Sputnik Music Forums - Improvisation

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Ok so..Guitar being the most expressive instrument out there, my only digression is that I know nothing as to how to play left handed..so only using one side of my brain I'm gonna explain what I have figured out which you both will never see out there and has only existed in black people in the form of blues because I believe they handed me the title of being the one to bring this to the public.

First, a lesson in listening. Try and listen to any music and if you care you can hear what the musician is going to play. My favorite example is Jimi Hendrix because he is so expressive yet soo planned out that you can simply study him by listening to a few songs. And yet, another reason why I love Hendrix, when you listen to his blues music ie Red House you are in for a surprise, he(like all black blues musicians) is completely unpredictable. You are simply gonna have to feel the moment with him to get anything out of the music other than complete freeform sadness(blues).

Which is the main reason I tell you now that I am a light in the darkness because not only do I know that they are completely freely chaotically creating right before your ears, I know how to do it in EVERY "style" of music out there simply because I enjoy to. With this knowledge mastered you will simply never play the guitar the "same" again. Every moment will be a challenge in freeform expression.

Ok so I am gonna address the exit strategy for the two internal states of mind which trap you in repitition and than address the way to begin to a newcomer in music. I had both states burned into me because I'm crazy, and yet I wish I could have been taught this when I began because well...I woul be soo much a better musician. Btw I've been doing it for 6 years now, so don't be discoraged by my confidence, it still takes time.

Exit strategy one: The will to please the crowd.

The good thing is that with this point of view you are already listening for what the people want in a psychic sorta way so you should be able to listen to only a few different blues songs in order to realize that yes..that stuff is being made solely in the moment, and with the more famous blues musicians you should be able to instantly see that they too are trying to please. My best example is the many different versions of Hendrix's Red House, that was his crowd stopping blues number.

Ok so another good thing is you are already an accomplished musician and thus know how to play anything you set your mind to. Here is the trick. Start playing for yourself, start thinking creatively, and now instead of letting your mind let you think you've played something wrong, EVER, start speaking in your mnd with words. My way out was "F it", everytime I felt wrong I'd say "F it" and "F it" over and over and just listen to myself instead of think anymore. Yes you still will be playing for the people because the people are looking to You for the sound...so truth be told the more you can just trip yourself out on the guitar, the more you are playing guitar. And if you can really start to handle chaos than you can really put on a show.

Exit strategy two: The will to have fun.

The good part here is you are very fresh and full of creative free energy. You only need to listen more to develop an understanding of hearing and it's my advice to take inspiration from the sounds of life, as they will give you the freshest and most personal state of musical influence.

My best musical example would be to listen to the progression in A.F.I.'s musical discovery. They were hardcore punk(power chords) up till they put their third known album out in which they started singing about the devil. From there you can see a definite holloween influence begin in which they got a new guitarist eventually who played more molody than rhythm. Interesting really to see how they delved into the later years, very very imagination based. I can only say they kept the idea of A Fire Inside alive.

For you the idea is much less of trying to get some kind of technique mastered or some sort of song mastered...but to just play. The more you work your muscles, the more you can just play for hours, the more you are going to be able to just get into it and keep going when you understand improvisation. You see, for you it is much less of an exit strategy and much more of a gaining of an understanding of what you want to hear from yourself.

So really if you can take my advice of listening more deeply in order to achieve the archetypal "hearing", and just work your fingers, you can basically just look into my section for beginners. As I really pride on how I would have done it right given the ability to teach myself from the begining.

As a side note. The reason I was a part of both exit strategies is that I played avidly for 5 years before I figured it out. So of course I planned on making a living with music as I was already thought of as a virtuoso by many, knowing truly soo little. But at the same time I cared zero for life. Being poor, rich people existing, athletes having seeming magical energy, billions burning gasoline all day every day years before I was born...on a planet?

lol I banter
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For the Beginner
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Step one:
Be a musician. If you don't wanna be a musician don't touch an instrument. Let me tell you that you are not a musician so that you know you choose to be a musician for yourself.

Step two:
Rhythm! Not songs, not notes, but pure in synch with where you are going rhythm. Of course, you have to play notes but you surely dont need to be thinking "correct" notes. Correct is just something people have been producing for hundereds of years, millenia in fact. The point of view you will have with one second of improvisation will show you something soo new, soo different that no knowledge can touch it because it has simply already been spoken and thus is starting to get stale in your mind.

Improvisation as with music in general is built on rhythm, and strong rhythm alone makes you a saught after musician in this world. The thing is I never want you to even think melody till you get rhythm mastered. And you will not know it is mastered till you can play with everything that is out there. Rhythm is perpetual and thus till you are no longer looking to learn or create, that is when I want you to go to the third and final step.

Step three:
Melody. This is where the perpetual concept of rhythm takes on a colorful even more perpetual(perpetualperpetual?) Twist. Now we are thinking waves, frequencies, clashing sounds...And let me tell you, all the theory in the world cannot take you away from the truth that it is your choice in the moment which is what happens and is the only thing that is ever gonna happen. So start thinking choice because that is all that happens.
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Now, when you are an accomplished musician. Improvisation is a given. To start it is the life of music and yet songs are a must if you are going to be playing with people, unless you are all crazy psychics like I have experienced from time to time. Of course Im pretty sure improvisational creation in the moment only has ever happened with me.

Improvisation fits so nicley into the "which came first...the chicken or the egg" arguement, since improvisation can be thought of (maybe not always) as repeating well rehearsed lines.

A player improvising may periodically play something they may not have landed on before, but typically the majority of what will be played during a segment of improvised playing will be the scales, runs, and lines that makes up that persons musical vocabulary.

Just as in having a verbal conversation with someone, exchanging ideas, you may be making statements you've never made before, but those statements are made up of words and phrases you have used since you first starting speaking as a child.

Melodic phrases played on a instrument are based on your previous knowledge, and experience you've gained through practice prior to that performance.

A speady, extended run executed clearly and with purpose that the musician has never played before...I'm not sure if that can really happen.

I don't mean to generalize what everyone is able to do, but anyone I've known who I respected as musician, has subscribed to the process I've described above.

Yes well, musical creation in essence is what I am talking about with improvisation. But..I can, and black people in the past did play completely new, completely fresh minutes/hours whatever you choose, whatever is felt, right there on the spot. It's great, at times I could get lost with myself, and I have advanced more in the last 6 years playing less than I have in my 10 years of playing.

Here's a good study, and my favorite really. Robert Johnson, they say he was nothing than he came back sayin he sold his soul to the devil to play some good guitar. And than he shortly died after making some good records, mostly playing slide guitar.

I plan on doin some stuff in front of crowds to show that its not just blues music that can be improvised, cause we need freedom right??? But I need women before I care about much soo hah you only got blues musicians of the past till I do something. learn or else play the same stuff over and over and over.

listen to jimi hendrix's machine gun on the band of gypsies cd. Pm me if you need a good mp3 site. That song will give you 13 minutes of impossible to reproduce stuff..and he has many different versions. That one is just my favorite, he played it again the next night on the live at the filmore east cd...Completely different. Plus he didn't even improvise it all, read his biography, that mofo played guitar instead of goin to sleep. Played it all day. He simply figured out different versions to play tomorrow in his sleep and improvised the fun stuff because music is MY THING lol. My thing to be master of and share because those blues musicians were only playin so they could sing. And what were they singin about??? Not havin women, the fools.

My mind has been forever changed i must go make love to my instrument

godly hit the nail on the head for me.

"improvisation" is about using your collective wisdom to create something new. The feel of what to play comes from your past experiences, be that listening to music or playing music

lol you two have no idea what your talking about. You have no feeling, or ears if blues means anything to you

If you think that you are playing something new each time you improvise, then you are not really listening to yourself. All that you do is based on something else you've practiced, repeating yourself over and over again.

Anyone that does not do this is the exeption, Hendrix included, and I bet if you really listen to any extended improvised soloing recorded by Hendrix, you'll hear repeated phrases throughout. It's just the way the human brain works...black, blues, or otherwise.

I believe this fellow here, "azurescen", is willfully mislead or being a self-indulgent troll.

Go, let your mushroomy spirit run wild and show us some real improvisation

Lol, I see absolutely zero concept in your understanding of improvising. Repeating says you know what you are about to play. Hendrix and other black blues musicians had zero clue what they are going to play they simply felt it.

And please don't call me a troll because there is zero words on this site saying homosexuals only. And if thats not your deal than your disrespectful and I simply don't know what you are.

Pm me your email and I'll show you freeform expression. Tell me the style if you prefer.

so who azure

is it nacho you think

[QUOTE=azurescen;18961008]Lol, I see absolutely zero concept in your understanding of improvising. Repeating says you know what you are about to play. Hendrix and other black blues musicians had zero clue what they are going to play they simply felt it.

And please don't call me a troll because there is zero words on this site saying homosexuals only. And if thats not your deal than your disrespectful and I simply don't know what you are.

Pm me your email and I'll show you freeform expression. Tell me the style if you prefer.[/QUOTE]

I don't really agree with the statement that "repeating says you know what you are about to play".
Not necessarily anyway.

Also, when I improvise, I try to think ahead from where I am at the moment, so in ideal conditions, I DO know what I'm going to play, even on the off chance that I'm not repeating anything I've ever done in the past (which is an incredibly rare occurrence, I might add).

At the end of the day, unless you're getting seriously into super free styles of music that don't have defined tonal or rhythmic centers, there are only twelve notes, and only so many scales and chords. It's impossible to avoid repeating yourself - and that's ok, because it's not just what you play, but the context in which you play it that makes your playing what it is.

Also, you "plan on doing stuff in front of crowds to show that it's not just blues music that can be improvised"?
Are you trying to say that you think improvisation outside of blues is some kind of revolutionary idea?

Do you have any idea how absurd and ridiculous that assertion is?

But do the knobs go to 11??... ... I'm confused...

[QUOTE=azurescen;18961008]Lol, I see absolutely zero concept in your understanding of improvising. Repeating says you know what you are about to play. Hendrix and other black blues musicians had zero clue what they are going to play they simply felt it.

And please don't call me a troll because there is zero words on this site saying homosexuals only. And if thats not your deal than your disrespectful and I simply don't know what you are.

Pm me your email and I'll show you freeform expression. Tell me the style if you prefer.[/QUOTE]

You really need to stop using blues as an example of improvisation where nothing is played twice.

The structure of blues chord progressions is very rigid. Just try getting freaky while in middle of an 8, 12, or 16 bar blues, and just playing what you want.

As far as blues soloing goes...your statement that "Hendrix and other black blues musicians had zero clue what they are going to play they simply felt it", speaks volumes of your ignorance. Nothing further you have to say could possibly be taken as having any kind of validity.

Let me guess...
you are between 18 and 25 years old.
Probably play in some kind of cover band that has a high concentration of Zepplin covers.
Your Ibanez has a whammy bar, and some kind of "cool" graphic on it.

Yup 25 and better than any guitarist alive...At creating new music at least. And it would only take me time to learn any sort of technique, ie sweep picking/banjo kinda finger picking lol.

Trust me I will out do anyone when it comes to jamming/creating new music on the spot. Play me a rhythm and I'll do brand new stuff constantly.

Please don't disrespect black blues musicians of the past. Most do NOT play simple "chord progressions", at least not the stand alone musicians. Don't or else thier lives were lived for nothing.

Btw, I'll try and get to a computer because all I have is a playstation vita and just found out I can't send videos on it. But how can you really tell I'm improvising unless you're jamming with me? Just listen to robert johnson, trust me, he is complete freeform feeling improv.

That is a great site! I saw the information is very usefule!
[img]http://bookstoday.info/eo/ps.jpg[/img]
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[QUOTE=azurescen;18962305]
Please don't disrespect black blues musicians of the past. Most do NOT play simple "chord progressions", at least not the stand alone musicians.

Just listen to robert johnson, trust me, he is complete freeform feeling improv.[/QUOTE]

Robert Johnson is great, but he wasn't great because of his sophisticated use of harmony.
Pretty much everything he plays exclusively uses dominant I IV and V chords. Which is fine (great, in fact!) because it's the blues, and that's what the blues is.

Also, are you using Robert Johnson as your example of someone who doesn't repeat themselves when they improvise?
Have you actually listened to any Robert Johnson properly?

He does not have a wide array of licks.

You see blues music may not be totally complex but it is not repeated. Repeating means you are playing the same thing whereas improvisation involves using a mental "bag of tricks"(sounds) where the musician knows a few things but whenever he plays a song he comes at it in a completely fresh way. Improvisation is completely unrehearsed. It is where you do not play your music ie repeat in the same way EVER.

I know nothing of occasional improvisation because if you ever improvised for even a second you would never play the "same sounds". Every song becomes a basic moment to moment masterpiece and it's sort of like you sing the song on your instrument a new way every time.

I have reached states and am probably the most complex musician to ever live. Music is generally played by feeling where you travel in time expressing sounds that provoke a certain feeling over that time. But I'm pretty sure I'm the only musician to ever attain the state of taste in music, which Im positive would require improvisation. Feeling limits you to one sound a moment whereas when I was playing by taste I had multiple sounds at my disposal that conveyed a certain flavor and I was looking at flavors like icecream at a parlor.

I can't really say improvisation has ever really been done by any other than black blues musicians because if it was out there it surely would have taken over the world and they would not teach music the way they do at all. Improvisation is music mastery while people of the world are simply musicians playing rhythms. Drummers probably have attained mastery and started playing with tone/melody but I think the transition from drums to something like guitar tripped them out too heavily.

[QUOTE=azurescen;18966572]You see blues music may not be totally complex but it is not repeated. Repeating means you are playing the same thing whereas improvisation involves using a mental "bag of tricks"(sounds) where the musician knows a few things but whenever he plays a song he comes at it in a completely fresh way. Improvisation is completely unrehearsed. It is where you do not play your music ie repeat in the same way EVER.

I know nothing of occasional improvisation because if you ever improvised for even a second you would never play the "same sounds". Every song becomes a basic moment to moment masterpiece and it's sort of like you sing the song on your instrument a new way every time.

I have reached states and am probably the most complex musician to ever live. Music is generally played by feeling where you travel in time expressing sounds that provoke a certain feeling over that time. But I'm pretty sure I'm the only musician to ever attain the state of taste in music, which Im positive would require improvisation. Feeling limits you to one sound a moment whereas when I was playing by taste I had multiple sounds at my disposal that conveyed a certain flavor and I was looking at flavors like icecream at a parlor.

I can't really say improvisation has ever really been done by any other than black blues musicians because if it was out there it surely would have taken over the world and they would not teach music the way they do at all. Improvisation is music mastery while people of the world are simply musicians playing rhythms. Drummers probably have attained mastery and started playing with tone/melody but I think the transition from drums to something like guitar tripped them out too heavily.[/QUOTE]
Get out of your own ass.

This post has racism, narcissism in grand majestic sweeping generalizations and baseless conjectures worse than an american political ad.

agreed. let's see you feel those notes man

Sorry cant send on my vita like I said. And you're all retards anyways. If you can't even know I'm telling the truth than you don't have brains. I could post a video and how would you know any better. If you can't just listen to me than we'll have to jam or else. Seems pretty retarded to me to not trust me and even care to talk to me.

You're not bad..

8.5/10.

that's a really generous rating noonslice.

you can transfer/send videos on a vita. i have one.

you'd have to use CMA (content media) on your PC and transfer the video from you vita to your computer.

at that point all you need to is upload and BAM, all done. after the 2.0 update next week, they will be rolling out an email app. I'm sure you'll be able to send these types of files from there as well

Alright, well I'll do the best that I can to get to a computer, but if you don't even believe that robert johnson and othe black blues musicians are improvising...What's really the point?

aw come on , don't get discouraged....you can make us believe!

[QUOTE=azurescen;18968075]Alright, well I'll do the best that I can to get to a computer, but if you don't even believe that robert johnson and othe black blues musicians are improvising...What's really the point?[/QUOTE]
so what

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/14/165145967/a-peek-inside-rappers-brains-shows-roots-of-improvisation