Improvisation: The Master Skill

A WORK IN PROGRESS....MORE TO COME SOON!   --Cheers!!  Ron

“To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk”.  --Thomas Edison
“Imitate, assimilate, innovate!” --Jazz great Clark Terry, when asked how one learns to improvise.

Harmonic improvisation---what Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Ellington, Armstrong, Jarrett, Santana, Van Halen, etc. do (or did)---is rapid-fire inference thinking.

To do it successfully one must recall, compare then select among a vast 'vocabulary' of tone and rhythm patterns, which are braided into melody and superimposed upon an awareness of, and control over, the ongoing contexts of Mode & Meter, plus the ever-changing Harmonic & Rhythmic Functions, and, of course, the basic Tempo & Tonal center (Keynote). Most of this is done, if you truly wish to communicate, with an ear towards the musical vocabulary of the listener (or audience).  All of this musical thinking (audiation) must then be instantaneously expressed through our technical (muscular) control over our instrument/voice.  That's why in music, improvisation should be viewed as the master skill.

Note the underlined parallels between that paragraph and the one that follows:

Realize that you improvise everyday, virtually effortlessly with conversational language.  You recall, compare then select words from a vast vocabulary to answer something you heard while maintaining an awareness of, and control over, the context of the conversation and an ongoing awareness of the function of the words.  Most of this is done, if you truly wish to communicate, with an ear towards the vocabulary of the listener (or audience).   All of this linguistic thinking must then be instantaneously expressed through our technical (muscular) control over our instrument; the voice.  That's why in language, conversation often is viewed as the master skill!

Realize as well, that it IS POSSIBLE for all persons to do this musically as well, given a proper (more linguistic) learning sequence.

Let's get started:   A WORK IN PROGRESS....MORE TO COME SOON!   --Cheers!!  Ron!!