Improvising musicians of all levels face a particular challenge in their music practice: improvisers have to keep their material and ideas fresh, and guard against falling into mental or physical patterns. Patterns and habits, while useful in many respects, can limit an improviser’s ability to express his or her ideas if those patterns become too rigid. Here are 5 exercises to help you see and play beyond the same old scales and structures, for a fuller range of expression. (These are great for non-improvisers, too!)
Explore your instrument with a fresh mind.
How can you make sound on your instrument? A violinist typically draws a bow across strings–but the violin will resonate in many other ways. The violin’s wooden body can be struck with the hand, the strings can be plucked, the bow can be placed at a different proximity from the bridge, or a bow can be made out of different materials all together. Explore your instrument like a beginner. How can you make sound with the instrument in front of you?
Listen to other instruments.
Open your mind to new timbres by listening to great instrumentalists who play a different instrument than your own. Are you saxophonist? See if you can mimic your favorite cellist. Are you a drummer? See if you can make your drums sing like your favorite singer. Listen closely, and be creative.
Generate some new patterns.
If your hands tend to get stuck in the same old scales and arpeggios, try generating some entirely new patterns with musician’s dice. If you don’t have musician’s dice, you can assign each pitch of the scale to a number (1 is A, 2 is A#, and so on) and generate a series of random numbers using a computer. Experiment with the resulting random pattern. Construct an improvisation from that pattern and see where it takes you. (This exercise also works for generating new rhythms!)
Tune your instrument differently.
If you play an instrument that can be retuned, such as a guitar, try a new tuning. This allows you to explore different resonance capabilities of your instrument, and it forces your hands to find new patterns.
Improvise with someone new–and let them direct you.
No one’s improvisational mind functions in exactly the same way. Find a fellow musician who also wants to push his or her improvisational practice, and take turns directing each other. Have your buddy ask you to construct improvisations based around certain (new) patterns, or disallow you from using certain techniques so that you’ll find new modes of expression instead. You will both have to listen to one other closely and be creative. Keep it relaxed and fun, and explore together.
How do you get “unstuck” as an improviser? Leave a comment below and tell us about it.
