Intro to improvising

If you’ve never improvised before it can be intimidating. But it doesn’t have to be. Think of it like a skill. The best improvisers are the people that have practiced improvising the most. They do it all the time. They work on making music up on the spot all of the time. And practicing it helps a whole lot. The more you practice soloing the better you get at thinking of ideas on the spot and the more comfortable you get expressing those ideas on the spot.

To get yourself started with improvising I’ve written down a few tips and exercises that I’ve used while practicing myself and while teaching my students how to improvise.

So let’s get started.

Play a bunch of random notes

I know this won’t be what most people think of as improvising, but it still is. It’s not soloing over changes or improvising using a motif, but it’s still improvising. Just play a bunch of random notes. It doesn’t need to sound good or be pretty, but just play something that you’ve never played before on the spot. Get used to literally just playing a bunch of stuff.

It might seem silly, but one of the barriers that I see holding people back from improvising freely and expressing themselves easily is that they’re too worried about playing a “wrong note.” So get those notes out of the way by purposefully playing a bunch of randomness. Just get used to playing something that you’re making up on the spot.

Think of this as shaking your arms out to loosen yourself up. Shake out a bunch of random notes.

Play something that sounds ugly

Purposefully play something that sounds ugly. I like to do this with my students sometimes because it always surprises them with how hard it truly is. The only requirement is that you try to play well. You want to intentionally play something that sounds gross and disgusting, but you want to play it with good technique.

This removes just hitting the piano as one of the possibilities that some players will immediately think to do. I do also make it a point to tell them that the goal isn’t just to smash their instrument, but to play a lick that sounds ugly, but is played well.

The goal is to play something intentionally. So if you’re playing with a specific timbre you want to be doing it purposefully and with the intention of creating an ugly sound.

Add ornaments to a melody

This is starting to get into improvising more properly, rather than some beginning exercises.

Take a melody that you know really well and add some ornaments to it. Imagine you’re adding runs and trills and extra expression and articulation to it. You want to make sure that some of what you’re adding is actual notes.

Make the melody your own by adding different runs either into or out of notes. Create your own version of that melody. Try to make it sound unique and like it’s your own.

Change the rhythm of a melody

Take a melody that you know well and change the rhythm. Play it while accenting different parts of the melody or add notes to create a different rhythm. The idea is to quite literally “play around” with the rhythm of the melody and create a slightly different version of that melody.

One way to do this is to play it and extend some notes and shorten others.

Another way to do this is to play it in different time signatures. This might be a little difficult for beginnings but it’s something that I did in my classes at Berklee College of Music quite a bit. One of my ensemble class teachers had us play different jazz standards in odd meters. We’d often take a song like “Girl from Ipanema” and play it in 5/4 or 7/8, where we have to change the melody to fit in a meter with an extra quarter note or a one fewer 8th notes.

Take a scale and play random notes from it

This one is similar to the first two, but take a scale like the pentatonic scale and play a bunch of random notes from that scale. It might not sound like the most beautiful music ever, but it’ll get you used to the idea of just playing something. I find this to be useful for people that are shy while improvising or scared of playing “wrong notes.”

This used to be me in high school. I was timid and shy while soloing because I didn’t want to play “wrong notes.” I’ve found the thing that helps me be less shy and less scared of “wrong notes” is by playing random notes. Just playing a bunch of random stuff helps me realize that there aren’t as many “wrong notes” as I think there are. It also helps me realize that it’s much harder to find a “wrong note” than it might seem.

Within some restrictions (the scale) you can play a lot of random stuff that doesn’t sound all that bad.

Another thing it helps with is getting your ideas into music. Making up different ideas within a scale will get your ears a little more tuned to what each note sounds like and how those notes can be put together to create different musical ideas. The more ideas you know within that scale the more points of reference you have for what each scale degree sounds like.

Make variations of a lick

This is another improvisation exercise. Take a lick that you like and make as many variations of it as you can. Change the rhythm just a little bit. Change the rhythm a lot. Change the accents. Change the mode or the scale. Add ornaments to it. Try to vary it as many times as you can to create as many different versions of that lick as possible.

This exercise is useful way beyond the beginner stage because it gets you thinking in variations and motifs, which are two things that improvisers commonly use to create well crafted solos that sound like they were pre-planned, when they weren’t.

You’re always a half-step away from a “right” note

The next two are going to be pieces of advice, but not necessarily exercises. A “right note” is always just a half-step away. If the note you’re playing doesn’t sound particularly pleasant shift that note up or down a half-step and it’ll likely sound a whole lot better.

For example if you’re playing an Eb over a D major 7 chord, shifting that note up to E or down to D will sound a whole lot more “in” than Eb will sound. An E is a 9th, which would create a Dmaj9 chord and D is the root of the Dmaj7 chord.

You’re never more than a half-step away from a “right note.”

If you play a wrong note, play it again

This sounds counter intuitive because you don’t want to be playing stuff that doesn’t sound good, but it can legitimize the note that you just played. If you end up hitting a sour note, hit it again. Accent it and then resolve it to a note that’s more in.

This will make it sound like you’re adding spice to your solo, rather than making a mistake.

It’s also something that modern jazz players will do on purpose. Some players, in order to get an “out” sound, will play a lick that’s in a scale a half step above the the scale built off of the root of the chord. For example, you could play a quick lick in Ab major pentatonic over a G7 chord to add some spice to it, then resolve that lick to a lick that’s in G major pentatonic or G mixolydian.

This will create a modern jazz sound with notes that are purposefully out of the chord, that then resolve into the chord. This technique is something that can be practiced on its own so that you can add that spice into your solos on purpose when you want to.

Purposefully accenting some notes that are sour and then resolving them is a quite advanced technique, and you can “fake it” if you accidentally hit a sour note.

Alright those are my tips for beginners learning to improvise or just starting with improvising. These tips are also useful for people that are more familiar with improvising if they’re trying to create more thought out solos. Many of these tips are applicable regardless of what level you’re at with your soloing.

Give them a try next time you’re practicing soloing or next time you want to start out with improvising. I hope they help.

ISJ