If You Want To Find Your Own Sound, Improvise

[Quadruple C]

[ This Message was edited by: Quadruple C on 2003-09-29 14:50 ]

[OzTrumpeteer]

I'm not a big fan of practicing licks, either; I hate hearing players spouting licks. But, there is merit in this kind of practice (in practice, not performance).

I think that the best analogy for improvising is to compare it to speaking. When you learn to talk you learn words, phrases, grammar, you form sentences, you compile a vocabulary, you learn the language. But when you orate, converse, the ideas that you express are your own. Or not. Just as in music, we learn the notes, the chords (sometimes ), and so, when improvising, the musical ideas that you express are your own, or, in some cases, not.

As 'single-line instrument' players, we should spend more time learning chord changes, and we should look on practicing licks as akin to piano players learning voicings. Perhaps, instead of learning licks off recordings, we should record ourselves singing through changes, and then practice those lines in all keys.

(as a side note, in his autobiography Miles Davis mentions that he 'could play all Dizzy's licks').

The worst solos that I've played have been when I've tried to recreate something, be it of my own or someone elses making.

So, back to your original point, I agree that improvised music should be improvised rather than regurgitated. To achieve this a player needs to have 'something to say', something to express. To communicate with anyone, you must first have an idea to communicate. You must feel something about what you're playing.

Corey.

[dwm1129]

I can't agree more with Quad C's post. I hardly practice improvisation on my horn, it is all spent at the piano and listening......the only work I will do on my horn is transcribing. Now, don't get me wrong I still put in my dues working on technique, it's just not in the form of learning licks....it's working from my Arbans and similar books.
As for when I am playing live, I don't remember a damn thing I played......sometimes things that I transcribed come through in my playing, but because I am not aware that I am doing it, they seem come out perfectly. I always record everything I play with my mini disc and listen to it when I get home and sometimes transcibe my own solos to see what was going on.
I don't have any explination for how my improvisation works, it just does. Someone once told me "learn it all then forget it".

But how does this work on a psychcological level? How does your brain work to create such beautiful things when your not even thinking about it or trying to do it, and don't even really remember doing it?

[Larry Smithee]

I like the spoken language analogy also. There was a great line, spoken by the comic/humorist George Carlen, that comes to mind. He's describing a legal trial setting in which a lawyer approaches a witness who says "describe in your own words what you saw. Do you have your OWN words"? And of course the witness doesn't, he uses the same words everyone else uses. What's my point? I'm not sure except that it seems that what is important aren't the memorized licks (vocabulary?), or whatever, as much as the spontenaity (improvisation?) involved in putting them together in a sophisticated and meaningful manner. Learning to use grammar, words, and vocabulary is pretty important in spoken improvisation (dialog). There might be a connection to jazz improvisation in there somewhere.

[Nicholas Dyson]

I'm with Larry.....

We transcribe, play with Aebersold, etc. in order to better learn the language. The things you learn there will come out in your playing, unless you make a conscious effort NOT to.

I agree that it's stale and generally lame when you can here a player say in his mind:

'ahhh! Rhythm changes.... lick 32, then lick B, then lick 458C, then lick 2, etc.'

That's not what I'm into, but keep in mind we have 12 notes to deal with. There is a finite number of combinations, and even less so when improvising in a certain language... i.e. bebop, dixie, blues, funk, fusion.... The thing that makes it yours is the combination of combinations in a given situation.

We're all using english here, so the fact that I'm so damn long winded and that I say thing perhaps a different way that someone else would makes this 'mine'. No one else would have come up with the same combinations of words et al, at the same time. This is just what came out because of the recordings (learning to speak, idiosyncratic language, the vernacular of wherever you are.) I've heard, and the performing I've done (rambling on and on in TH).

You can't 'make the changes' if you don't know the language, that's gibberish, and you can't speak the language without using a bunch of words that other people use. It's a matter of context and application.
_________________
Nicholas Dyson
Ottawa, Canada