91�ȱ�

Improvisation in music is all about creatively exploring and experimenting with sound in order to express yourself. In order to be successful at improvising, you must listen carefully to yourself and to the people that you make music with and spontaneously respond to what happens in real time.

Approaches to improvising can include:

• using your musical knowledge and music you have listened to in order to inspire you when improvising
• playing things you have heard and that you enjoy listening to by ear
• experimenting with putting chords together in different ways
• exploring different ways of producing a sound on an instrument (exploring timbre) to see which mood is created

Question and answer

In this clip from a 1964 91�ȱ� music series called 'The Beat', American blues guitarist and singer John Lee Hooker performs his track 'Boom Boom'.

Listen out for the musical question and answer conversation between the voice and the guitar.

You might want to work with a partner to create an improvised question and answer passage. This could be based on a riff where you have a different answer each time or you could ask your partner to try to copy the same pattern.

You should think about rhythm as well as melody when creating a question and answer conversation.

12 bar blues

The 12 bar blues chord progression is extremely common in jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll music. Learning to play this on keyboard, guitar or ipad will be helpful in allowing you to learn the basis of chord progressions that will help you play lots of songs.

Watch the same clip by John Lee Hooker and this time focus in on the chord structure. It makes use of the 12 bar blues chord structure, which uses chords I, IV and V.

Working with others in a group to create and record a 12 bar blues chord structure is useful. Or, if you would rather work alone, use music technology to record your chord structure.

You could also add a suitable drum-beat and a bass line.

Once you have your 12 bar backing, try improvising using question and answer patterns, riffs or notes from a minor pentatonic (five note) scale. You could also go on to add lyrics.

Jazz improvisation

Taking an existing melody and experimenting around it can lead to interesting discoveries.

You could take the rhythm of a favourite song and add your own new melody to the rhythm.

This video shows Soweto Kinch embellishing the melody in ‘A Night in Tunisia’ before going on to play an improvisation with lots of syncopation over the chord progression.

Improvising with music technology

Composer Gabriel Prokofiev shows how you can incorporate improvisation with sampled (pre-recorded) sounds into live performance.

In his ‘Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra’, four times World DJ Champion Mr Switch improvises with orchestral sounds that the composer has sampled whilst the 91�ȱ� Philharmonic play the written parts.