How-to Videos

Really, all you have to do to improvise is to pick up an instrument and start playing, or open your mouth and start singing, and just make music.  I’m a big advocate of free, self-expressive improvisation, not limited to any particular style.  I started improvising in an explosion of highly dissonant, atonal music that served as an important emotional catharsis.  I’d been blocked by a fear that my improvisations wouldn’t be “good enough.”  When I let go of that and just played whatever came to me, I experienced tremendous freedom and release.

Don’t get me wrong: learning to improvise in a stylistically appropriate way in a particular genre (what Derek Bailey called “idiomatic improvisation”) is a great thing.  It just takes a long time and a lot of work to get proficient at it, to be a “good” jazz improviser, or to be able to improvise a set of variations in the musical language of the Classical era.

The benefits of improvising–self expression, greater comfort with your instrument, increased confidence, deeper exploration of the language(s) of music–are so powerful that we miss out if we put off improvising until we have the time to learn to do it “right.”  With free, self-expressive improvisation, the goal is simply to express yourself through sound. And remember, you don’t have to improvise in public (if you’re a performing musician);  improvisation can be part of your private exploration of your musicality, creativity, and self.  And when you find others to improvise with (again, in private is fine), it can be a fantastic way of connecting and sharing with others.  (Music for People is a great place to find other improvisers, from all sorts of musical backgrounds.)

In these videos I share what’s been helpful for me as a way of getting started.

“There Are No Wrong Notes” (A favorite phrase I picked up at Music for People, and one my college students particularly relish!)

Priming the Creative Pump, Just One Note at a Time

Playing the Music That Wants To Be Played