Hochschule Luzern - Musik, Abteilung Jazz

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


1. Initial Preparations for Jazz


2. Cultivating the Soloist's Skills


3. Collective Aspects of Improvisation


4. Additional Factors Affecting Improvisation


5. Contributions from Readers of this Site


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)


HOCHSCHULE LUZERN MUSIK, ABTEILUNG JAZZ, MARIAHILFGASSE 2A, CH-6004 LUZERN, SWITZERLAND
Phone: ++41-41-412 20 56 / Fax: ++41-41-412 20 57 / E-Mail: jazz@hslu.ch