and-so’s playing because it sounds like he/she is just running up and down scales!”. That’s bound to happen if you are spending hours a day playing scales. But, if you spend time on these scales and try to make each note sound musical, rather than just trying to develop speed, you will accomplish several useful things. You will develop the relationship between the two hands. You will gain knowledge of the fretboard. It also serves as ear training.

I know players, great players, great improvisers who say things like; “I don’t play scales” or, “I don’t think in scales”. Scales are just groups of notes. Over time, people have determined- “We like these notes played together”, that’s all. Whether you “think” scales or not, whether you consciously play scales or not, doesn’t matter. If you want to improvise, you have to work on the things that sound right to you and work on them with repetition in order to gain the physical proficiency.

I spent a whole lot of time studying and playing chords. Learning chord shapes, inversions, changing chords back and forth until the transition was seamless. There are lots of resources, lots of books like, “Chord Chemistry” by Ted Greene, that contain useful knowledge. If you are improvising with other players, you will find yourself accompanying, with chords, the individual who is playing the “look at me” part at any given time. “Comping” is a form of improv unto itself. It is an art form. From a music theory standpoint-if the person soloing plays an E flat note, you might choose to play a D flat9 chord instead of a G7. This is a “chord substitution”. It will work sometimes and sometimes it won’t, you have to be listening to the conversation.

Within the realm of comping, there is also opportunity to improvise rhythmically. You may wish to accent in places, to compliment the soloist. Listen to Keith Richards play live, he can do a thousand subtle things with a simple A chord. Keef improvises constantly, the song structure is in place, all the chord changes happen when they are supposed to but, within this “structured” framework, he is doing all of these little rhythmic alterations.

Music has three elements, melody, harmony, and rhythm. When you are improvising, all three are in play, all the time. What you do not play, leaving space, is part of the equation. Space, is a factor with all three elements.

Phrasing and Space

The space, the things you don’t play, is a key element of “phrasing”. Interesting choice of words there, “phrase”. Once again it goes back to the idea of a conversation. In conversation, a sentence may contain multiple phrases. When you speak, you automatically leave space, you automatically pause and, insert a verbal comma. Then, at the end of your sentence, you pause again, maybe a longer pause. The listener intuitively understands that you have finished a thought. There is a sense of completion. Some people are very difficult to converse with because; “they just keep yapping and never stop to take a breath”.

All of this applies to the musical conversation. You state a series of phrases that, together, complete a thought. Here is a trick to help develop phrasing. Sing what you play as you are playing it. Even if you can’t hit the notes with your voice, it will enable you to recognize where the natural spaces should be. It helps to further establish the connection between your brain and hands. It encourages natural phrasing. I still do this on stage (off of the mic.) when I am improvising sometimes. Especially if I have played a few things that I didn’t like. It gets my hands back to paying attention to my brain’s musical ideas. Some guys don’t sing, they kind of grunt along with what they are playing. It forces you to leave space because you have to take a breath. Go listen to organist Jimmy Smith. On a lot of the records you can hear him grunting along.

Music Theory

Man that’s a can of worms there-music theory. Sounds like something you would want to avoid-Music Theory-like Department of Motor Vehicles.

Part of the problem with music theory is there are different schools of thought that also use different jargon. Some of the terms overlap and mean different things. If you are in Nashville, playing a song in the key of C and the bass player says; “go to the 2″, he means play a D major chord. If you are working on a Bach Chorale, the 2 chord or, ii chord, is a D minor. In jazz, a 2 chord generally means a D minor 7th or some variation thereof, at your discretion. See what I mean, it’s confusing as hell. And, that’s one small example, the tip of a big, huge ice berg of confusion.

As a result, a lot of players avoid the pursuit of theory. They will sometimes start listing names of famous, brilliant musicians who, allegedly, didn’t read music or know theory. You hear this list, Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery, Jimi Hendrix on and on and on…great players all of them and it sucks you in, almost like a timeshare sales pitch, it all makes logical sense-if these guys didn’t learn “theory”, why should I? It is nonsense.

Here’s the deal, I’m going to give you the straight stuff here. Music theory is a collection of the elements that you may need in order to carry on the musical conversation. The vocabulary, the language-when you are having a conversation it is important that the parties are speaking the same language. When you are having a conversation, do you stop and say; “Bob, do you realize that you just started a sentence with a preposition?”. Some people converse in the Kings English, some use a lot of slang or curse words, it doesn’t matter. As long as there is communication it is a conversation.

It is possible that an individual, who has never taken a language arts course and could not conjugate a verb, it is possible that this person could effectively converse. They may be able to communicate with ease. If this is the case, it is a person who has listened intently and studied how other people converse.

I am not convinced that Charlie Parker couldn’t tell you what notes make up a Dminor7flat5 chord. If he couldn’t, it didn’t matter because, he damn sure recognized one when he heard one and, he damn sure knew what to play over one. So, Charlie Parker knew the vocabulary, he knew the language and therefore, he knew music theory.

You have to have a grasp on theory, on some level, in order to improvise. You don’t necessarily have to know every set of terminology but, you need to have the skills to engage in the musical conversation. If you are sitting in with a country band, you don’t need to know that they call it a 2 chord but, when you hear it, you need to recognize it and know what to do. This comes from study and part of that study includes listening and absorbing.

I have had some music theory classes. I have learned a lot of theory from the two guitar teachers that I studied with, Ron Roskowske and Randy Phillips. I even took some private jazz theory lessons from a trumpet/piano player named Dave Scott. He was very helpful because he knew “serious” or “legit” theory as well and could explain the different jargon. I consider all of it to be very valuable.

You have to have “practical theory”. If you are going to play in a pit orchestra, you need to sight read. If you are playing in a country band and the bass player holds up two fingers, better know what that means. If you miss a chord change and the piano player says; “That was a 13flat9 that you missed on the bridge”, you don’t want to miss it next time. If you are playing death metal in dropped D and the other guitar player says; “No, not gunga-gunga-gunga, it’s gunga-gunk -gunga, better catch it. Practical theory.

The Subconscious Mind and The Gambler’s Roll

So, you listen and learn. You develop the physical dexterity to the point that you can execute your musical ideas. You hone the phrasing and learn the theory.

What then?

You have to get to the point where the ideas flow naturally, the same way they do in a good, verbal conversation. When you are talking to someone, you aren’t thinking-I need to pause here-I need to take a breath…now. The subconscious mind handles all of that. When you are improvising music, the subconscious mind has to do be in charge of the grunt work, the physical playing part. The conscious mind is simultaneously spewing musical ideas and listening, it can’t be bothered with; “I need to move my hand here..now”.

Once again, this is something that is developed through repetition. You have to do a bunch of it to do it well consistently.

Improvisation will never be flawless because it involves human interaction. Humans are never flawless. The upside to that is there is always a chance for redemption. If you blow it, you are an eighth note away from a fresh start. So, you have to cultivate an attitude. You have to be willing to take a gambler’s roll and couple that with a deep faith.

There are tricks of the trade, if you make a mistake-repeat the mistake and it looks like you did it on purpose, make the hard stuff look easy and make the easy stuff look hard.

Some of it is a good-natured sham. I know that there are things, different patterns or licks, that always work in a way that gets a reaction from the audience.

Sometimes you get to a place where you are able to do stuff you can’t really do. The subconscious is doing it’s part, driving the tractor, and your mind is coming up with ideas that seem like they are channeled from an outside source and, you simultaneously execute them with ease and precision. Miles called it “playing over your head”. That is the true payoff. Once you have been there, you want to get back there. You get even the smallest taste and you are willing to listen more, study more and absorb more.

Today, that is what I know about, what my friend Pat calls, “getting to the point of improvised command performance”. Now, it may change tomorrow because, like the phrase, like the conversation and like the human condition; it continues to evolve.