Techniques to Improvising Melodically

Introduction and engaged listening

We'll be listening to some musical examples of a few of the techniques we'll be working with throughout the course as well as an exercise you can use to become more connected to the instrument.

Motifs: Notes, rhythm, and sounds

Motifs are the building blocks used to create a musical idea. You can think of them as words or phrases. They can be comprised of specific notes, a specific rhythm, and/or specific sounds. Through their repetition and variation, motifs can be used to create a complete phrase.

Phrasing: Creating a musical sentence

If we were to speak using random words that don't connect in any way we would never be able to communicate. You have to arrange the words in a way that express ideas, thoughts, etc. The same goes for playing a solo. You can arrange what you play in a cohesive way, much like a "sentence," with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Theme and variation: Improvising using a melodic phrase

Often people will go immediately to a scale in order to solo over a particular chord. This works OK, however, a scale by itself is not all that musical. What you can do instead is use the scale to create a melodic phrase, or theme, and use that as your base for improvisation.

Superimposing: Repurposing scales to create new sounds

Superimposing is taking one thing and laying it over another so that both are still present. In music you can use this concept to create new sounds by laying one scale over a number of different chords. Or, vice versa, use multiple scales over the same chord.

Improvising with a written melody

As improvisers we often think of only playing over the chords of a song, but we can also use the written melody of the song as a way to improvise. Here we'll work on using the rhythm of a written melody but altering the notes, as well as using the written notes and rhythm and, through variation, creating our own improvised melody.

Rhythm: Using subtraction and rhythmic displacement

A good melody consists not only of the choice of notes, but also of the rhythm of the melody. Here we'll work on creating variation by removing certain rhythms from a phrase as well as using rhythmic displacement, or altering where on the beat a particular rhythm falls.