First Steps: Improvisation for Classical musicians

As I make my way from NYC to Boston for my first days of teaching at the Berklee School of Music, I'm wondering how it will feel to teach 20 students in the next two days, outside of my normal touring musician's lifestyle where anything goes and I meet my students like ships passing in the night, here and there at camps, on tour, on ichat, etc.... Berklee must have lots of rules and I'll actually have to follow them - scary. I can't just spend an hour hacky-sacking with my students!

Now that I'm an Associate Professor, I guess it's about time to write down all my ideas for string players interested in jazz, improvisation and everything that comes with. I've been improvising and teaching for years, so you'd think it shouldn't be hard to start putting it all down

Honestly, it's scary to "formulate" my ideas in writing, because by writing them down I risk losing my ability to improvise my teaching, as I often do in clinics, even while guided by outlines. This tension between preparation and improvisation is analogous live musical performance.

Improvising and preparing don't necessarily go together, in music or life. Often someone who is very disciplined in terms of preparation is uncomfortable with improvisation, and vice versa. In my case, I'm in the habit of putting myself in difficult improvisational situations, simply by being unprepared. When unprepared for a clinic, a performance, a recording, I'm forced to come up with something new, i.e., some on the spot way of getting through. Conversely, by preparing my ideas in this blog, I'm worried that they'll become "stale" overnight, (because of course that's the nature of ideas- they're fresh in the here and now and they become less true as time goes by. You'll find this to be true of your improvisations- they're only fresh for a while, until they become cliche.)

Furthermore, I would have codified my ideas, as if "writing out my solo" in a tune-and once you've played "the perfect solo", it's hard to vary it. Anyway...

A suzuki teacher and violinist from Columbus, Ohio emailed me today to ask about how to get started with improvisation. It seemed right on cue- the perfect beginning point for this series of lesson-blogs.

I told her I'd be happy to get together in a few weeks when I'll be in Columbus to see my daughter, Camille. We talked. She said she knew a guitarist and singer-songwriter she wanted to jam with and she's tired of "going from the gut", i.e., faking it. She wanted some ("oxymoronic", she says) "lessons on improvisation", so she can better "mentally organize" when she's jamming. She said she wanted to learn how to play the "notes in the chord that sparkle", and "cut some things out" of her playing, i.e., maybe play a bit fewer notes. and if I could show her which notes to take out, etc.

I said I'd be happy to help. She can come observe my residency at the Wellington School in Columbus next monh and we can schedule a lesson as well. I told her she was welcome to work with me through video/ichat/Skype lessons, or send me mp3's for my review and commentary, and we can hook up from time to time when I'm in the area.

In the meantime, the first thing I suggested she do on her own, since she's already improvising a little bit, is to RECORD herself- Like preventive medicine (want to be healthy? Simply abstain from BAD things!), the BEST way to improve your playing is to first, record yourself, and second, OMIT the bad habits that you hear from your playing, i.e., all the redundant, repeated licks, all the unnecessary mannerisms, all the token blues licks and token chops and riffs from whatever "jazzy" tidbit you heard. JUST STOP playing that crap. This is EASY stuff to do- not hard. Just like, if you want to quit gaining weight, quit eating bad food. You don't need to know tons of advanced theory or practice 7 hours a day to do this.

You'll sound tons better by: 1) Listening to yourself (via recordings) and 2) Not playing the bad things.

My mentor, the great organist and pianist, Bobby Floyd always has a recording device with him, at every gig, whether solo piano, band, in a club, church, theatre.. I've never seen him on a gig without his recorder. And he plays so great all the time. First step is to get a recording device, carry it with you at all times, use it whenever you practice, rehearse or perform, and listen back.

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