[Xaymaca]

Well I have been playing for over 20 years, but don't have the improvisational/technical skills to prove that. I just haven't been able to grasp the concepts and apply them to my playing. I sound alright, but have a lot of ground to cover which should have been covered about 15 years ago in terms of my playing. I have a basic understanding of chords and that for the most part are based on the key of the song. In addition, that certain chords can be substituted for others (this one I don't fully grasp, but know it's out there), such as for G major you can use A minor (since it's the dorian, and that the melodic/harmonic minor can still work), and that you can use the Mixolydian scale on a major dominant chord. I know this might be wrong and that I am nowhere close to where I need/want to be in grasping these concepts. There has been this one lick that I have learned when I was working with a music teacher, but still can't find out how to apply it to my playing.

The next thing is actually hearing the different chords in the pre-recorded tracks I use and actually play over those changes. I am tired of falling back on the key signature and using the scale instead of voicing with the chords. I need some help finding the right tools and actually applying them to my playing. I forgot to mention that I like to play along with Kirk Whalum, Mike Phillips, and Richard Elliot. I say play along not "transcribing," because when it comes to their fast passages I have a hard time catching along. I will try to learn them, and I tend to get very frustrated when trying to learn them. I have a hard time acutally hearing it and reproducing them on my horn.

I am desperately asking for help from those who are much better then I technically, so that I can get to that point in the near future. Thanks in advance.

 

[lydian]

The good news is for that style of music, you can greatly simplify your approach. Those sorts of tunes don't have many chord changes, and the style relies heavily on the pentatonic and blues scales. Any fast passages you can't figure out are likely just pentatonic or blues runs.

Taking your example of G major, just riff on G maj pentatonic (1 2 3 5 6 or G A B D E). For a bluesy sound, use the minor pentatonic (1 b3 4 5 b7). You'll notice this sounds a lot like a the blues scale. That's because all you have to do to get the blues scale is add one more note, the sharp 4 or flat 5 (1 b3 4 #4 5 b7).

Another nice thing about pentatonics is you only have to learn the major pentatonics, and you'll automatically know all the minor ones. That's because the relative minor pentatonic has all the same notes as the major one. Let's take C as an example (1 2 3 5 6 or C D E G A). To find the relative minor, go down a minor third to A. The minor pentatonic scale of A is A C D E G (1 b3 4 5 b7). Those are the exact same notes as C major pentatonic. How do we use this in practice? Let's say you've memorized all your major pentatonics, and you hear a bluesy line in a song in G. So you want to play G minor pentatonic, but what are the notes? We know that a minor pentatonic has the same notes as its relative major. Just go up a minor third from this relative minor which is Bb. The pentatonic for Bb major (1 2 3 5 6) is Bb C D F G which are all the same notes in G minor pentatonic. Reordering to start from G, that's G Bb C D F. To get really bluesy, add in the #4, or C#.

To summarize, for a tune in G or chord progression with a key center of G, riff on the G major (G A B D E) and G minor (G Bb C D F) pentatonics (same notes as Bb maj pentatonic) plus the occasional #4 (C#).

That covers the vast majority of smooth jazz.

We hardcore beboppers tend to look down on and ridicule smooth jazz because of its simplicity. But jokes on us since those are the records that actually sell and what the public wants to listen to. However, there are a couple of artists who are injecting some actual jazz elements into smooth jazz these days resulting in something that both the general public and real jazz fans and players can appreciate. For a taste of that, check out artists like Bob Reynolds. If you want to go straight to the source, the guy every smooth jazz artist copies, check out Sanborn. If you want to go to the next level, check out Gerald Albright and Kamasi Washington.

 

[tombg14]

I can only speak to my own personal experience, but transcribing has been by FAR the most helpful exercise in terms of getting better at improvising (and by transcribing, I mean just learning the melody or solo I want to learn by ear, not necessarily writing it down). There is a great app called Anytune Plus that allows you to import songs from other apps like iTunes, and then you can do a lot of different things, including slowing the song down as much as you need to. Also, even though I love transcribing, it can be really hard! Sometimes I'll work for weeks or months on a single solo. You could start with something manageable - don't even try a full solo, just try to pull the melody the way those guys play it, or learn part of a solo you really like. For me, the greatest benefit of transcription is the act of doing it: you just naturally improve your ears and your sense of what goes into making a good solo.

Finally, another really simple exercise you can do with those pre-recorded tracks to actually hear the chord changes is the following: for one chorus, just play the roots of the chords. Next, chorus, play 1-3-5-1 of the chord as quarter notes. Then as you get comfortable, you can play eighth-note arpeggios like 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3. You get the idea - just really basis stuff to get the sounds of the chords in your ears. I do this a lot and it really surprises me sometimes how it can almost end up sounding like a nice, simple legit solo.

 

[Fader]

The best way to get better at improvising is to do more improvising. If you're playing along to backing tracks in private - Experiment. Don't think about the chords or the notes in them. Try to make "bad" notes work. Play outside the box. No one is there to hear you mess up. Many poor improvisers are bad at it because they are trying to play all the notes that fit (often as quickly as possible), but they are not trying to express anything. The best improvs I hear seem to have repeating phrases, and always seem to come back around to a theme or melody. Don't worry about being fancy - just be musical. Don't be in a hurry. Leave space. Let it breathe.

 

[LAP13]

This. Totally this. I completely understand and feel exactly the same. I actually feel a bit of a fraud that by now, I SHOULD know and be expected to be able to do it but improv is a dirty word in this house!!

I used to play with a guy who could read absolutely anything you put in front of him, if a fly landed on the page, he'd play it but couldn't improvise, goes to show you know what you know.

The things that help me the most - keep it simple, use the melody and embellish it rather than overcomplicate it and go avant-garde
- listen and sing it; if you can sing it, you can play it i.e. know your instrument
- make mistakes, play the worst improv you possibly can, then have another go and it won't be as bad, as you think
- call and response, think of it as a conversation
- whatever you play "Play it like you bloody well mean it!"

 

[chinux79]

Many poor improvisers are bad at it because they are trying to play all the notes that fit (often as quickly as possible), but they are not trying to express anything.

Great advice! I tend to do that and it drives me nuts! Learning when not to play is very important.

 

[Xaymaca]

The good news is for that style of music, you can greatly simplify your approach. Those sorts of tunes don't have many chord changes, and the style relies heavily on the pentatonic and blues scales. Any fast passages you can't figure out are likely just pentatonic or blues runs.

Taking your example of G major, just riff on G maj pentatonic (1 2 3 5 6 or G A B D E). For a bluesy sound, use the minor pentatonic (1 b3 4 5 b7). You'll notice this sounds a lot like a the blues scale. That's because all you have to do to get the blues scale is add one more note, the sharp 4 or flat 5 (1 b3 4 #4 5 b7).

Another nice thing about pentatonics is you only have to learn the major pentatonics, and you'll automatically know all the minor ones. That's because the relative minor pentatonic has all the same notes as the major one. Let's take C as an example (1 2 3 5 6 or C D E G A). To find the relative minor, go down a minor third to A. The minor pentatonic scale of A is A C D E G (1 b3 4 5 b7). Those are the exact same notes as C major pentatonic. How do we use this in practice? Let's say you've memorized all your major pentatonics, and you hear a bluesy line in a song in G. So you want to play G minor pentatonic, but what are the notes? We know that a minor pentatonic has the same notes as its relative major. Just go up a minor third from this relative minor which is Bb. The pentatonic for Bb major (1 2 3 5 6) is Bb C D F G which are all the same notes in G minor pentatonic. Reordering to start from G, that's G Bb C D F. To get really bluesy, add in the #4, or C#.

To summarize, for a tune in G or chord progression with a key center of G, riff on the G major (G A B D E) and G minor (G Bb C D F) pentatonics (same notes as Bb maj pentatonic) plus the occasional #4 (C#).

That covers the vast majority of smooth jazz.

We hardcore beboppers tend to look down on and ridicule smooth jazz because of its simplicity. But jokes on us since those are the records that actually sell and what the public wants to listen to. However, there are a couple of artists who are injecting some actual jazz elements into smooth jazz these days resulting in something that both the general public and real jazz fans and players can appreciate. For a taste of that, check out artists like Bob Reynolds. If you want to go straight to the source, the guy every smooth jazz artist copies, check out Sanborn. If you want to go to the next level, check out Gerald Albright and Kamasi Washington.

Yeah I know Gerald Albright. He is the truth. The man plays some complex lines and uses Altissimo like they're notes within the normal range of the sax. He is one of the ones when I try to transcribe his stuff it just frustates me. I am sitting there thinking what is he doing, why did he use that particular lick or sequence of notes, where did he get that rhythm from. His stuff is deep.

 

[whamptoncourt]

IMHO Fader and Lap13 have given you some great advice. Improvisation is about you composing in real time. This has been bastardized by academics and a teaching industry that somehow thought it best to formulate improvisation. Well, that's the antithesis of what it's about. The players the academics listened to in order to formulate their "theory" weren't interested in following set patterns. They were were exploring new territory, and if alive today would be advocating the same. Trying to sound like some player from 60 years ago isn't what improvisation is about. It's playing what you can hear in your head today.

As others have said the key is the melody. We play one note at a time... a lead line that either is the melody or a variation on it. Call and response, harmony, counterpoint, any of these can work. What doesn't work and sends an audience packing is playing formulated drivel where the music becomes a showcase for an ego just playing as many notes as possible without giving the audience a musical experience. Playing music is about GIVING stories, emotions and an experience to an audience. It's not about trying to TAKE praise from your listeners for some ego pyrotechnics. Nice if you've got the chops to play fast, but if you've got nothing to say then that's all a listener hears.

Working on matching what you can hear in your head with what your hands can do is the goal. If you can't hear anything, then go ahead and do the "theory" thing, copy and paste, and try to at least give some sort of feeling to playing notes that you may not even hear until they come out of your horn. It comes down to you're either playing what you can hear, or playing what you can't hear.

 

[tombg14]

IMHO Fader and Lap13 have given you some great advice. Improvisation is about you composing in real time. This has been bastardized by academics and a teaching industry that somehow thought it best to formulate improvisation. Well, that's the antithesis of what it's about. The players the academics listened to in order to formulate their "theory" weren't interested in following set patterns. They were were exploring new territory, and if alive today would be advocating the same. Trying to sound like some player from 60 years ago isn't what improvisation is about. It's playing what you can hear in your head today.

This is very true, but those players that were exploring new territory learned the building blocks of their craft by .... learning the solos of the musicians that they admired - in other words, transcribing. I think there's really excellent advice here and from others about not getting locked into academic exercises, taking risks, and expressing yourself, but at the same time I have dealt with years of frustration of trying to learn to improvise while being given the same advice, and feeling like I was beating my head against the wall. The most helpful thing for me to get to the point of being able to do all those things was developing the skills to learn the vocabulary of the music I wanted to play. Everyone's mileage may vary, but for me, transcribing has been, by far, the most helpful thing in moving away from a place of extreme frustration with soloing/improvising.

 

[whamptoncourt]

I'm not going to argue with tombg14. His clarification/justification is "the music I wanted to play". If the music you want to play is mainstream jazz then by all means copy. If you wish to be in the 21st century and have an audience, then "the vocabulary" of mid 20th century may not be appropriate. I'm wearing the hat of a contemporary player. There is little/no call or need for mainstream improvisation. There is always a demand for players who can become part of a band or play recording gigs without having parts written out for them. Few or none are looking for a 1950s style sax soloist. This is the reality of our instrument in 2020...and probably beyond.

Everybody has choices about what they like to play, if it's mid 20th century and you don't care about playing for an audience, then that's fine. If you're striving to play in today's music sphere, then leave that "vocabulary" and copying of those masters behind and find your own voice. That's what they did.

 

[MaxTT]

All really good advice here. I would only add that to play anything it has to be first in your mind before it can go through your body. The best way to do that is immerse yourself in people who's solos move you. I followed an exercise a few years back where I listened to only one album for an entire month. In the car, at home etc. It really gets into your DNA that way.

 

[harmonizerNJ]

Well I have been playing for over 20 years, but don't have the improvisational/technical skills to prove that......

I will bet that your technical skills are plenty good enough to play a decent improvised solo, and that what I will call your "storytelling" skills are holding you back more than your technical skills.

I played sax in jazz bands all through junior high, high school and college, playing lead alto sax for almost all those years. My technical skills were good enough to play decent jazz, but even after all that experience, by age 25 I was still not comfortable improvising. I took some lessons with some old guy at the local music store, mostly out of desperation to stay active on the sax, and not expecting to learn much from him. He got to hear some of my rambling and ineffective improv, and at about the 4th lesson he turned to me and said:

"I don't understand why you are playing so many notes".

I just sat there for a minute, absorbing his point.
Really, there was no good reason for me to be playing all those notes. I was technically competent enough to play the notes, and they probably sounded like they were being played by someone who knew something about jazz. But there was no point. There was no story.

Pretend you are going to have a verbal conversation with someone. You have a good idea for the first sentence, so you say it.
If you don't have a good idea for the second sentence, do you blurt something anyway, right away?
It's better to wait, and wait until a good idea comes.
It might be an idea of few words.
Now translate this concept to improvisation.

Fader made a point about space.
Space is your friend.
If you leave space in the middle of an improvised solo, it comes off as confidence.
For me, leaving space before I start my next phrase greatly increases the chance I will come up with a good musical idea for what that next phrase should be.

The technical stuff matters too, both to increase your vocabulary, and to allow you to better execute some of those good ideas that come to you.

But a good story teller with average technical skills will create an improv solo that I will prefer to listen to, more so than someone who has better technical skills but can't tell a story.

 

[Guto]

There is a great app called Anytune Plus

Thanks for the tip! I downloaded it today. It's indeed awesome for transcribing! I always used Audacity. This is much better.

 

[bowtie]

I feel you Xaymaca. I'm at a similar stage in my musical development. I've been playing about 10 years but way to focused on playing sheet music instead working on fundamentals and self-expression. There's some great advice in this thread. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

 

[CatDuet]

If there is something you love, so that you DO want to slow it down so you can absorb it to transcribe, it's useful to know that Youtube has a way of slowing down the speed of videos by clicking on the little gear icon. You can slow it as much as 50%.

If you have access to a good teacher, ask him or her to play some improv of their own on a tune you're working on, and record it. I can absorb the stuff my teacher plays best, because he isn't double- or triple-timing to show off, but is telling a story, using ideas he has already been emphasizing to me lately. If (as is common in our present day) you are taking the lessons by Zoom, you can record your Zoom session. This is one of the most effective ways I have found to gain confidence lately. Another way of slowing down audio files which is shareware is Audacity.

 

[DarrellMass]

I just start playing. No backing tracks.......no song in mind. I may begin with a 4-5 note riff in my head, just to get started in some sort of direction, but then I just play, listening to where my mind takes me. If I play, what seems to be a "wrong" note, I try to make the next note justify the "wrong" one, and usually can make it work out. You have to begin, by knowing where the notes you think up exist, on the horn. Then, you have to learn enough tunes, or segments of songs, that you have a good catalog of note patterns in your mental catalog, and under your fingers. Do it often enough, and eventually your fingers just know where to go, to land on the note that's in your mind. At that point, your only limitation is your mind's ability to think music.

 

[Xaymaca]

Thanks for the advice everybody!

 

[JayeLID]

The best way to get better at improvising is to do more improvising. If you're playing along to backing tracks in private - Experiment. Don't think about the chords or the notes in them. Try to make "bad" notes work. Play outside the box. No one is there to hear you mess up. Many poor improvisers are bad at it because they are trying to play all the notes that fit (often as quickly as possible), but they are not trying to express anything. The best improvs I hear seem to have repeating phrases, and always seem to come back around to a theme or melody. Don't worry about being fancy - just be musical. Don't be in a hurry. Leave space. Let it breathe.

I LIKE THIS very much ^^^^^^

Yes. Indeed it is good to have basic theory under your belt...BUT...do not short change your own ear. If you have been playing for 15+ years, you have your own ear for sure.

There is a point when the 'academic' model of learning to improvise does produce a, shall we say, 'recognizable' result (if I were up for a fight here I would have written "makes one's playing simply sound derivative and not their own"....but I am not, so I didn't ).....

That's fine, getting the recognizable result, being able to do 'what others can do'. But that's not some sort of universal goal, necessarily.

Over the decades (holy crap I am getting very close to saying "over the generations") I have been playing (various instruments), I have most CERTAINLY played with horn players who, by my definition, may not have been the greatest improvisers, or even particularly good ones when using an academic yardstick - BUT, BUT, BUT...I chose to play with them repeatedly because their playing style possessed other elements which, well, simply made them worth playing with...if you get my drift.

 

[lydian]

This play from your heart stuff, be original, and ignore the past is great. But fundamental to all of that is the requirement for a knowledge of melody and harmony. Yes, it may seem mechanical to say, use this or that pentatonic scale. But an artist has to at least have the right colors to paint with. You can and should discover these colors from listening to the masters as well as forming a theoretical concept of what works and what doesn't. Bird, Diz, Trane, etc. all had a very solid theoretical knowledge. They didn't just play from their gut. If you're completely free from the shackles of harmony, you're going to sound like crap.

 

[Keith Ridenhour]

For the first tool I'd use to help with what you are asking is to after you learn the melody, pretend you are a bass player and just walk the changes to any song you are learning until you have the chords memorized. this is easier than it may seem if you cut the song down to 2 anf 4 bar portions. Once you really ingrain the root feel and different character of chords you will hear the changes much better and know where you are in a song if you lose count of the form. Try it on a song for 5 minutes or so. No playalong. you are the playalong, you are the songs harmony. If you do it at 60 or 72 BPM you will play the song many times through in 5 minutes. Read it off the chord symbols at first but then force yourself to close your eyes until you have it down. As horn players we are spoiled. We play 2 choruses of a head, 3 choruses of solo and then fall asleep for 5 minutes. The bass, piano , harmony play the entire song. guess who knows the harmony better>

Well I have been playing for over 20 years, but don't have the improvisational/technical skills to prove that. I just haven't been able to grasp the concepts and apply them to my playing. I sound alright, but have a lot of ground to cover which should have been covered about 15 years ago in terms of my playing. I have a basic understanding of chords and that for the most part are based on the key of the song. In addition, that certain chords can be substituted for others (this one I don't fully grasp, but know it's out there), such as for G major you can use A minor (since it's the dorian, and that the melodic/harmonic minor can still work), and that you can use the Mixolydian scale on a major dominant chord. I know this might be wrong and that I am nowhere close to where I need/want to be in grasping these concepts. There has been this one lick that I have learned when I was working with a music teacher, but still can't find out how to apply it to my playing.

The next thing is actually hearing the different chords in the pre-recorded tracks I use and actually play over those changes. I am tired of falling back on the key signature and using the scale instead of voicing with the chords. I need some help finding the right tools and actually applying them to my playing. I forgot to mention that I like to play along with Kirk Whalum, Mike Phillips, and Richard Elliot. I say play along not "transcribing," because when it comes to their fast passages I have a hard time catching along. I will try to learn them, and I tend to get very frustrated when trying to learn them. I have a hard time acutally hearing it and reproducing them on my horn.

I am desperately asking for help from those who are much better then I technically, so that I can get to that point in the near future. Thanks in advance.