Re: [Harp-L] Improv

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Martin wrote:
> "just how does one guarantee finding one's way back to the  melody?"...

Glenn Weiser wrote a really great response to this question to which I'd 
add the following thoughts.

There comes a point in your improvising skills where you've done so much of 
it that doing it becomes about as natural as chatting with a friend.

When you're chatting with a good friend you don't need to force yourself to 
concentrate, you and your friend are absorbed and your concentration is so 
pure that you don't even think about it.  (If you or your friend are high 
on something, this may not apply, but the same is true when improvising 
music.)  You're making points you didn't even know you knew, sometimes 
surprising yourself.  You're responding to new ideas with new ideas (unless 
you and your friend are stone cold duds).  You certainly aren't worrying 
about whether you're following the rules of grammer - map grammer to music 
theory in the improv instance.

But even more interesting, when you're chatting with a good friend who you 
talk with every week, you aren't repeating your old material (your riffs) 
because they've heard that all before.  Instead, you're collaborating with 
your friend in making new stuff, formulating new reactions to stuff, saying 
funny things that you had no idea you were going to say just a few seconds 
before you say it, etc.

In other words, when you've been improvising music for a while losing your 
thread or your way back to the melody is less and less of an 
issue.  Whatever you do IS the thread, and the Escher-like staircase of 
resolutions brings you back to the melody at your pleasure.

There are of course important ways in which musical improvisation and 
conversation do not map.  A conversation is not limited to, say, 32 bars or 
some multiple of same.  But the feeling of a particular progression of 
chords and resolutions guides you along back into the melody if you have 
played enough, even if you just barely know the tune you're playing.

In conversation, you are quite often building to a point, to a payoff, 
unless you are a dreadfully incoherent person.  You probably know what the 
point is you are trying to make, and getting there can be alot of 
fun.  When music is truly being improvised you have no idea what the point 
is that you are coming to, but the changes are guiding you along, and if 
they're good changes they're going to force you to make a point no matter 
what, and the better player you are, the better your points will generally 
be.  Keep playing, keep getting better.

All I'm saying is that if you play alot and improvise every day, after a 
while getting lost is less and less of an issue because it would be like 
getting lost in your own house.

By the way, though mere mortals need to know and master the changes and 
melodies of a piece of music, there's a beautiful story about Charley 
Parker having been hired to play in front of a big band in DC in the early 
50's.  The tunes were originals and the arrangements were quite intricate 
--- and Bird only showed up just before showtime, after rehearsals.  The 
guys who played in the band said Bird improvised his way through the entire 
show as if he'd been playing those tunes for years.  Elektra/Musician 
released studio recordings that were made a few days after the show, I 
believe, and it's clear that only Bird would've been able to improvise 
without knowing the tunes.  (It's possible they were actual live 
recordings.  I only have these recordings on vinyl and I haven't had a 
turntable in over 20 years.)