I have learned something about improvising. About playing jazz in general. Diving into the deep end and trying to implement transcribed solos into songs, without a proper grasp of the jazz style, is pointless. Or not pointless; it's just more counter-productive than it is productive.
Until recently, I've been trying to transcribe snippets from artists such as Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and Chick Corea. While the listening did me good, and the transcribing certainly helped me get a feel of rhythm and phrasing, it was doing nothing to my playing.
I started studying jazz properly this year, with my teacher, Steve. I had all these ideas and thoughts about improvising at first, but he wouldn't let me delve into it. He constantly told me just to start my solos based on the chords I was playing; something I thought to be too simple. So I ignored it.
It's only now, after studying and playing my pieces for my assessments next week and the various group tunes we've been doing over the months, that I've taken a step back and heeded his advice.
Rome wasn't built in a day. And jazz cannot be learned in a matter of months. It takes years to develop to the point where you can find yourself to be an amateur; it will take decades to master. It took jazz pianist Mark Levine four years of playing and practice until he was able to play midly-effectively. It took some of his advanced students 5 years, and others 10. When Miles Davis used to play with session musicians he didn't know, musicians who had been playing jazz for fifteen years, he would say to them; 'That's cool. You're not quite there, but it's cool.'
Jazz isn't something you can just sit down and "play". Improvising isn't something you just 'learn'. It's more of a state of mind (apologies for the hippy talk) than anything else.
So when I've come to play my assessment pieces, rather than go over my head and try to play Bill Evans motifs, I've started to solo around the chords, and the notes in the chords early. My knowledge of theory is progressing more than anything else, so I've started adding ninths, elevenths and thirteenths in where appropriate, but really, I'm focusing on playing with chords. Little things like avoiding starting on root notes and avoiding playing straight arpeggios are things I've picked up with both help from Steve and Simon, our improv lecturer. In class at the start of this semester, my solos consisted of me hammering away constant quavers of any note in the current mode I was playing in. It didn't sound like jazz at all. Just free form improvised drivel. By sitting back and playing much simpler melodies around the chords, I've started making my pieces sound more jazzy than I ever thought I would at this point.
I'm still very much getting to grips with it. I've started to touch upon altered chords and tritone substitutions, but I won't be fluent enough at playing around with them until summer/after summer. That's fine by me. Steve has started teaching me things like replacing an F7 chord with a B7 in the left hand with a C sharp triad in the right (I forget the name. Maybe I just mentioned it). By jumping from the notes in C-7 to the notes in that altered chord while soloing, heads turn. People hear it and think 'wow, this guy knows his stuff'. But I don't. It just sounds like I do because I took time to think and play around chords.
So I will continue to transcribe solos, play things in different keys and read the many books I've acquired/bought from libraries and shops. But I won't dive in and try to play like Bill Evans does any time soon. If I did that, I'd go backwards rather than forwards. I'll keep my playing based on my theory knowledge. Now, I'm playing around with chords, passing notes and the occasional scale. And Steve has told me that the solos I'm playing from doing that sound perfectly fine for my level. When my knowledge and grasp of the jazz genre as a whole grows, THEN I will start adding more complicated things in.
Because really, when you start to learn piano, you don't start learning a Gb scale once you've just got to grips with a basic C scale, do you? When you're not even used to playing one black note? No.
Jazz is something I really want to be good at, and something I will strive to learn in a more focused manner once other things are done (like the four pieces I'm doing for next weeks assignment - if I have to practice them any more after next week I will tear my own ears off).
Autumn Leaves and Some Day my Prince will come. Those are the tunes I'm doing that require a spot of improvisation. In the pieces, I switch genres; I go from playing 'classical, flowery jazz' to a fast paced waltz half way through My Prince. In Autumn Leaves, I go from playing block chords to stride to funk; and I improvise over all of those genres, playing around the melody and chords. When I come back to those tunes next year, in five years, whenever, I will no doubt be soloing more freely and openly. But for now, I'm keeping things simple; because that seems to be working. I only hope that in my end of year solo assessment for improvising, the simplicity in my playing proves to be as effective as I'm feeling it to be.
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