Picking Notes out of Thin Air?: Improvisation and its Study

(A COLLECTION OF QUOTES POSSIBLY USEFUL
TO THE STUDENT LEARNING TO PLAY JAZZ)

I used to think, how could jazz musicians pick notes out of thin air? I had no idea of the knowledge it took. It was like magic to me at the time. Calvin Hill

I have no idea what I am going to do when I take a solo. That's the thing that I don't understand myself, and I've been asked about it so many times. When I play a solo, I never know any more about what I'm going to play than you do. Doc Cheatham

Improvisation is an intuitive process for me now, but in the way in which it's intuitive, I'm calling upon all the resources of all the years of my playing at once: my academic understanding of the music, my historical understanding of the music, and my technical understanding of the instrument that I'm playing. All these things are going into one concentrated effort to produce something that is indicative of what I'm feeling at the time I'm performing. Arthur Rhames

• Love at First Sound: Early Musical Environment

  Early Performance Models; Early Training and Performance Opportunities; The Benefits of Cultural Milieu in Shaping Musical Developement; Different Paths of Commitment

• Hanging Out and Jamming: the Jazz Community as an Educational System

  Informal Study Sessions and Apprenticeships; Jam Sessions; Sitting in at Concerts; Professional Affiliations with Bands; Paying Dues as Learners; Formal Educational Institutions; Developing Extraordinary Skill
  

• A Very Structured Thing: Jazz Compositions as Vehicles for Improvisation

  Building Up a Jazz Repertory; Rendering Composed Melodies; Learning the Harmonic Basics for Tunes; Differing Harmonic Prototypes; The Malleability of Form; Deepening Knowledge of Repertory and Original Composition; Jazz as Ear Music

• Getting Your Vocabulary Straight: Learning Models for Solo Formulation

  Transcribing Solos and Re-creating Them in Public; Learning Discrete Patterns from Recordings; Learning by Observing Performances and Demonstrations; Increasing Apprehension and Recall of Vocabulary Phrases; Early Limitations and Physical Mastery over Instruments

• Seeing Out a Bit: Expanding upon Early Influences

  Discovering the Larger Jazz Tradition; Features of Musical Personality as Models; Personals Sound in Relation to Other Traits; Constellations of Traits and Concepts; Creativity as the Act of Fusion and Transformation; Applying Knowledge toward Original Invention

• The More Ways You Have of Thinking: Conventional Rhythmic and Theoretical Improvisation Approaches

  Playing off of Time; Improvising from Chords; Improvising from Scales and Intervals; Integrating Different Theoretical Models; The Ongoing Interplay of Theoretical and Aural Ideas

• Conversing with the Piece: Initial Routines Applying Improvisation

  Early Efforts and Tribulations; The Singing Mind‘s Conception: From Technical Exercises to Ideas; The Implication of Ideas; The Physical Realization and Exploration of Ideas

• Composing in the Moment: The Inner Dialogue and the Tale

  Storytelling; The Teller‘s Trials; Musical Saves; The Improviser‘s World of Conciousness

• Improvisation and Precomposition: The Eternal Cycle

  The Creative Interplay between Vehicles and Ideas; Figures, Patterns, Phrases: The Lives of Licks; Preparing Strategies for Individual Pieces; The Combined Use of Improvisation Approaches; Inferring Soloists‘ Models

• The Never-ending State of Getting There: Soloing Ability, Ideals and Evaluations

  Swing: Judging Rhythmic Substance; The Melodic Substance of Ideas; Judging Harmonic Content; Originality and Taste; Emotional Substance; Instrumental Virtuosity and the Technical Features of Ideas; Storytelling Ability; The Spontaneity, in Relation to the Uniqueness, of Invention; Evolving a Unique Voice within the Jazz Tradition; Accomodating Musical Change; Negotiating the World of Critical Judgement

• Arranging Pieces: Decisions in Rehearsal

  What Goes into Arrangements; Specifying Parts within the Larger Designs of Arrangements; Transmitting Arrangements; Collaborating on Arrangements; Changing Arrangements; Conducting Arrangements

• Adding to Arrangements: Conventions Guiding the Rhythm Section

  The String Bass; Learning the Musical Role of the Bass; The Drums; Learning the Drums‘s Role; The Piano; Conventions of Accompaniment Associated with Different Idioms; Unique Stylistic Fusions; Performance Conventions Surrounding Repertory; Conventions Associated with Instrumentation

• Give and Take: The Collective Conversation and Musical Journey

  Striking a Groove; The Rhythm Section's Improvisation within the Groove; Soloists and Rhythm Section Players; Interpreting Ideas; Shaping the Larger Performance; Surprises in Group Interaction; Challenges Presented by Musical Error; The Ongoing Interplay between Collective Improvisation and Precomposition

• When the Music's Happening and When It's not: Evaluating Group Performances

  Ascending to the Music's Heights; Deficient Musicianship and Incompatible Musical Personalities; Problems Apprehending and Interpreting Musical Ideas; Conflicting Notions of Tasteful Conversation; The Rhythm Section's Response to Criticism; Circumstantial Problems Undermining Performances; Group Interplay: A Comparative Perspective

• The Lives of Bands: Conflict Resolution and Artistic Development

  Artistic Developement; Power Relations and Musical Values: The Individual versus the Group; Assessing and Accommodating Musical Situations; Negotiating Musical Differences off the Bandstand; Negotiating Differences during Performances; Musical Conflict and Economic Realities; Irreconcilable Differences within Bands: Short-term Accomodation and Personnel Changes; The Life Cycles of Bands and the Creative Process; The Challenges of Different Bands

• Vibes and Venues: Interacting with Different Audiences in Different Settings

  A Venue's Acoustics; Room Design, Audience Capacity and Management Policy; Interacting with Different Audiences; Preparing for Audiences; Music Presentation as Drama; Interpreting Behaviour during Musical Events; Musical Responses to Difficult Audiences; Responding to Knowledgeable Audiences; Recording Studios as Performance Settings

• Jazz as a Way of Life

  Improvisation as Composition; The Mucisian's Odyssey

• More Quotes!

Please be encouraged to send in further quotes!

Note: The idea for these pages came to me while reading the fabulous book "Thinking in Jazz - The Infinite Art of Improvisation" by Paul F. Berliner (published by the University of Chicago Press in 1994)