From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since January 2007.

There are Many different Ways to go about describing Jazz improvisation. Improvisation is the most important aspect of jazz. Many People have different Beliefs or views on how to go about learning how to improvise. Basically, Improv is composing on the spot and coming up with melodies off the top of ones head. This may seem a bit hard at first, but with practice and understanding more jazz theory, improvisation can be understood.

Improv can be broken down into many different styles. Many people have different opinions on how to approach improv. Some of the different styles are Be-Bop, Melodic, and outside playing. These are not all the ways to go about approaching improv but they are the basic ones. Some players are so natural that they can just hear a solo in their head and play it by ear. There are also many approaches to improv, such as targeting, 3 to Flat 9, penatonics, cells,and lines.

One of the first concepts of jazz improvisation is targeting. The main idea of targeting is basically landing on the important tones of a chord. A chord is built up of the 1,3,5,and 7th degree of the scale. These are the "most important" tones in the chord. There are a number of ways to target a chord tone. The first is by ascending or descending chromatic approach. THis means playing the note above or below one of the chord tones. In the key of c, the notes in the chord are C(1),E(3), G(5), and bflat(7). SO by playing an eflat at the end of a line then resolving to an E, this would be one basic example of targeting and would be targeting the third of the chord(E).

Another approach to improvisation is known as the three to flat nine theory. This is a very Be-Bop approach to improv, just like targeting. This technique is just using the third of the chord (in c it would be E), and playing the flat nine of the chord with it in various ways(in c the flat nine would be D flat or c sharp). This technique has a very distinct and unique sound to it.

Penatonics are a more avance method to improvisation. One Jazz musician who used penatonics extensively was John Coltrane. Most scales are made up of seven notes (in c it the major scale is C D E F G A B) but the penatonic scale is made up of only five notes of the major scale (C penatonic scale is C D E G A). Penatonics are useful in pattern form and that is how they are played. One patern using penatonics could be 3 6 5 2 3 5 (in C- E A G D E G).

Almost every jazz musician has cells or lines, although they dont like to admit it. Lines (also known as licks) are pre-planned ideas the artist plays over and over. Lines can be obtained by listening to Jazz records and transcribing what the professionals play during their solos. Transcribing is puting what you hear in a record onto music paper. Cells are basically the same things as lines but they are shorter. In my opinion, cells are more useful in soloing because they are easier to remember, and are easier to play because they are so much shorter.

There are many different way to improvise in jazz. These are just some of the ways it can be done and it gets way more complex the more you advance at it. It is also more fun as time goes on.