How did you learn to improvise?

Securb said:
You are going straight to hell for making me watch that.
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Henry Kaiser has a few songs that are legitimately interesting and good

-but I think there is a major takeaway to his career

If you are born a millionaire and can pay anyone you want to play and release albums and do shows with you -you can have a music career. lol
 
NegativeEase said:
Henry Kaiser has a few songs that are legitimately interesting and good

-but I think there is a major takeaway to his career

If you are born a millionaire and can pay anyone you want to play and release albums and do shows with you -you can have a music career. lol
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But a broken clock is right twice a day -so I guess I listened/suffered enough to find the good stuff too

back in the day -anything labeled abstract, improv, avant garde or free jazz -I would listen to
 
Securb said:
Which is a great point and yet another part of improvisation that has yet to be discussed, communication.

As stated agreed to by most, when improving alone, you have the freedom to do whatever you like. In an ensemble setting, there are physical, verbal, and musical communications that give you cues as to where the music is going. It is challenging to improvise in an ensemble setting without some musical knowledge.
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Great insight here. In the open worship settings I play in it's all about watching and listening to each other. Who ever is setting the flow you jut have to feel where they are going. Here in my area we for a number of years would do 27 hour events where every group took a 2 hour set. Many times we would just throw something together with folks who had never played together. Come out of a written song just into pure improv having no idea where we were going until we got there. Sometimes it was really cool and natural but other times it took a while to gel. The key was communicating and feeling were the rest were going and that just came from experience. I guess it became so natural in my circles I didn't realize it was so unusual.
There is a whole movement of what we call Prophetic Worship with a good number of players and I have been blessed to be a part of it for many many years. Unfortunately right now I don't get a chance to do this as much as i used to. The pandemic shut a lot of it down and so far it hasn't come back.
Here is a clip from some of my friends who are masters of this kind of stuff recording a night at a local church. Wish they had not gone back and overdubbed some of this clip though.
 
Here is a guy I have played with a good bit over the years. Never know where you are going with Chris. He has been back In Australia for a number of years so we haven't had a chance to play together in quite a while.
 
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I'm feeling like the thread might be winding down but wanted to get in one more post.

The study and technique I listed in my posts are very effective. But back to the original poster, it's not really how I learned. It's how I teach.

I learned little pieces at a time and then went out and used them in the real world and once they were solid I went back and grabbed more pieces. It sounds like this is probably the way most of us did it.

But, if you have the time, resources, skill, ingenuity etc you can move faster than average if you have a plan that keeps building on the basics. There's a whole lot of good advice in this thread and you might want to boil it down to something that works for you, then complete the cycle by letting us know what you did.

​​​​​​
 
Here is a really cool clip from Glow in Austin Texas of what I'm talking on the spontaneous open worship stuff. Some VERY serious players here!!! This is the kind of stuff where I really feel at home playing. You have no idea where your going until you get there and at time kinda step out and just flow with it. I have recordings where in this kind of stuff I'm playing things I have never been able to reproduce. Man do I miss doing stuff like this!
 
^^ Nice!

NegativeEase said:
I am here to educate
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Yeah same here..

Sometimes people mistake that for self-indulgence (tho' I won't hold that against them) but it's all about education & helping a brother out educationally by exposing them to various nuances and stuff :bigthumb:...

Different guitar again..

 
More selfless, educational improv soloing...

This time in a blues rock context

Again w/ the Cort & Laney..


 
Here is an excellent description of Indian improvisation that translates nicely to other styles and forms. This guy explains the improvisation process of an Alap very poetically and romantically. This also translated to call and response in a blues, jazz, or rock setting. Once again this speaks to the communication going on during an ensemble improve through music more than visual cues.


Here is a very nice example of an Alap.



At 4:17 some of the greatest call and response improv of all time.

 
I feel like people should really listen to a lot of world music to improve their improvising -make different melodic and harmonic passages and step connections in their brain.

If you are going to solo out of minor pentatonic shape 1 as your core starting point - you probably will go on to sound more similar to everyone else taking the same guitar education path

Mix it up, get free -make some noise.
 
NegativeEase said:
I feel like people should really listen to a lot of world music to improve their improvising -make different melodic and harmonic passages and step connections in their brain.

If you are going to solo out of minor pentatonic shape 1 as your core starting point - you probably will go on to sound more similar to everyone else taking the same guitar education path

Mix it up, get free -make some noise.
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When you think of the artists that were able to successfully integrate World Music into the mainstream, there is no surprise when you mention the names The Beatles, The Police, Dave Matthews, Elton John, Dave Brubeck, and others that were leading-edge musicians. Some cult bands and performers like Paul Horn and Vampire Weekend also did the World Music thing great.

This is the first Brubeck song I ever heard. I was sold on Dave after hearing this. What a great fusion of Eastern and Western harmony and melody.

EDIT: Brilliant comping by Brubeck at 5:50

 
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Don't mean to blow my own trumpet here ('cuz I'm selfless) but I've done my own little bit for ^^ eastern-western musical integration too, (verse=eastern, Chorus=western ..there you go.)


Little did you guy's know you had you're own ambassador for world-music right here on SD... :bigthumb:
 
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