Help with Improv

[chopintod]

I am a classically-trained, advanced pianist (my most recent piece was Fant.-Imp.) who is just starting to get into jazz and such.  It's fun after 13+ yrs of forced classical (although I still love playing classical).  I am also just starting to play improvs.  However, my improvs are (I'm thinking) a lot different from 'accepted', or 'formal', or 'good', improvs--I simply make up a song as I go, without giving much thought to key signature, scales, song structure, etc. etc.   (I do, however, come up with phrasing, expressions, dynamics, accents, themes, etc. as I go).  In other words, I spend no real time thinking about the improv before I begin playing it; I simply play it.

My question isn't, "How do you improvise?" because I know there are already hundreds of books, web sites, articles, and posts on this site about that.   My main question is: is it 'acceptable' to play these improvs?

It's a tough question to phrase.  I enjoy playing these, I think they sound good, and my family enjoys them, but I'm not sure whether these are playable at, say, a public gathering of fellow players/friends (i.e., in the lounge of a dorm building). 

One more specific question: do improvs have to follow a key signature & its related scales, or can you mix and match and come up with new ones as you go?   

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Terry

PS, wish me luck at college (Ohio U), I move out Thursday!

[nightmarecinema]

Try this:

Record one of your improvisations. If you listen to it and you decide that you would enjoy listening to that enough to buy the CD, then chances are it's acceptable. If you listen and get bored or decided outright that you don't like it, then I'd suggest working on it a bit.

My guess is that you won't have to work too much on your technique, probably not your inflections either (the most subtle yet important part of improvising) -

Well, I have a good amount more to say, but I want to see what you have to see before I say more

[ted]

Chopintod:

I certainly wouldn't bother worrying about whether your playing is "acceptable". Acceptable to whom ? Would it really matter if other people find it unacceptable ? They don't have to listen do they ? If they do have to listen, and you are concerned about playing your music in shared living quarters then the problem is more a social one and has nothing to do with improvisation per se. There will always be people who dislike anything, even music by those considered to be great artists.

If you are quite happy with your playing and so are your family, then just carry on playing as you see fit. In improvisation "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

[quasimodo]

Here's a quote I found on a jazz guitarist's website :

The important thing is that we're getting this stuff by thinking of chords first and not scales! Scales will happen anyway when you start looking for ways to connect the chord tones. (When you start to get really good at this, you'll realize that there's really just one scale - the chromatic scale, of which you can use as much or as little as you choose.) Your ears should tell you what does and doesn't sound good. Use them as much as possible! Eventually, you'll learn lots of scale names and possibilities for all kinds of chords. That stuff is in lots of books; just about anyone can read them. But your ears and your taste are what will make you sound different from anyone else, and you won't get that from any book. Some of the greatest players (Django, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery) had little or no theoretical knowledge, but they had incredible ears and artistic vision. The rest of us need a little help from theory, but we need to keep it in perspective: music theory is mostly about figuring out why something worked!

I like it very much.

Btw, though it's a jazz guitar website, I think a lot of stuff are transposable to piano/keyboard. So anyone interested might find that site useful.

https://www.bobrussellguitar.com/

[Derek]

The recording idea is a good piece of advice. If you like what you played a lot, and your friends and family do too, of course its acceptable. Free, organic improv like that is the best anyway because it leaves all the infinite possibilities of music wide open to you. If you're an avid player of repertoire, improv can serve as a wonderful escape from the tediom of practicing rough spots in repertoire ad infinutum.

[jeremyjchilds]

A good improv is like a good speech...it has something to say. A bad improv is the musical equivelant to my aunt Jamie's rambling emotional speech at my wedding... , poorly thought out, lacking purpose.

It is very easy to tell when my improv students are just "rambling"  Since you have a very strong technical base, most of your development needs to be cognitive and rythmic (take hand drum lessons for 6 months, {it is mandatory for my jazz students, and I teach it to them})

You need to transcribe and analyze your favorite improvs to see what is really happening. You can use your Classical analysis skills here...just be sure to analyze in functional notation rather than tonic based notation. Once you learn a certain "lick" or progression, then you need to take it through the circle of fifths untill it's ready to be "pulled out" in any relavant situation.

But that doesen't answer your question....

You need to develop a taste in jazz first, and the best way is to listen and listen. Which pianist treats a half diminished chord the way you like most? What are they doing to prodice this effect?

THere are thousands of ways to add cleverness and style to your improvs. Two ways are to 1) start "anticipating" chord changes in your improv voice, with scale tones that will foreshadow you next chord change, and 2)Become absolutely rythmically fluent.

Just now I realize that it was kind of dumb to write two things...cause there are hundreds...

Well, someone else write more...

Good luck

[Derek]

So jeremy what do you think of Keith Jarrett?

[jeremyjchilds]

I think I will go and listen for a while...won't be back for a long time