Enhancing Skills for Spontaneous Composition (Improvisation)

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The following are speaker notes for a class presentation on improvisation given at Millersville University (Millersville, PA, USA) on April 14, 2004.

1. Elements of a Musical Composition
2. Elements of a "Good Solo"
3. Developing Melodic Skills
4. Developing Harmonic Skills
5. Putting it Together
6. Recommended Resources

Elements of a Musical Composition

What are the components of a musical composition?

• Melody - pitches, duration, rhythm/space
• Harmony - chord changes

What skills do we need to develop in order to be able to write a "good" tune?

• How to compose an interesting melody - different pitches, different durations, organized linearly in time (rhythm);
• How to construct a logical harmonic framework (know harmonic theory);
• How to fit melody and harmony together meaningfully.

Elements of a "Good Solo"

What are the components of a "good solo"?

• Interesting melody (pitches, rhythms, duration, space);
• Melody is constructed with respect to underlying harmonic structure

Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Things That Create Interest When Soloing/Starting A Phrase or Melody (PDF format)

Common elements, then, are the ability to create linear constructions of pitch/rhythm/density with respect to an underlying harmonic structure.

Improvisation can then be thought of as spontaneous composition.

Composers have the luxury of time, however.

As an improviser, you employ many of the same skills that a composer does, but you must employ them much more rapidly and with great accuracy. Thus, you must sharpen melodic and harmonic skills to compose spontaneously as quickly as possible.

Developing Melodic Skills

(within the context of preexisting harmonic structure -- a tune)

• Learning intervals

  If you say you can't sing an interval of, say, an ascending major sixth, but you can sing the first two notes of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear", what does that tell you?

  You can already hear the interval, but you haven't learned to translate it by name or by sight.

  The ability to play an interval you conceive in your head, and the ability to play back a melody that you hear, are important tools in being able to improvise and interact with confidence.

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Ear Training (PDF format)

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Interval Chart (PDF format)

• Key fluency

  Learning intervals in all keys on your instrument is critical to navigating unfamiliar chord structures with confidence.

  Exercise this skill first by taking a very familiar (and simple) melody and transposing to different keys by ear. (For example, take "Happy Birthday" through all twelve keys.)

  Later (as the skill improves), any time you learn a new song, try to transpose it into a couple of different keys. (Chase Sanborn suggests learning it up a half-step and down a half-step, for example.)

  Play melodies on the piano so you can see the intervals as they go by.

• Developing a musical vocabulary

  • Find recordings of jazz soloists you like and listen.

    Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Suggested Listening (PDF format)

    Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Historically Significant Recordings (PDF format)

    Don't just listen passively; plug into the solo and try to absorb what he/she is doing. Listen to the same song several times and try to focus on different things -- note choice, use of space, articulation; What is the bass player doing? What is the drummer doing? What kinds of different chords is the piano player playing each time? How long is each solo? etc.

  • Transcribe/memorize solos

    • Can be hard at first if you can't hear intervals yet (getting pitches)
    • Can be hard at first if you don't subdivide well (rhythm)
    • Accuracy/completeness of the transcriptions is not as important as being able to play it on your horn
    • Builds melodic vocabulary very quickly (like language, vocabulary is learned in part by imitating fluent speakers)
    • Start small - pick a tune you already know well for which you have accurate changes. Do small chunks (1-2 bars at a time), skip bars that are giving you trouble and come back later
    • Relate the solo to the chord changes (important!)
    • Include/imitate nuances (tone, articulation)

    Resource: Jeff Helgesen - Effective Solo Transcription

  • Active, intense listening will improve your eighth note feel.

Developing Harmonic Skills

• Understand dominant/tonic (V7-I) relationship and cycle of fifths. This is an underpinning of Western music.

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - The Circle or Cycle of Fourths - PLUS - Scales/Modes Based on the Major Scale (PDF format)

  Resource: Mark Sabatella's Jazz Improvisation Primer: Basic Theory

• Learn to recognize ii7-V7, the most common harmonic structure in post-war jazz and popular music.
• Some think of a ii7-V7 progression as a "key area", even if it does not resolve as expected. For example, you can think of B-7 E7 as being in the key area of A major, if you understand that the stress of a melodic line should reinforce the chord tones of B-7 and E7, respectively. Thinking in these terms may help you "chunk" information as opposed to trying to think of scale and chord choices one bar at a time.
• It is very helpful to develop basic piano skills. Nothing fancy, just work out common seventh chord types (minor 7, dominant 7, minor 7 w/flat 5th, dominant 7 w/flat ninth, major 7). Being able to recognize the "flavor" of a chord rapidly will increase your speed of response in constructing a melody with respect to the harmony.
• Scales, scales, scales -- very important to learn major, dorian, and mixolydian for basic navigation of major key chord constructions. Also, useful later are "symmetrical scales" like diminished and whole-tone scales.

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Scales (PDF format)

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - Scale Syllabus (PDF format)

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - The Blues Scale And Its Use (PDF format)

Putting it Together

• In the beginning, try lining up chord tones on the beat (that is, make sure that the note played on the beat is a chord tone). This strongly reinforces the underlying harmony. Fill in between with other scale/chord tones.

  Resource: Mark Sabatella's Jazz Improvisation Primer - Playing Changes

• Practice ii7-V7 licks through the cycle of fifths, slow enough to play accurately. Use a metronome. Don't tolerate sloppiness on hard keys, play more slowly if need be.

  Resource: Jamey Abersold Jazz Handbook - II/V7/I Progression with Emphasis On The 7th Resolving To The 3rd (PDF format)

• Practice ii7-V7 licks descending and ascending by whole steps.
• Practice ii7-V7 licks descending and ascending by half steps.
• Try approaching chord tones by half-step above or below (instead of scale tone neighbor, as above). Experiment on creating lines using this technique. (Exercises your mastery of chord tones, stresses harmony without sounding scalar. This technique was suggested to me by Chip McNeill.)
• Record yourself. Listen back to solos and identify things that don't sound "right", break it down to figure out why. What note or rhythm could you have played to make the line sound "better" to you?
• Don't be afraid to use repetition, dissonance, etc. to add variety, continuity, reinforcement to your solo.
• Breathe -- leave space and listen to what's going on around you to give you ideas about what to play next. Live in the moment!

Recommended Resources

• Jamey Abersold - Jazz Handbook

  Jamey Abersold's Jazz Handbook is a free collection of reference materials for the improviser, available from Jamey Abersold's website.

• Chase Sanborn - Jazz Tactics

  Chase is an excellent trumpet player and clinician. His book Jazz Tactics is an excellent resource for beginning and intermediate improvisers. Available from Chase Sanborn's website.

• Mark Levine - The Jazz Piano Book

  Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book, available from Sher Music Co., is an excellent resource for both the novice jazz improviser as well as the professional looking for new approaches. Highly recommended.

• Mark Levine - The Jazz Theory Book

  Mark Levine's The Jazz Theory Book, available from Sher Music Co., is considered by some to be the authoritative reference on jazz theory.

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