SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to give away a “secret” (though I hate to call it that) of improvising (soloing) today. If you still want to live in your little bubble and believe that all those cool notes just flow out of the ether and magically through the hands of your blues idols, you’ll want to skip this…On the other hand, if you’d like to know a little more about what improvisation is all about… read on.<\/p>\n
According to the good old wikipedia:<\/p>\n
Improvisation<\/strong> is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Okay… so maybe acting, singing, and talking don’t make much sense here, but reacting and creating in the moment are very applicable.<\/p>\n
I prefer to define improvisation as “spontaneous composition.” You compose… but right now… on the spot, and then it’s gone (unless you record it.)<\/p>\n
So how does this work? I mean, do you really make it all<\/em> up right here and now?<\/p>\n
The answer is, of course not. That’s like telling a 4 year old to get up and give a speech at a banquet – there’s no vocabulary to work with.<\/p>\n
If you were to sit down and compose something, think about how you would do that. You’d have to know what key you were in, and that would give you a framework (a set of notes that you knew were okay to use.)<\/p>\n
Additionally, you’d use what are called melodic devices – common elements of melody that are ingrained in us. We can’t even escape these patterns and devices if we want to.<\/p>\n
Check out this video of Bobby McFerrin showing just how attached we are to our favorite pentatonic scale:<\/p>\n