How do I start to improvise? Should I learn hundreds of licks and then use them as building blocks fitting into a certain key?
To make a clear answer to this question, first we have to clarify some banal things again.
Let’s start with what music is. It is the way to express mood and emotions. A poet writes poems, an artist draws… a musician writes music. Here we have to note that musicians are capable of making music on order and actually do it, but they do it anyway even without any order. It is above them. They can’t stop doing that.
Now let’s consider what happens with already written music. An instrumentalist is getting familiar with a sheet music. What it contains is essentially information. Information on the relationship between sounds in pitch and how they sound rhythmically. There is also some concept about timbre, since any music is written for a specific instrument. All this is the basic meaning. But it is not enough for good intonation.
The performer’s goal is to fully reveal the artistic meaning of the music sheet.
No doubt, every instrumentalist has his own view. That is why you can say that one performer is a very good interpreter of a certain composer and style, but you do not hear anything about the other. It must be said that such statements get any value if they are coming out of the mouth of a musical expert. Those people who got fame only by writing in magazines on the entertainment genres or just coming on air frequently can say whatever they want. Fame by any means in one hand or talent and skills in the other are completely different things. Likewise, material wealth acquired by means of fame does not tell anything about competence. I will give you just one example, although there are countless.
Antonio Vivaldi died in poverty. Does this fact make him a bad composer?
Having described very schematically what music and musical performance are, it is possible to describe what improvisation is.
Improvisation is essentially a real-time composition. Right before the eyes of the audience. This is not a memorized music score or well edited (if it was needed) composition! And it means already that an improvising musician has got very good compositional capabilities and phenomenal performing skills.
When I listen to the music of Mozart (just an example), I have no doubts that he was an incomparable improviser. It can be different. I have listened to many “improvisers” playing Mozart’s music, and he is very lucky not to be able to hear that process. Although they play the same ingenious music score, it sounds awful. Very rude and soulless. Yet they improvise in some styles. Some of them composed essentially nothing. We do not take into account “compositions” that any bad 13 years old student could write as a homework in music. It is these people exactly who say aloud about their “improvisations” and their “opinion”… this is so miserable!
If a person cannot write something in years, how can he “create” in real time?
This is pure rhetoric. And now let’s go even deeper. If he cannot perform decently something already written, that he studied for a long time, how can he play well in real time something that he does not know? No way!
There is only one option left. People of that level do this! They take it as a great achievement to remain in key while strumming learned sound sequences, which lack any meaning and musicality. Not to mention emotions, which are the essence of music. Notice that! A musical person, even uneducated, will never miss and play anything out of key. And our individual considers it a great merit to learn what he can play in what chords (“improvise”). In other words, they spend a lot of time to pretend to be musical after that.
Let me give you an example for comparison.
Imagine three people.
Two of them learn a certain language at the highest level. One of these has a talent for writing poetry. Whatever he says and writes, everything is very fascinating. Naturally, everything is done very correctly. The other person is not gifted in poetry. He is in no way inferior to the first one in terms of language proficiency. Whatever he says and writes, everything is very correct but not as exciting as the first one. Even by 1/3. And now let’s add the third person. He has got a regular education. Not the slightest hint of a talent. He is up to the second one, well-educated having no talent in poetry, as to the neighboring galaxy by foot. But, nevertheless, he states that he writes poetry. And writes it at once on the go. And the second one is far even from the thought to write poetry. He knows for sure there should be a talent for that. And you should have a need to say something on your own. Not because it is cool. But how the first talented one does that.
The same is in music. If somebody thinks that it is enough to get a cursory knowledge of music theory and this will allow him to play correctly and stay in key, this person has an extremely superficial view of music. And if he thinks also that he can learn many different phrases, and then assemble them like a mosaic in a given harmony, he should think about what exactly he is doing. How can you consider that a repetition of someone else’s phrases is a real-time composition (improvisation)? Even if a person who thinks with such standards gets education and therefore becomes competent, he will achieve close to nothing. Easier to say he will achieve nothing at all.
You cannot even master the instrument with such way of thinking. There is no way to explain to such person, that just the correct rendering of the music score does not guarantee a good performance. And in this exact case, it will be complete happiness if his “improvisations” will look as bad études with bad performance. And all this is the best scenario. In a general case all those “improvisations” sound like a speech of a person lacking any thoughts. Just an irresistible desire to say something.
If you satisfied with such state of things, you can learn some harmony and many standard phrases (cliche) and then assemble real-time “compositions” from them (improvise), like a silly child, who plays with a mosaic.
A musician, educated (musically) person or just a musical person, will not even consider your “creativity” funny. For a simple layman, your level will depend on your fame. For such a person there is no difference between the ingenious composition or noise from a building site, it is all in the same line. Whether you will be on the glossy covers of magazines and on TV, or at least the YouTube “star”, bleat and strum falsely, the layman will be happy. But if you are not there — you are nothing. Remember the example I’ve given you above (Antonio Vivaldi).
You should know that there are brilliant instrumentalists who do not write nor improvise. Their interpreter talent does not decrease because of that. The education they have got does not lose its value. The work they done is far from futile waste of time. Of course they can write and improvise much better than all those “improvisers” in a modern sense of this word, but it is not enough for them. They compare themselves to the best people, who have ever written and improvised.
You can focus on such people and demand the maximum from yourself. At the same time remain realistic and do not spare yourself in everything you are gifted for.
From the other hand you can learn several phrases (do not hope for much since it requires a talent, education and a lot of work) and glue them one to another at least to correspond to harmony… call that an improvisation and live in the world of your fantasies.
It is for you to decide.
