Music Blog October 2022
At the Colorado School of Music we have students come from all over the Denver metro area and nearby for private music lessons including Lakewood, Wheat ridge, Arvada, Golden, Morrison and Evergreen. We offer piano lessons, guitar lessons, ukulele lessons, violin lessons, viola lessons, vocal lessons, voice lessons, clarinet lessons, saxophone lessons, drum lessons, percussion lessons, trombone lessons, tuba lessons and euphonium lessons.
This music blog will be discussing the fantastic art of improvisation. Improvising on an instrument can be a life long journey. For me I have been addicted to jamming and improvising ever since the first time I was taught the concept. My first instrument is the guitar and have been practicing improvising in music for the last 30 years.
First I will be discussing the different tools used to improvise. Today I will be mostly talking about improvising a solo. You can improvise with chords as well. When I think of approaching a solo or just jamming along with others, I think of which tools I may use to create a solo. First we have all the different scales that we can use. We have pentatonic scales, major and minor scales. We can alter the major and minor scales. Which brings us into using Modes. There are 7 different modes and each will give you a different sound or color when used properly. Basically a mode is taking either the major scale and altering one note or doing the same to the natural minor scale. There is also a harmonic minor scale and a melodic minor scale that can be used when improvising. I have gone into detail in previous music blogs are the Modes.
The next tool used when improvising is the arpeggio. An arpeggio is a broken chord or playing a chord one note at a time. For example a C major arpeggio is C-E-G and then it repeated. You can practical make an arpeggio out of any chord. If you have a favorite chord try arpeggiating it. When using an arpeggio the arpeggio does not need to match the chord that it’s being played over. You may find that certain arpeggios compliment different chords. For example if you have a C major chord you may like the way and Eminor arpeggio sounds over it. This all comes down to personal preference. I like chocolate ice cream and you may like strawberry ice cream.
The last tool that I will be discussing is different chords or intervals. An interval is just the distance from one note to the next. You can use peace of chords to improvise with. One of my favorite intervals to use in the sixth interval. Thirds are also very appealing to the ear.
Now I am goin to discuss a few improving concepts. The first is called call and answer. I am going to use an analogy to explain this. Let’s say I give you a call on the telephone and I say “Hello this is Dean what are you up to right now?” I would stop talking in order to let you respond with your answer. You may say “I am working on how to improvise.” Then you would stop talking in order for me to answer. This would continue until the conversation was over. This is consider an example of call and answer. On your instrument you emulate this you would play a phrase or a few notes then pause for a moment and then create a second musical phrase to respond of answer the call. The second concept I am going to introduce is a bit simpler. It is repeating yourself. When we have a conversation with someone and are want to stress a certain part of the conversation we may repeat the same thing twice or even three times to stress the importance of what we have said. It goes the same for improvising in music. If you play something you like repeat it more that once maybe you play it three times. You may want to change it just a little bit on the third or fourth time repeating it to keep it interesting depending on what phrase you are repeating.
The number one this to remember when improvising is listening to what you’re playing and how the notes sound with the chord or chord progression you improvising over. Of course playing the right notes for the key you’re in is also paramount. I hope this blog on improvising has been helpful on getting you started on your life long journey of improvisation. Please contact us to come in for your $10 introductory lesson from one of our great instructors or myself to learn further about improvising. We offer guitar lessons, piano lessons, drum lessons, violin lesson, Ukulele lessons, vocal lessons as wells as some orchestral instruments and more. 303-526-9865 or info@coloradoschoolofmusic.com
