January
27
2010
Improvisation - It’s Not Just For Jazzers Anymore
The idea of improvisation scares the beejeezus out of many musicians, especially those who learned to play their instrument side by side with learning how to read music. Knowing how to read music is a valuable skill. But when you stop and think about how you learned to speak your native language, you will realize that you learned to read well after you learned to speak the language.
This philosophy of learning is appropriate to learning the language of music as well. Today’s edition of Musician’s Motivator addresses how you can develop your musical speaking skills. For today, you can give your music reading skills a rest!
Benefits of Improvisation
It’s not just for jazz musicians. Bringing improvisation into your regular practice will enhance your ability to listen. And not just to music. I have found that as a result of practicing improvisation, I bring another level of awareness to conversations I have with people.
Regular musical improvisation naturally increases your attention in musical settings as well; whether you are in a musical group as one of the players or in the audience listening. In symphonic band rehearsals, I hear more of the other instruments playing. I have been pleasantly surprised by the sound of the tuba and bass clarinet playing softly in unison while I was counting measures to my next entrance; or noticing the oboe trilling above a clarinet choir. As an audience member, listening to the recent Washington Wind Symphony performance of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor was a treat, enriched by my own regular improvisation practice.
But Wait, There’s More!
Another benefit to regular improvisation is enhanced creativity. You will find that a little bit of creativity, no matter how small, begets more creativity. It’s like smiling at strangers on your morning walk. They usually smile back!
After establishing a regular improv practice, you may find yourself drawing more, re-arranging items on your dresser aesthetically, wearing more colorful clothing, climbing a tree, writing a short story for your children, or planning the planting of your front garden area. All this as a result of improvisation!
A habit of improvisation practice also leads to composing and arranging music. After all, improvising is just that – composing music. It just needs to be written down.
How To Practice Improvisation
Here are two exercises that anyone can do to develop the improvisation muscle. They are from my forthcoming book, Truly FUNdamentals – The Most FUN Musical Warmups Ever!
- Take Three
- On The Air!
Take Three
Choose any three tones that you can play on your instrument. Play those tones using any rhythm and note values. Play only those three pitches. You may include the upper and lower octaves of those three tones. Remember to use rests in your rhythms! Long note values, short note values, various articulations - all are welcome. Give yourself plenty of time to explore these three notes.
On The Air!
Turn on your radio and play along. Many radio stations specialize in one genre of recorded music. You can chose from jazz, pop, oldies, classical, folk, rock, opera, and many others. I recommend that you start with a style of music you like and with which you are familiar.
- Pick your channel.
- Raise the volume sufficiently so you can hear the radio music over your own instrument.
- Listen!
- Match the predominant tones first. This will help you establish the key center.
- Play the melody (if it’s a song you know) or play a blending melodic line.
If radio is too old-school for you, try these online music resources: Pandora, and Musicovery.
Speak Up
Share your improv fun on my blog or drop me an email: meg@meggrace.com.
If you liked this, you may also want to read: Fueling Up At The Inspiration Station. A few months back I wrote about this exercise designed to get you playing and making music on a regular basis. Fifteen minutes of blowing into your horn, an experiment to make practice happen.
- Other recommended articles: Who, Me? Creative?
- Is There Music in The City Skyline?
- Drawing Down The Music
Music has many mathematical elements contained therein. The idea to apply pitch to pixels is the concept behind the free software, 
In this image, I am boating on the Bosphorus Strait, the waterway separating Europe and Asia.
This time, I set the instrumentation to voices by choosing #54 Ooh Choir. There are 142 different instruments with everything from clarinet and trumpet and tuba to Rain and Gunshot and Dog. There are nine different types of drum kits, and about that many types of guitars, pianos, and basses.
The English word music comes from the Latin musica and the Greek mousike, meaning an art presided over by the Muses. The Muses are nine sister Goddesses in Greek mythology directing song and poetry and the arts and sciences. The Muses inspire.
“I breathe but air and out comes beautiful music.” It is obvious how this is true for wind instrumentalists and vocalists. And it is also true of string players and percussionists.
On the other hand, this being a choral group, the songs all have words, something I’ve never had to contend with when playing band and orchestra music. What’s more, of these 16 songs, four of them are in a language other than English. I am also singing in Yorùbá, the language of 
Perhaps the reason I had difficulty learning this song is that it had no meaning for me. In the beginning, I was just singing words, working on getting the rhythm correct and my entrances down. What if I read the words without the music and tried to understand what I was singing?
I found it! I sat and listened to the song, as if for the first time, without any judgments about the lyric or the time signatures or tessitura.
We were taught fingerings with a numbered diagram of the sax keys. Numbers one through six were used to indicate which fingers and corresponding keys to depress. These diagrams were placed below the staff, describing the finger position for the note above.
We tend to think of music solely in terms of what we hear. But research on the brain about how we process music shows that a lot more than our hearing is involved. In fact, the Auditory Cortex is only one small part of the brain that processes the various input from musical activity. Further, those parts of the brain that are stimulated when a person listens to music are also stimulated when the person merely hears the music in her head!