Improvisational techniques discussion?

[leroyleroux]

I think we could have a fairly good discussion on the techniques you use when ad libbing. I don't know a whole lot about chord theory and such, but can find my way around fairly well in most common keys.

I tried giving a lady lessions some years back, and after the second lesson, she stated, "I don't think I need these scales and things, I just want to improvise like you do." (avoiding the temptation to insert an eyeroll)

Anyway, my first experience with improvisation was as simple as a mid g to high g scale at the end of one of the lines of 'Mockingbird Hill'. Dad told me to learn it one Saturday. I got bored and threw that lick in. When dad heard it, I thought I was in trouble, but he said that was good, and to do that whenever it fit.

I do have a two cd and set of books on jazz improvisation, but I have never gotten around to using them, but I should. I also have a book titled 'Hot Licks for Bluegrass Fiddle', I have picked a few of them up. The auther likens your skills as like a bag that you fill with licks as you learn them, and you can pull them out anytime.

So, what is your level of skills, and how did you learn them, and maybe we can help each other get better.

[scrubber]

I've looked through the Hot Licks.. book. The transcriptions are useful for looking at individual player's styles, but I disagree with the book's implication that you simply need to throw together a bunch of licks to have a "hot" break. Each song has its own melodic/harmonic structure and breaks should work deliberately with (or against) that structure. That doesn't mean that licks that follow your intentions can't be used, but the governing factor needs to be the head, not the hands.

Of course, this is tough! Like other aspects of fiddlin', it has to be practiced. One thing I do is isolate the head from the hands -- I sometimes just run a tune over and over in my mind, imagining different ways of performing it. At other times I play a tune to death, listening for interesting developments. When it comes to head/hand coordination, I sometimes take a tune I already know and play it (slowly, if needed) in another key (e.g., B-flat instead of D). Probably the BEST thing to do to practice improvisation is to GET OUT AND JAM!!, preferably with friends who can put up with you when you crash!

Listening to others can also be helpful, especially when you listen with expectations. You know the break is coming up -- what would YOU do? Having some preconceptions/expectations keeps one engaged with the performer during the break -- the listening is active rather than passive. I find that I learn more from a performance when I listen in this way...

[leroyleroux]

Yeah, I can agree with that...probably being the most important is doing playing with people who don't care when you screw up. Some of my best licks now were mistakes.

[banjobassman]

I use the pentatonic scales most of the time on a tune I don't know. I'll play the scales over while the song is going around at a jam and usually can improvise a break when my turn rolls around.

[grassyfiddle]

I struggle with this one.

I have the a licks CD, have tryed to learn, but struggle when trying to apply a particular lick in a jam session. Usually can't remember it, can't play it up to speed, or just bomb. It is hard to learn a particular lick and apply it outside of the context of a song.

So, in the meantime, I just make up something, usually playing pretty straight. I am trying to start applying more double stops and am working on the blues scale to give me some more tools.

[scrubber]

I just make up something, usually playing pretty straight. I am trying to start applying more double stops and am working on the blues scale to give me some more tools.

There's nothing wrong with that strategy!! Playing the tune links the break to the song -- If you just have an assortment of licks, the break is generic (we used to call these 'all-purpose breaks' when I was a lad) and has only the chord progression to tie it in...

[david blair]

This is a good topic. Maybe we can lively up some conversation?

Improv on the fiddle can use all sorts of technique. Sometimes double stops, sometimes a double while sliding one of the notes with an open string against it. Like Vasser would do. Try an A note on the D string with C# on the A string. Slide the C# down and up and add the open E string. Kind of like a shuffle pattern. For instance the tune Lonesome Fiddle Blues.

For me it's helpful to play broken third scales in four octaves and arpeggios in major/minor with sevenths up and down. The thirds scale I do could be explained using numbers instead notes; 1-3,2-4, 3-5. 4-6, etc, while changing the appropriate fingers for shifting of positions. The Arpeggios really help to get that "jam" feeling with a shuffle bow, for instance.

And rhythm bowing chops, like landing the bow on the strings and grabbing another chop while picking it up again. Darol Anger has a great DVD showing this technique.

I should be playing now...

[scrubber]

Four octaves! It doesn't hurt to be ready for anything, but for bluegrass two octaves will usually suffice!

I have to reiterate -- the head should rule the hands. It's important to have the chops necessary to do what you want to do, but a break that consists of scales, modes, or arpeggios unrelated to the melodic contours of the song is just boring! For an interestng break, there needs to be some melodic link to the tune, technical fireworks be damned!

[david blair]

I know, all that technical stuff sounds boring...

So does a player of one style!

The purpose of practicing scales is to familiarize myself to the tones in all keys. These are then modified as major/minor arpeggios, in different inversions, later adding 7/7b tones. Scales or patterns also played as broken thirds can be quite musical. If these are practiced with a metronome, at different tempos and note values, with different but consistent patterns of bowing there is a moment when the player will not be restricted any longer to habitual licks. Lyrical magic moments begin to happen. Intensity begins.

[scrubber]

I agree that technical facility (bowing, fingering, knowing all of the fingerboard) is important -- it's what is needed to bridge the gap between what you think you are going to play and what comes out! In small doses, it's even interesting to hear some pyrotechnics (in the spaces between the phrases, for example).

Unfortunately, some players never get beyond the exercises, being content to play them for their own sake! (I remember seeing an aquaintance in college walking from the practice rooms one day -- he was happily singing scales to himself! How sad.). Others think the patterns they learn are 'magic bullets' that can work for any break at any time (the 'all purpose break' I referred to earlier). Non-musicians are often impressed by this kind of stuff, giving an attention-hungry performer added incentive to just rattle on...

As so often is the case, one has to find a way to strike a balance!

[grassyfiddle]

Wow!!

This all sounds very technical. I just wonder how much time the oldtimers ie; Chubby Wise, Kenny Baker, Scotty Stoneman etc; spent working scales and stuff. Or were they just supernaturally blessed to do their stuff??

[scrubber]

I think that some of what we call 'talent' is the ability to connect what one imagines to what one performs on the fiddle. Great fiddlers can do this extensively! As for the rest of us, we have to work to achieve (in some small measure) what they have naturally accomplished. This involves some technical observation because we don't have the intuition to do it outright!

[eric]

I'm betting that our more talented friends practiced. A LOT. Here is an interesting article I came across a few years ago about how experts are made, not born.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind

[grassyfiddle]

Based on the conversation, I think most on this board would agree that to become a better bluegrass fiddle player will take some amount of practise.

Scrubber mentioned knowing the fingerboard well, I'm sure there are a lot of techniques that need to be learned. How about any specific practise tips?

I'm assuming that to know the fingerboard sufficiently for bluegrass will require a pretty extensive understanding of the scales in 1st, 2nd and 3rd position in the major bluegrass keys. This in itself can present quite a challenge.

Then need to understand key doublestops, ie; root, fourth, fifth, flated third and seventh in the major bluegrass keys. (also heard mention of a sixth this past weekend?!?!)

Once someone has established this foundation, then understanding how to apply in a tasteful manner during a break or fill, in the bluegrass style.............lot to learn........ and to think this is a derivitive of 'simple folk' music?!??

Anyway, are there any practise tips from the board??

[leroyleroux]

I don't have any tips for practicing (other than one for myself which would be actually practice), but it seems that the different postions are more for the double stop licks. I don't do much of those. I am more of a fast single not player. I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.

The most learning I gained was by playing in live jams, and seeing what works and what doesn't.