Suggestions on Improvising

thickpick

Hey, Lango. I've never tried exporting with SlowDowner, so I just ran an experiment. I loaded up Rose Room, set the speed to 75%, selected the first 12 seconds to loop, and then exported as a Quicktime file. It asked me how many times I wanted to loop played. I said three. And it created an mp3 file, which I've attached. This took me all of 2 minutes.

Again, it sounds like I work for the company that made this, but really, I'm just interested in a) seeing what it can do, and b) saving you and others a lot of time and effort. Hope this helps!

Lango-Django

Thanks for doing that, thickpick. Your little clip sounded nice.

I think I'll go ahead and download and try the freebie version of Amazing Slowdowner and see if it'll work faster and easier for me than what I've been doing.

Will

klaatu

adrian wrote:

I'd echo what jovation said -- try humming a solo and transcribing that to guitar. The best solos (in my opinion) are the ones that are so melodic you can hum them.

Stephane Wrembel said something very similar in a class at Django in June 2007. He suggested singing improvisations and then trying to play them, and not worry about mechanics such as what mode of the scale you are playing over a particular chord. Singing gets you to focus on making music. When you sing, in his words, you don't say "I think I'll sing in Mixolydian now," you just do it. I also liked his definition of improvisation - you are making up new melodies based on the old one.

Shawn

Being able to improvise freely is a pretty interesting area. There are quite a few approaches that seem to work, but I can only comment on what worked for me, and thereby offer a possibly different (or the same) perspective to the method. Personally, improvising has always come easy to me...both as factor of my background in the arts and having a descent ear for rhythm...but I struggle with written music and transcription.

Now that I have that out of the way, my first approach was to listen to as many varieties of music as possible. Everything from Mozart to Ali Farka Toure to Lady Gaga (and everything in between). I believe this trains the ear to recognize different melodies, song structures, note durations, etc. just like Django himself always did listening to classical pieces, and melodies coming from the likes of Armstrong and Gillespie. Getting back to the roots of music and understanding African Polyrhythms, the beginnings of Jazz in New Orleans, and how Django stepped from Musette to Jazz is imperative to understanding the chronological steps in the history of improvisation (from a Gypsy Jazz perspective at least).

After opening up to other forms of music that is not necessarily Django-centric just learn to forget all those scales and arpeggios you took so much time to memorize and just have fun playing. What I mean is that "learning" and "application" are two totally different things, or wrong notes in the right places are not necessarily bad things. I take this application from one of my favorite musicians and innovators, Ornette Coleman (I often mention him without realizing it), who when you break down a song rhythmically goes from 4/4 to 6/4 to 9/8 to 7/16 within the space of a few measures, and have complex song structures and forms. Most notes are played freely and the melody is ever changing based upon what the ryhthm section is playing. I know Free Form Jazz is not for everyone, but I do believe learning different forms of music like this is key to being able to play what you want, and help your own improvisations. Sadly, I believe that simply staying in 4/4 or 3/4 AABA when learning and practicing doesn't allow the improviser to fully express their potential. Although your set list during a gig may be entirely in one of these times and forms, which it often will in the Gypsy Jazz style, I believe an improviser needs to be able to work within any time signature should it present itself...heck, it can only make you better in one of the simpler 4/4 style signatures.

On another note, as others have suggested, try singing melodies or at least composing little bits and pieces of melodies in your head. No matter how simple the melody may be, this will get you thinking "outside the box" and open up your mind to the possibility of composing new lines not soley based upon arpeggios, modes, etc., which although handy are also quite restrictive.

Anyhow, just a few more ideas for you to think about. I may be completely off the mark, but these are a few things that helped me.

Shawn