The art of jazz improvisation is a beautiful thing. Like all art, some artists are more adept than others. In this column, I will put forth concepts, ideas, and perhaps silly idle thoughts. All, however, with the hopes that as time goes on, more and more of us become truly adept at creating the art of jazz improvisation and living our lives on jazz!
I recently saw a documentary of sorts that put forth brain scans of individuals in deep sleep and then compared them to brain scans of jazz musicians while improvising. Although not entirely shocking, what was interesting is that the two different categories of brain scans showed predominant brain activity in the same regions of the brain. Wow! This reinforces what I have heard fellow artists state when they go about teaching the skills of improvisation. At the outset, don’t get too bogged down in music theory. Let your natural instinct tell you what to play.
OK, let’s start off with some basic approaches as to how we should begin to approach our practice of improvisational skills. First off, jazz improvisation is an art form that has evolved somewhat in a fairly short period of time. Jazz performers have always played what musicians term melodies. Traditionally that was something that someone wrote and thereafter others played. Louis Armstrong is one of the first to take liberty with that approach to melody. He would take the melody line and modify it slightly while soloing. Since then, artists of improvisation have taken larger and larger liberties with the original melody when creating improvisational passages or presentations. At the core, however, is creating melodic improvisation. This does not merely involve learning great technique, memorizing patterns and playing the ‘right notes.’ Rather, it is about learning the language of jazz and its style. It involves developing skills in phrasing control and utilizing creative design and intent.
When we perform jazz improvisation we do it with other musicians and hopefully in front of an audience. The improvisation itself is, however, performed within a chosen chart’s predetermined chord progressions. So, one of the first things we as improvisers have to learn is how to track our playing location within the territory we are journeying through. A good tool to practice this is to begin playing along with jazz recordings or to use recorded play-along pieces, such as those available by Jamey Aebersold. The twelve bar blues progression tracks are a good starting point to practice with. Begin by playing one bar phrases, resting a bar, playing a bar and so forth. Start and stop on the bar, don’t play beyond. To do this, I highly recommend that you tap your feet in a way that allows you to keep time. This will help you to develop your ability to track your location within a chart’s progression. Of course while doing this, begin to apply the style of jazz by adding inflections and rhythms whenever possible.
Jazz improvisation can be thought of as having a conversation with an audience. However, you’re the one doing all the talking. In conversations, we communicate, we tell stories. We ask questions and receive answers. Practice asking and answering questions and think of stories to tell your audiences.
A great book entitled, ‘Constructing Melodic Jazz Improvisation,’ written by Brian Kane goes into great depths on this topic and is one you probably want to have in your reference library to help you become a jazz superstar sooner than later. It is available through the link at the end of this article.
In addition to Brian Kane’s book, you likely will want to begin acquiring other instructional-aids as well. A good start would be Jamey Aebersold’s book entitled, ‘Volume 1, How to Play Jazz and Improvise.’ All of Jamey’s great books are available through the link below to Amazon. Buying through my site doesn’t cost you anything, but will help me continue to provide this site to the trumpet community. Keep making great music!
