Improvising

[cleionvi]

Hello,
Do any of y'all improvise? If you do, how do you set up your practice session? Any tips or tricks? Can be any genre.
Thanks in advance.

[ted]

All the time. It has become just about everything to me musically. I don’t “practise” it in the accepted sense of that word and I am unconcerned with genre. There have been several interesting improvisers here over the last twenty years. I suggest to begin with you peruse the improvisation section from when it started, listen to as many as you have time for and read the many discussions about it. That should give you some good ideas concerning your own direction.

[ranjit]

I improvise all the time, but have never learned to do so in any genre. I just sit down and play, I don't really see the need for a warm up. I find that trying to imagine music in your mind, while difficult, is one of the best ways to begin a practice session.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Improvising is its own warmup, for me. Sit down and play and see what emerges. I find a good understanding of harmonic progressions helps, along with accumulated scale and arpeggio technique.

[quantum]

All the time.  It can be a specifically focused improvisation, if for example I wanted to work on a particular technique, style, or conveying a certain idea.  At other times it can be playing in order to see what happens.  If it is something I end up liking, I make note of it in order to add to my improvisation repertoire so it can be called upon in a future improvisation. 

When working on improvisation technique, I often study music of other people.  It could be sheet music, recordings, or live performances. 

[lostinidlewonder]

I predominantly prefer to improvise without any boundaries or rules or preconcieved ideas, something usually called "free improvisation". I do enough of constrained playing full of rules and requirements so it is nice to be free of all of that and merely exist within the "creative". This can produce ramblings of musical output but sometimes quite good content can emerge which surprises me. Funnily enough when doing free improvisation I often feel really good no matter what sounds are coming out, it is only after observing recordings of them afterwards that I realize quality differences.
 
I think it is important to be able to control your improvisations to decorate standard playing too. So you can play a composed piece and simply tinker with it on the go. Good sight reading skills also allow you to improvise easier, so you can read some work and also add alterations as you go along.

When stylizing an improvisation it is important to "hear then play" rather than "play and hear" there lies a difference in how it is approached. You can also "think then play" like preconcieve certain technical patterns you want to use or progressions or "play then think" where you notice patterns that emerge while playing and then build upon them. So I think order is quite important with these factors when approaching improvisation.

[mad_max2024]

As a suggestion

Take recordings/sheets of pieces or songs you like.
Sit down with them and analyse thoroughly the parts you are interested in. Try to understand what they are doing (scales, modes, chords, voicings, key, etc) as well as trying to play the riff or passage or chord voicing or whatever it is yourself.
Then try to apply it to a chord progression or another song and mess around with it to see what you can do.
First play it straight the same way you learned (possibly transposed to whatever key you're in) then get creative and change it in whatever way you like.

The more things you analyze and learn from hearing and studying what your favourite performers or composers do the more tools you will gather to improvise or compose your own stuff.

[cleionvi]

Thank you for all the responses. All have been very helpful and I will take them into consideration.

[cleionvi]

Take recordings/sheets of pieces or songs you like.
Sit down with them and analyse thoroughly the parts you are interested in. Try to understand what they are doing (scales, modes, chords, voicings, key, etc) as well as trying to play the riff or passage or chord voicing or whatever it is yourself.

Have there been any threads for analyzing that have stood out to you? I figure it's pretty intuitive (I have analyzed before) though I'd be interested in how other people like to analyze.

[quantum]

Have there been any threads for analyzing that have stood out to you? I figure it's pretty intuitive (I have analyzed before) though I'd be interested in how other people like to analyze.

Analysis is not about arriving at a definitive state of knowledge.  Analysis is similar to interpretation.  In music performance, interpretation brings understanding, enlightenment, and an artistic voice to the delivery of the music, breathing life into the music from a state of notation to a state of listening.  Performance interpretation is personal and unique to each performer. 

In composition, analysis brings understanding, enlightenment, and an artistic voice to the craft of composition, bringing insight into the music from a state of notation to the articulation of ideas and concepts behind that composition.  Analysis is personal and unique to each musician. 

To be clear, I am not talking about the uninspiring assembly-line type of analysis, that music students are expected to regurgitate on standardized tests in order to receive grades.  I am referring to a deeper and artistically fulfilling methodology of analysis that seeks understanding, and not mere textbook repetition. 

***

What you can do is pick out passages of music that appeal to you and analyze them.  Look for patterns, examine how the passage is constructed, identify what makes the passage stand out to you.  Try to integrate the passage into your own improvisations.  Aim to use the passage musically, not just technically. 

If you end up liking the passage that you may want to integrate it into your own improvisations, transpose it into all keys, be able to play it with either hand.  After transposing it, modify it to fit into another mode, for example major mode to minor mode and vice versa.  Of course transpose the modification into all keys.