Jazz Improvisation
Blues Elements
Another topic I’d like to discuss here is Jazz improvisation, both in performance and in approaches to learning and listening. As both a performer and composer, and also a teacher of this music, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to share my experience with students.
I like to say that you can’t really teach someone to improvise. How could you? Improvisation is a response in the moment. You can’t know what your next thought will be, so how can you plan a response? But, you can equip yourself with tools and knowledge, by learning the language of this music and understanding something (a lot!) about harmonic and musical structures. Those structures and harmonic underpinnings can provide a framework, but the real time response always has to be spontaneous.
Jazz is a conversation. Everyone has their chance to contribute to the conversation. It’s a most democratic form of music. Everyone has their role to play, but we’re free, and encouraged, to contribute in every moment. The best jazz is like the best conversation, lively, wide-ranging, funny, intense, challenging, surprising, even enlightening.
Still, who can say what it is? When someone asked Louis Armstrong what Jazz is, he said, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” Like Qi in our discussion of Neigong (though perhaps on a different scale) it’s something that can be pointed to, but it can’t really be described. Those of us who play and listen know right away. It’s a direct cognition, a “knowing” that is prior to conceptualizing about it. The conceptualizing comes after the cognition.
To bring this back around to the original subject, I want to talk about some of the elements that make up the language of Jazz. Perhaps the most universal and basic element of Jazz comes from the Blues. When I say universal, I mean that the basic elements of Blues seem to cross many cultural boundaries.
As an example, a few years ago, I was flipping through the TV channels and came across the very end of a video about China. There was a village with an old guy in a t-shirt and shorts and sandals sitting on a chair on the berm between rice paddies. He was playing a triangular three stringed instrument kind of like a banjo and singing. I watched for a minute, then suddenly realized, “He’s playing the Chinese blues!”. It was unmistakable, and fascinating.
In this country, the Blues influence came from Africa, with the introduction of slavery. Along with the horrible and ongoing effects of slavery, a new music began to develop with Blues as a primary source. The mix of African musical forms with white church music and Eastern and Western European classical and folk music gave birth to this new music. This is discussed eloquently in documentaries and writings about the development of Jazz.
Blues is a flexible and extremely personal expression. It can be adapted to any circumstances and used to express the whole gamut of human thoughts and emotions. In Jazz as we know it today, the elements have been absorbed and re-expressed in an endless number of ways. Rock, funk, Soul, R & B, country, all use elements of Blues. Jazz, as the music that welcomes all influences, absorbs all of these interpretations and innovations, and encourages an ongoing exploration and expression of them.
In teaching about Jazz, we often introduce simple approaches using Blues elements as a way to begin to improvise. One element of this is the “Blues Scale”. What we normally call the blues scale is a pentatonic, or five note, scale, with the addition of a passing chromatic note. (There are major and minor forms of the Blues scale, but most commonly we start with the minor).
A “C” Blues scale would be: C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb. If you can play these notes or sing them, you will recognize the sound. Rock and Roll guitar players have made a billion dollars from this scale. The chromatic passing note is kind of like “bending” notes, like you can do with the voice, or guitar, or sax, for example. You can’t do it with a piano, though Thelonious Monk claimed he could. (And who’s going to argue with the Master?).
To illustrate this, and as an introduction to one of the ways I like to share this with students, I’m including a video. This is just one approach, but I think it’s helpful. This is a video I made for a student during a lesson.
If you want to learn more, I teach online and in person, and make custom videos for students all the time. KeithDavisMusic.com
Check out my podcast, Notes on Jazz, for more great content about Jazz.
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