JAZZ IMPROVISATION USING SIMPLE MELODIC EMBELLISHMENT

Looking to download the audio & PDF resource files that go with the book? I’ve put ‘em all on a single page.

BACKGROUND

My students at Ithaca College are great kids – smart and respectful humans and excellent musicians, and they care deeply about making the world a better place through music. It is a great honor to teach them.

I’ve been listening to students take solos for years, and I sometimes experience the feeling that their improvisations wander — that they’re not strongly melodic. Early in my teaching years, I assumed students could hear their when their solos did not have melodic clarity. I had thought students could learn like I did: just keep improvising (in my case, very badly at first) until it kinda magically starts sounding better and more melodic. After a few years of teaching, I realized not all students have the wherewithal to learn like this. If a student cannot perceive when things are not going well, they cannot learn from trial and error alone.

I thought back to the exercises I had learned from Lee Konitz, the most compelling melodicist I know. I only got to work with Lee once, but his teachings stayed with me and now I often use them with my students. I was also inspired by a 1985 Downbeat interview called “Lee Konitz: Back to Basics”, where Lee presents a series of 10 steps to improvising on “All the Things You Are.” In the article, Lee demonstrates how he begins with step 1 (the first “gradient” he calls it) which is a straightforward performance of the melody, then seamlessly proceeds along levels of embellishment until he reaches the 10th step, “an act of pure inspiration.” The early steps mostly use the melody pitches as targets, with gradients 2-5 representing an increasing density of embellishments around the melody notes. By the 6th gradient, he has begun introducing his own target pitches as the melodic foundation, and by the end of the sequence, the 10th gradient, he is playing entirely his own creation.

The Downbeat article is a brilliant demonstration that encapsulates Lee’s approach beautifully. However, it doesn’t contain much in the way of pedagogy that would help me teach these concepts to relatively inexperienced improvisers. There is so much going on in Lee’s process of embellishment, students can get overwhelmed and are incapable of incorporating the concepts while trying to improvise. So, I decided to create exercises that break down the process into smaller components so that even novice improvisers could accomplish something tangible in each step along the way. In essence, I kept breaking into smaller pieces and creating exercises until I had a whole book.

WHAT IT IS

The book asks students to learn a simple melody, and then perform a series of straightforward, repeatable embellishment tasks on that melody, rather than to improvise on advanced tunes or complex chords. After they’ve mastered several variations on each of the embellishment techniques, I instruct them to mix the techniques up spontaneously. So, in the early steps in the process, students are not soloing “completely” -- they have specific improvisational goals in mind. Only a small portion of what they’re doing is actually improvised, all the while they’re building specific embellishment skills. Many chapters conclude with an additional etude over standard chord changes that utilizes the embellishment technique introduced in that chapter, so the techniques are certainly applicable to learning a wide range of songs.

There are several pedagogical aspects of the book that are important:

• Gives clear goals. Rather than only using improvising to learn improvisation, the book teaches tangible skills and melodic knowledge that can lead to stronger improvisation. Because the exercises are so clear, many of them can be practiced in unison as a group/class, rather than requiring individual students to perform one at a time.

• Allows for a wide range of levels. The exercises in the book range from very easy (junior high students could play them) to very hard (pros would be challenged). The exercises are challenging yet achievable. Many of the assignments and activities can be tailored depending on who is in the classroom. If you find that people are struggling with an exercise, you can do them as a group, slow them down, or vary the exercise to help cement their skills. If one or two people are doing great while the rest of the class is struggling, you can give the stronger folks advanced versions of exercises to keep them moving. I had one advanced student who told me that he was skeptical about the process and material. Singing and playing simple melodies seemed too basic and easy for him. But after a few weeks, he told me he saw how valuable the exercises were.

• Provides a means of assessment. I used to find that assessing student work in improvisation class was really tricky. How can you grade a student creation when they say “I was just playing what I feel.” So, the book contains performance and written assignments that are tangible, clear and assessable. 

You might wonder: How does these exercises become “complete” improvisation (as in, “acts of pure inspiration”)? Alongside learning embellishment techniques, students also begin to create their own simple melodies, through both improvisation and composition activities. I equate these projects to creating “cantus firmi,” like in species counterpoint. For these creative assignments, students are tasked with making simple, slow moving tunes – no faster than half notes. In my classes, we share our tunes with each other by singing and playing each other’s work to make sure everyone’s simple melodies feel melodic. I make suggestions to improve them, and sometimes the other students will, too. Once students have settled on their melodies, they ornament them (and each other’s) using the same embellishment techniques they’ve been learning all along. Once they are embellishing their own simple tunes, the results become equivalent to Konitz’s higher gradients, when he introduced his own melodic target pitches as the foundations.

WHAT IT ISN’T

It’s important for me to add that this book is not about scales or theory. It’s about giving students tangible exercises and other activities that teach melody. There are already a lot of fantastic books about jazz theory and chord/scale relationships, so I didn’t feel a need to make mine about those things.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

The book includes a host of performance-based exercises and written assignments, as well as clear musical examples that help teach the techniques. I’ve included additional transposed versions of all the exercises for Bb, Eb and bass clef instruments in the appendices, so there are no separate books needed. All the assignments have accompaniment recordings (“play-alongs”) you can download here on the resources page. On that page you can also download PDFs and accompaniments for additional advanced exercises, such as transposed versions of the exercises in all 12 keys, which have proven to be quite valuable to my advanced students. The instructor resources available from Routledge contain more, including a sample course syllabus, videos, and printable PDFs for all the written assignments so students can turn them in on paper if preferred.

INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO

To help introduce the topic of simple melodic embellishment, I’ve started creating the series of videos below, which feature several enjoyable playing and singing exercises. Grab your axe and get started!

QUESTIONS?

Please feel free to reach out with any questions about the book, the process, or anything else!

-Mike