Learn the basic concepts of improvisation from Gary Burton, one of the most renowned improvisers in the jazz world, including the mental, melodic, and harmonic processes that contribute to the instinctive skills that an improviser puts to use when taking a solo. While many people are fans of jazz and understand that musicians are often “making up” the notes they are playing during a performance, most people—often including musicians, themselves, who are beginning to learn improvising—aren’t clear about what exact processes take place to enable this to happen. The purpose of this course is to introduce the basic concepts of modern improvisation and how to go about mastering the different musical and mental skills involved. Course author Gary Burton codifies a sought-after approach to improvisation that has been at the core of Berklee College of Music's curriculum for decades. Students who complete this course will know what to practice and how to practice the various aspects of improvising, in addition to understanding how the improviser spontaneously communicates to the listeners through their musical creations.
Harmonic Motion 2
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From the course by Berklee College of Music
Jazz Improvisation
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From the lesson
Harmony for Improvisers
It is important for an improviser to clearly imply the harmonies when improvising. It is not enough to just play correct notes on each chord. In this lesson we'll examine how the improviser helps the harmonies move. Part of the improviser's job is to help the listener follow the changes as the chords move from one to another.
Meet the Instructors
Gary Burton
Though there are different kinds of harmonic motion.
And a lot of the time, the way chords move even suggests a kind of physical
direction that things are moving. Up, down or sideways and so on.
It, there's this suggestion there in the way the harmonies move.
and each kind of resolution has its own recognizable characteristic.
Let's just look for instance at the very common 5,1.
[MUSIC] But what if we use the substitute dominant, it's almost the same thing.
But we make E7 [SOUND]. See how different it sounds [SOUND].
There's a chromatic movement that happens.
What about [SOUND]. That's even more easy to distinguish as
being unique. That's chromatic motion from below,
coming up into the one chord. So, each kind of chord movement suggests
a unique identity. in fact, when I [MUSIC], I encounter, a
chord movement that's going up, which is not nearly as common as chord resolutions
that seem to go down, I usually try to bring that upward suggestion through in
my playing. I might play a line [MUSIC] that goes up.
on that harmony just to help the listener get the sense of its motion.
So, there are a couple more kinds of movement and chord situations that the
improviser will encounter that's important for you to know.
one of these is called constant structure.
In this case, the type of chord stays the same.
It doesn't go from a dominant 7 to a 1 chord or to a minor this or whatever.
They're all the same. Let's say this is a major 7 chord
[MUSIC]. You can hear they are all major 7 chords,
just changing place on the keyboard, but all the same type of chord.
So the structure stays the same which is where the name comes from, constant
structure. And the interesting thing about constant
structure besides the fact that it has kind of a unique sound.
Harmonically it doesn't sound like [MUSIC].
You know the kind of resolving changes that we hear more commonly.
But on constant structure because the chords are all identical, in this case
all major 7 chords, any phrase. [MUSIC].
Any melodic phrase that you use on one chord you can play on, all the others,
just by transposing to each new harmony, because the chords are going to be the
same. Now related to, in some ways, the
constant structure concept, is when chords move chromatically.
[MUSIC] That's again a very recognizable kind of movement to our ears, to the
listener's ear. chromatic movement is, you know, has its
own character. And, and it is a k, it's a form of
constant structure because you know the chords are all the same, in this case
dominant 7 chords moving down. so you can do the same thing.
Any phmelodic phrase can be repeated just by, moving it down a half-step and, and
so on. But in addition, there's some, something
to know about, this, the world of chromatics.
This is one of my pieces of advice that I give the students all the time.
And I have a saying, which is that, chromaticism is the improvisor's best
friend. And I say that because, being able to
play chromatically helps us smooth out rough sp, spots in our melodic lines.
an example is, let's say we're playing on B flat 7.
And we want to go, we want to go to the E flat on the beginning of the next chord
on the E flat chord that we're leading into.
And I want to, I'm picturing playing steady 8th notes, right up until that
note. But what happens if I get close to it and
I either got not enough notes or too many notes or whatever, what do I do?
And that's where chromatic notes help me out because I don't want to get to that
not early or late, I want it to be on the down beat.
So I can turn it into a chromatic line. [MUSIC] You add chromatic notes, turn it
into a chromatic line. As I approach the note, I want to land on
it. So it helps me to land on the right beat,
on with the strong note. So we use chromatic notes that way, to
help our improvising. We also use it, sometimes, just to add
interest. let's say we're playing a long passage
with only one chord. It's D minor.
[MUSIC]. want to go on and on for 8 bars,
something, may-, 16, 16 bars. Well, after a while our one scale starts
to sound repetitive and boring. So if we can just add a few extra notes
to break it up, to add some color. [MUSIC] All right.
I'm still on the D minor, but adding some of these chromatic notes, adds more
color, doesn't clash with the D minor, but it makes it a little more
interesting. So it's another, thing that the
chromatic, line does for us, that chromaticism does for us.
It not only helps us smooth out our melodic lines.
It also helps provide interest. So you will find as you get more
experienced using chromaticism that it is a very useful tool.
So, today we've looked at several ways to deal with harmony as an improviser.
One is guidelines, guide tones and guidelines.
Another is common scales where the cords all share a common scale.
third, constant structure, where all the cords are the same type.
And chromatic motion, where the cords are moving chromatically.
Now, I'll be back in a minute and I will talk about our assignment this week.
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