Improvisation for the Classical Guitarist
Published: 1996 Author: Paul Carroll
A short dissertation on improvisation pertaining to the classical guitarist
Throw away your guitar
and your music and music stand and stand in the middle of the room and repeat to yourself out loud a hundred times: ‘I can improvise – I can improvise – I can improvise…’ – and then (a subtle difference here) ‘I want to improvise – I want to improvise – I want to improvise…’ Do this every day for a week or month and hopefully you’ll go some way to reducing the fear and negativity usually felt by every music-bound student.
Having primed yourself into a state of positive motivation, you can now go and retrieve your beloved instrument from the wastepaper basket and start some serious work. But where to start?
Well, generally speaking, most people who get into improvising do so because they’ve been moved by hearing somebody else do it – whether it’s the blues by Eric Clapton, jazz by Oscar Peterson or a cadenza in a Mozart aria.
The key words in learning to improvise are ‘Don’t be afraid to mess around!’ The very thing that you would be chastised for in the normal course of practice is to be positively encouraged when exploring the wealth of melody inside your head. Fiddle about. Doodle. Be aimless! Allow the subconscious to pierce through the pedagogy and theorems that are recourse to learning that Sor study.
So how will we begin? Look at the simple pentatonic scale of C in figure 1. Play it and become familiar with it to the point of not needing the music. Now get a friend (every classical guitarist should have one of these) and get them to play the chord sequence in figure 2. You may have to teach them the chords first but that’s your job isn’t it? Most improvisers need a lackey, i.e. someone to do the accompaniment while you get on with the glory bit. A next best if you’re the closet type is to record the chord sequence onto your ghetto blaster. Count 1 2 3 4 and away you go playing C F and G7 for five minutes. Play it back and you’ve got an instant accompanist who won’t get bored after the thirtieth repetition – and believe me, you’ll be doing it a lot more than thirty times…
Now that you’re fluent with your pentatonic scale of C, aimlessly play four notes to the bar (crotchets) in time over the top of the chord sequence. You can start off by playing the notes in the order as written but eventually I would like you to throw caution to the wind and play any note in any order. It’s a bit like diving in at the deep end. The worst that can happen is the neighbours shouting ‘Shut that *** row up!’, but hopefully a beautiful thing might happen and you will spread wings and fly away on the gift of song. The most likely thing, though, is that some bits will sound OK and other bits will sound wrong. However, what will happen in time, and this is important, is that this starts training the ear to hear where the notes are on the guitar and through a process of osmosis, the subconscious learns automatically where each note that you hear in your head lies on the guitar. Heavy stuff. Read it again because this is leading to the crux of what improvisation is really about, i.e. that ability to instantaneously play on the guitar what you hear in your head.
‘But I don’t hear anything in my head!’ Practise these scales regularly and you’ll start hearing things you didn’t know you had.
This is particularly where jazz takes off and for those of you on that path, will provide a lifetime of study and enjoyment. Another similar branch is blues, but this seems to be born out of narrower harmonic and melodic intentions, providing, however, the backdrop for a very broad base of accessible emotions.
If you were eavesdropping on a conversation between two improvising instrumentalists, you may hear them debating the pros and cons of improvising (a) using modes or (b) based on a sense of key. I’ve moved on now from my earlier paragraph about using the pentatonic scale of C to doing full-blown improvisations with many modulations, twists and turns. I like jumping from one extreme to another. For example, in my own band ECSTATIC!, the other guitarist sits and works out what modes (dorian, aeolian, etc) fit what chord sequence and he comes up with things I would never dream of playing, whereas I like to know what key I’m playing in or modulating to, and I tend to use that as my starting point. I think the modal thing is more from the jazz school and my scale-based approach comes from practising my classical guitar grade exams from the year donkey.
There comes a point however when all these modes and scales become mechanical. They become so inbred in your system that you can automatically fit them to the chord sequence and then start the lifelong task of expressing your soul…man. If you consider that you’ve probably spent ten years trying to learn Bach’s twiddleedee, don’t expect to play like whoever your favourite improviser is in ten weeks. It takes as much work and practice as any other art form, but nevertheless both fun and satisfactory results can be had in the early stages – even if it’s only standing in front of the mirror and pulling faces like Jimmy Hendrix.
Have you got any favourite improvisers? If not, get one quick. My favourites are endless…Pat Metheny, Martin Taylor, Robben Ford…on and on. Most of the great improvisers are/were unorthodox in their approach. Not only did they improvise music, they improvised their method of getting there. Despite this, don’t despair, brilliant results are attainable from a method approach. My personal desire is to be able to express myself through both the traditional reading and playing of classical guitar technique combined with an ability to be spontaneous and improvise when the need arises.
I went to a drum clinic (a sales/tuitional concert for drummers) in Glasgow last year with two of the worlds leading session drummers (I’m interested in all instruments). I was amazed at the opposing views they had regarding their art. VC said forget everyone else; develop your own uniqueness and style – don’t try and copy anybody else. TW said copy everybody and eventually your own style will win through. Work it out for yourself.
This first part is really just a general dissertation on improvising for classical guitarists, so if I wander about a bit I offer no apology, it’s just me trying to improvise my way to the end. You’ll have to follow carefully to try and keep up. The next bit pertains more to you as teacher trying to draw out the improvisational talents of a pupil on a subject you’re not to sure about yourself.
So you’re there with your pupil, reading the GCSE syllabus, wondering how to approach a subject you’re not even sure about yourself. Or perhaps your pupil is there improvising away, displaying their natural talent. How can you develop it? Ear training is closely allied to improvisation and quite frequently people with a ‘good ear’ can improvise competently. One way of developing the ear can be combined with sight-reading practice. Read a simple melody line – then try and play it back by ear. Likewise any other melody can be given the same treatment. Whether it’s Greensleeves or Yesterday, try working it out in any key that takes your fancy. Find a starting note and you’re away. No cribbing by looking at bits of music. Persevere until you can play the tune fluently. When I was learning to play the guitar, I was forever picking things up from records – little licks, tunes, whole pieces – by ear.
If you’ve gone away and picked up Yesterday for example, get your friend (remember them?) to strum the chords behind you as you play the tune and then try and alter some of the phrases a bit by adding some embellishment – -some tasteful twiddles here and there (and everywhere) or part of your favourite scale that you can wangle in somewhere. Don’t forget, if you haven’t got a friend, you can always substitute the tape recorder as your accompanist. Once you get reasonably proficient at both ear training and improvising, look for recordings of other artists’ solos and work them out by ear. Learning or analysing other musicians’ solos helps to feed yourself ideas for you to develop into your own style.
However, you may find all this incredibly easy, fiddling about with tunes, modes and scales, etc, in which case you should move on to diminished and augmented patterns and the application of these in your soloing. These require a heightened level of hearing ability as well as the general understanding of flat 9ths diminished whotsits! Sophisticated jazz players introduce a lot of chromaticism into their solos but this requires years of training the ear and the brain. Even for the listener it can be daunting as they substitute closely related (harmonically) melodic sequences which just about resolve (to the more traditional ear).
Usually, a pupils choice of what they want to sound like or emanate is something like Nirvana or the latest whizz kid. However, in a good student this can sometimes bring technique up to a high level very quickly just through sheer enthusiasm and desire, as can playing with other instruments. The tape recorder is great as a learning tool but ultimately the interaction of other musicians brings out creativity that wouldn’t normally be tapped. Piano, bass and percussion make up a standard, acceptable format, but any instrument from the penny whistle to the euphonium can give rise to inspiration.
The classical guitar isn’t particularly noteworthy for being an improvising instrument – playing with a pick is usually considered more conducive to fast or fluid melody lines and the standard classical technique could sound a little stilted in certain situations. If you are trying to emulate a jazz style of playing which has lots of continuous sixteenth-note passages, imagine the havoc caused to your carefully honed nails with all the excessive i-m-ing. A jazz player I know has to have a refret every six months – not just the more commonly used 5th to 12th fret say, but the 15th fret and up is worn to a frazzle! Imagine your nails after this sort of hammering. Having said that, flamenco players do it – using their own breed of scales and modes.
I was going to offer a bibliography but then I realised that nearly everything I know about improvisation comes from just doing it. With a little basic knowledge, a lot can be achieved and can provide the pleasure and satisfaction that can only come from creating something of your own.
Copyright © 1996 by Paul Carroll