Improvising : how much thinking theory how much memory muscle visual hearing memory

[tea for two]

When we improvise by yourself, not with others, are we thinking this and that chord mode scale, this is how they link up
and or
is it memory muscle memory visual memory hearing memory first foremost
that guides our fingers.

::

I'm going on memory muscle visual hearing memory when I noodle, nearly all my stuff is based upon noodles.
I have an impression of what I want to do.
I'm not thinking of chords nor notes : if I did I'd mess up, I'd have to look up what I was doing lol.
I just let my fingers move so that the impression/s I have in my mind can happen.
My stuff isn't complex so that helps me.

I get frazzled by theory : although aged 12-14 I had Classical lessons in Piano Violin, enjoyed writing scores at that age. My theory is utter pants.

[merlyn]

I have a trumpet playing friend who says "The last thing I want to do on stage is think". Ideally we want to play what we hear, which is creating rather than remembering.

When I was a teenager and I picked up the guitar, it was, as Frank Zappa described it, shitty teenage leads. Reent-toont reent-toont reent-toont-tee-noo-nee-noo-nee.

Now when I pick a guitar up what comes out is around a chord. But what I should do is play around chord progressions.

[amanise]

I've always found there are different levels of engagement with your own improv engine (so to speak). On your own you can tinkle around a scale or a chord, arpeggio whatever. This is where you first jump in when you start to learn to improvise. You can do a lot from there - but there's a whole other level waiting as you learn which takes a lot more effort to break into. Once you're through the barrier though, what you really need is the presence of other musicians around you to inspire and for you to respond to. Then you can really take off and (as you put it) take flight. Others describe that as entering what's called a 'flow state'. Getting into a flow state isn't necessarily just a music thing - computer programmers do it and all sorts of other people who are practiced at it. I didn't understand what I was looking for - until suddenly one day I found it - but I kept going until I got there and never looked back. As I get older, I find it harder to achieve - but for now I can still do it. So I do. I don't want it to leave me - but I'm pretty sure one day it will. One strange thing about it is, how much it makes you sweat. It's pretty exhausting. It used to pour off me when I gigged. Not so much in a studio environment. Weird.

[BWC]

When you speak, how much are you thinking about grammar, or the mechanics of speech?

[Arpangel]

This is a massive subject.
We cant unlearn what we’ve learnt.
I'm talking from my perspective only.
I don’t have any "starting points" when I improvise, nothing in my head.
What instrument I have in front of me decides where I'm "likely" to go.
There is no differentiation between noise and music, all can be used, it's all "sound"
I do not look at my hands, I close my eyes, and these days I find that I have to get totally out of it to play anything, as drunk as possible, it disconnects me from being safe, I take far more risks musically when I’m drunk, and it works for me. As I said, this is all about me, not anyone else, I’m not advocating this to anyone else, it's my body no one else’s.
Chaos reigns here now, improvisation definitely feels and works better if I’m in a mess, I set-up stuff in my studio, little "systems" that are all interconnected, ending up on faders on my mixer, that I forget about , so when I push a fader up I don’t known what I'm going to get.
If I'm at the piano, then a lot of stuff has already been decided for me, by the instrument, the only way around that is to just work with it and make it sound like me, in a group situation I'm constantly listening, and waiting for gaps in the conversation, or times when I can complement what's going on, without dominating or keeping anyone out.

[Sam Spoons]

When I'm improvising I think I 'hear' what I'm about to play before playing it (to the point that I know when I've played it 'wrong') so effectively I'm making it up in my head before playing it. As Arpy says, you can't forget what you know (at least, not to order) so what we've learned previously is always going to influence what we play next. I don't/can't think in terms of scales or arpeggios fitting certain chords/changes and like every improvising musician I have signature phrases and stylistic things I do that make me sound like me.

Improvising to me is about making up a new melody to fit with a given set of chords changes which contains enough references to the original tune that it's more than just random notes. How far 'out there' it goes is as much a matter of taste as it is of skill/rules but the better you know the theory the further outside you can play without it becoming cacophony.

[Lostgallifreyan]

As Arpangel said, it IS a massive subject, and I tried to study musical theory on my own decades ago with a couple of paperback books. I'd torn them in half and retrieved them to try again (and again) before I finally binned them.

In many sounds I do not hear 'chords', I hear timbres, as an orchestrator would. I am very literal-minded, so improvisation came slowly for me, and it is definitely a learned thing, so what Tea4Two said applies, all of it, the different forms of memory, etc. Some tunes will set me off easily, others are a block to it. I think that relates to the sorts of tunes I liked most when I was still too young to consider anything but humming in unison to the main melodic part. (But for me that was equally likely to be the bassline.) Improvising over basslines is easy, except when playing a bass, which implies that both activities are fighting over the same resources a lot.

[Folderol]

I have no idea how I do it. Some times it just happens, other times it doesn't. The only thing I'm sure of is that it doesn't work if I sit down with the intention of composing something new.

[Lostgallifreyan]

Now when I pick a guitar up what comes out is around a chord. But what I should do is play around chord progressions.

That's interesting. I tend to think of tab notation as a block construction thing, and I avoid it like the plague. The progression IS the thing. When I improvise on a keyboard it's often down to just two notes, an interval, often holding one note while changing the other (over a very simple bass part with the left hand), seeing where that goes. It can be great. It's an ancient method, there's a lot of it in pre-baroque music, and it still lays a foundation for a lot of things since. It's like what goes on behind the words when we form a spoken sentence. This is definitely a learned behaviour, I suspect that no-one is ever born to it, though generations of people have predisposed people to it more than ever before, like any common or shared behaviour.

I have no idea how I do it. Some times it just happens, other times it doesn't. The only thing I'm sure of is that it doesn't work if I sit down with the intention of composing something new.

Same here, I can never do it cold. The three main ways I get into it, are when listening to something I like, or when walking in a place away from any musical sound, or when testing a new synthesiser sound for even tonal balance across a wide key range. These are all very different triggers, but they're equally effective.

[merlyn]

What I meant was that there is a default noodle when picking up a guitar. My default noodle now implies a chord. I don't see what that has to do with tab, or notation.

[ajay_m]

I think short-term where you are probably playing notes from a scale you are to some extent going on muscle memory (and certainly in terms of 'licks' that are common idioms in certain musical styles, such as New Orleans piano), then you will learn some of these and string them together (as Dr John does so wonderfully).

Over a longer timeframe you are perhaps thinking about harmonic progressions and where you want to go (or are taken by fellow musicians).
We should remember that many of the great composers - Beethoven for example - often presented improvisations as part of their concerts - the rigid 'playing from score or memory' approach we take to e.g classical music now didn't exist to anything like the same extent.

If you then look at a lot of classical music and think about the composer originally improvising as a source of inspiration then you can see their use of muscle memory patterns (e.g Mozart and the Alberti bass) but then they took conscious control in terms of thinking about modulation and finally of course for the music they wrote (e.g sonata form) there is formal structure including theme, recapitulation etc, which require some degree of structural planning outside the improvisational framework itself.

Each composer (both modern and classical) has, I think, an idiomatic internal preference for certain modulations which will come out during improvisation. My favourite example is the first movement of Schubert's piano sonata D960 where he gets into a passage that sounds initially almost Mozartian or perhaps reminiscent of Beethoven and then... he modulates it in a way that would have sounded completely crazy to his predecessors. That *must* have come out of improvisation, I feel, it's just so spontaneous.

Of course we shouldn't forget rhythm as an inspiration as well. Often in improvising you come up with something rhythmically unusual that serves as an inspiration and can be as important as the actual notes you're playing.

I have had the great good fortune to attend concerts by Keith Jarrett twice in my life and unfortunately it's unlikely he'll ever play again. But we will always have the Koln Concerts and I think everyone needs to absorb this extraordinary demonstration of sheer improvisational skill, he's really somehow communicating with some kind of spiritual power as he brings this music into being literally as we listen.

[Lostgallifreyan]

What I meant was that there is a default noodle when picking up a guitar. My default noodle now implies a chord. I don't see what that has to do with tab, or notation.

'Thinking in chords'. Whether written or not. It's just something I don't do, at least not in any conventional way. I play them, but it's driven by the same process I described when I mentioned intervals with held notes to anchor the transitions.

Ajay, I heard Keith Jarrett on R3 once, I think it was a Koln concert recording, not sure though. It was an instant hit with me, I never heard a piano sound like that before, it was like some of the thunderous textures Tangerine Dream come up with..

[Sam Spoons]

I play a lot if gypsy jazz these days but I rehearsing for a rock trio gig next month. At our last session I dug out an old slow blues (Steamroller Blues, based on the James Taylor version) and improvising over a simple chord sequence while (mostly) sticking to the standard blues vocabulary felt really nice. As we usually record our rehearsals I was able to listen back and the result was pretty ok too

[merlyn]

What I meant was that there is a default noodle when picking up a guitar. My default noodle now implies a chord. I don't see what that has to do with tab, or notation.

'Thinking in chords'. Whether written or not. It's just something I don't do, at least not in any conventional way. I play them, but it's driven by the same process I described when I mentioned intervals with held notes to anchor the transitions.

What I'm talking about is most applicable to jazz. I don't think of chords when I pick the guitar up and play something to check the guitar is working. After years of doing it, that's what I hear. I think that sheds some light on t42's question. You have to have absorbed ideas thoroughly before they come out in your improvisation. It doesn't seem to me I'm remembering it, it seems I'm playing it.

[Folderol]

Well, if nothing else, this is proof (if needed) that everyone is different

[Moroccomoose]

I've been stuck in the minor pentatonic doldrums for years, like 30years! Last year, I stumbled upon the 3-note-per-string method for constructing a scale in any key or mode on the guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQf6i8K ... dex=1&t=0s

It has completely revolutionised my solo improv. I don't think in terms of Chords and Scales, but I use the rules of the system for the mode/feeling of solo I want to play.
It's really unlocked the fretboard for me.

Stu.

[Lostgallifreyan]

What I'm talking about is most applicable to jazz. I don't think of chords when I pick the guitar up and play something to check the guitar is working. After years of doing it, that's what I hear. I think that sheds some light on t42's question. You have to have absorbed ideas thoroughly before they come out in your improvisation. It doesn't seem to me I'm remembering it, it seems I'm playing it.

I was never that good a musician. With me it's sort of like water finding a way through complex ground. I rarely know when using a keyboard, the way I do when whistling, what I might do with a tune. With the keys it's sort of like an unending open question, even when I can resolve the phrasing. It's definitely not like memory, though there is a sense of past that guides it, it's just never specific, not like combining known riffs..

Folderol, agreed, it is amazing the difference of expression. In genetics, humans are much more similar than dogs are, but in musical approaches we are as diverse as dogs.

[Lostgallifreyan]

I've been stuck in the minor pentatonic doldrums for years, like 30years! Last year, I stumbled upon the 3-note-per-string method for constructing a scale in any key or mode on the guitar.

Same here, I like minor pentatonics. I think a lot of Strangers basslines do that so it comes more naturally to me. I never got any teaching, but I liked listening very carefully to what JJ actually does, even the intricate bits we rarely hear, because he's obviously efficient, and I found that in trying to get around there are some odd moves, like down a higher string, instead of up a lower one, and optimising this led me to something like a three-note-per-string pattern of movement. It IS liberating, not least because it takes the strain off fingering what can be a tough reach for a hand, especially down the far end. Sometimes the simplest folk tunes can be the toughest challenges, getting nice fluent legato.

All that said, I never really got into wildly different scales anyway, I just like certain modes and tend to stay with those, bar the odd deliberately strange note when I like it.

On keys, I once tried (very studiously) to come up with a melody that used every note. I naively thought it might be like a 'tone row', twelve-tone thing, but it wasn't, it was gauntly melodic (deliberately so), and I think that effort eventually did help free up my improvisations.

[amanise]

I reckon one of the best ways (and most fun) of opening up your improv is by doing question and answer duets with other musicians. Audiences usually love it - which makes it all the more rewarding and conducive to creativity. As a guitarist, its great to have a really good keyboard player to bounce off.

[progger]

Hey, my favorite subject! Or one of them, anyway. Improvising and composing are, ultimately, the reasons I’m a musician.

Improvisation is something I’ve loved and studied deeply for many years and I’ve been very privileged to get to do it professionally with some of the most wonderful musicians from around the world. As some posts here have already suggested, each of them has a unique perspective and approach, there’s no one “correct” way to go about it, although there are some pretty consistent tendencies.

For me, improvising on a high level mainly involves two goals:

(1) Imagine music that cohesively conveys an emotion or sensation. (And it could be almost anything: beauty, anger, fear, intensity, peace, triumph, sadness… Whatever is right for the musical context.)

(2) In, as closely as possible, the same instant, perform that music on your instrument.

Even though part (2) seems more intimidating at first, I think it’s actually the easier one to conceptualize and develop, even if it might take an agonizingly long time. You just… get really, really good at your instrument. Practice and gig, as close to every day as possible, for years.

Part (1) is the insidious one, and really the element that – for me – leads to brilliance. It’s not like being able to slay your melodic minor scales at 300bpm is going to lead to wonderful improvised music. Theory and technique help, of course, and are important means to an end, but being able to improvise wonderful musical ideas tends tome come from truly absorbing and understanding… wonderful musical ideas. Transcribing, studying, memorizing, endless hours of joyful listening, all of those things, regardless of genre, for years and years. And, of course, loving the hell out of the process.

That’s one idiot’s take on this infinitely complex topic, anyway!

[Drew Stephenson]

I think you've got that right progger, the reason for the improvisation has to exist first.
Otherwise it's just demonstrating technical proficiency.

[RichardT]

I do a lot of improvising but I can't think of anything illuminating to say about it.

[tea for two]

Also how much or little to improvise to stay fresh.
How melodic or chaotic to make our improvisation.

Melody is important to me.
For this reason I can't say I am chaotic.
I would like to think were I a World Class improviser I would still focus on melody

I don't noodle that much for making my stuff : quite low the number of noodles.
Most of the thyme I'm noodling to a tune on utuub to best of my limits.
This brings me freshness.

When it is noodling to make my own piece
having listened to a variety of stuff over the years also from various parts of the World
I have impressions in my mind.
I have these impressions to draw upon, not their theory.
Whatever noodle happens I edit to make into something, this something could take a few minutes to a decade or longer.
I have noodles I did late 90s I put into tunes during lockdown.
So to me none of my noodles are a waste : I can make something out of a snippet/s whilst not using most of the noodle.

[Sam Spoons]

I've been stuck in the minor pentatonic doldrums for years, like 30years! Last year, I stumbled upon the 3-note-per-string method for constructing a scale in any key or mode on the guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQf6i8K ... dex=1&t=0s

It has completely revolutionised my solo improv. I don't think in terms of Chords and Scales, but I use the rules of the system for the mode/feeling of solo I want to play.
It's really unlocked the fretboard for me.

Stu.

That is something I will look at further, I need to get better at playing the note in my head correctly. At first glance though it seems to limit you to movements across the fretboard (TBF I haven't had time to watch the whole video yet) and doesn't really do vertical or diagonal motion, you need to do all three (and to include chromatic notes) before you can play anything that comes into your head. That said it is a definite step beyond pentatonics.

[Moroccomoose]

TBF I haven't had time to watch the whole video yet) and doesn't really do vertical or diagonal motion, you need to do all three

It does get there. But it is a series of vids, in bite size chunks.

It is formulaic, moving up and down the strings and up and down the frets. It covers starting from 2nd, 3rd...7th degree of the scale too, but I just use the 1st degree from the nearest root to where I'm playing. I'm really enjoying playing in mixylodian and phygian, which I simply wouldn't have known what that even meant before watching the series!