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Old 07-21-2020, 12:51 PM
Kevin G String Kevin G String is offline
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Default Hearing something before you play it!

Hello good people; when you’re improvising, do you hear the phrase or lick or riff before you play it?

I’m not sure I do, I’m sure it’s a drawback!

Thanks

Kevin
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Old 07-21-2020, 12:56 PM
MartinGibsonFan MartinGibsonFan is offline
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According to The Guitar Handbook, you should think about the improvisation about a minute before it actually happens.

' The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desparately try to think of something that will be effective., but I never sit down and work it out note for note '

Eric Clapton

J
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Old 07-21-2020, 01:07 PM
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Most who often use speedy licks and riffs have a set of patterns memorized from prior times that they plug in. I suppose with slower paced stuff you might have time to think of something new on the spot.
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Old 07-21-2020, 01:16 PM
MartinGibsonFan MartinGibsonFan is offline
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Let's take Eric Clapton's ' It's in the way that you use it ' at minute marks 1:20 and 3:00 I'm thinking this is the quintessential on the fly improvisation that is probably being discussed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP1AFDDJoeE
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Old 07-21-2020, 02:58 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MartinGibsonFan View Post
According to The Guitar Handbook, you should think about the improvisation about a minute before it actually happens.
Hi MGF

I'm confident I have NEVER thought of an improvisation a minute before I played it!

And improvisation is not playing something I've never played before. It's playing a passage differently than other times I have played it. Once I'm not feeling bound to the melody, it leaves me free to improvise.

For me it's almost always true to the chord progression, and stays in touch with the form of the song (especially when it involves other players). I may depart from the strict meter of the piece and play syncopation against the group, but it's still understandable and acceptable to the audience.

When I'm doing theme-and-variation the melody is played verbatim first time through…and maybe that's the only time I play it note-for-note except at the end to return to the theme.

Extremely well-known pieces (Sweet Georgia Brown for instance) lend themselves well to improvising because the audience is familiar with the melody (for the most part). But I don't limit my improvising to well-known pieces. I'll spontaneously echo short pieces of the melodies when I'm playing backing guitar, and play them in different octaves from the singers or players. Sometimes I'll spontaneously double the melody singer too, and when that is unexpected, I'd call it improvising (it isn't in the score and may not have been rehearsed that way).

Hope this adds to the discussion…



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Old 07-21-2020, 03:15 PM
Kevin G String Kevin G String is offline
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Maybe I haven't explained this very well. What I'm referring to is, do you hear in your head the phrase that you're about to play?

You know when you learn to read and to begin with you read out loud so the teacher knows that what you're reading is correct? Then when you're ready, you begin to read silently, for most people their brain still unconsciously sends signals to the vocal apparatus. Some people are aware of hearing themselves read in their head. If I remember correctly, this is called pre-vocalisation. And it's not a great thing to do because it slows your reading down.

I've heard some players saying that they hear, in their heads, what they are about to play.

Jeff Beck is one of the players and John Meyer is another and when John does his Instagram lessons, he sometimes sings the lines before he plays them.

So it seems like it’s possible to prevocalise a lick before you play it. As opposed to just allowing you fingers to randomly wander around a scale pattern or arpeggio pattern. Similar to when you’re having a conversation, I hear what I’m about to say in my head. I hear the words in my head just as I type them.

Anyway, I was improvising tonight and it was so much more musical when I tried to hear what I wanted to play in the next instant. it wasn’t always very accurate! But I don’t sing or work songs out by ear.

So are others aware of hearing what they’re about to play? In the context of my above rambling ;o)
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Old 07-21-2020, 03:25 PM
MartinGibsonFan MartinGibsonFan is offline
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John Mayer is a PERFECT example of an improv player.

Hearing his stuff, I think he thinks about his improv licks a couple milliseconds before he plays them.

Eric Clapton's licks are definitely more pre-planned.

So, I guess the answer is it depends on the player.

I think John Mayer is the king of Improv in my humble opinion. He can do it when he's vocalizing and he does it when he's doing solo.

One of the least improv guitar players, no offense, he can play million times better than me, but it would be someone like Eddy Van Halen and many other metal players. They appear to be improv but so far from it and totally staged.

Maybe Clapton is somewhere in between, but the more I think about it, I'm thinking Clapton probably doesn't do a lot of improv either.

But, I think when you listen to John Mayer, you really feel improv.

Maybe that's what Improv is, it's just a feeling you convey that you are playing sponaneously.

J
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Old 07-21-2020, 03:36 PM
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One answer does not fit every case but mostly I'm thinking of what I am playing at the moment and a memory of how I played the notes just before.
Now I might be thinking ahead regarding the motor movements of where and how I need to move my fingers next. A lot depends how well you know
a piece both musically and technically. The better you know those things the better you can think in larger chunks of context for a better flow.
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Old 07-21-2020, 03:39 PM
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My hands play my solos and breaks, not me.
I just close my eyes and watch them.
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Old 07-22-2020, 12:02 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin G String View Post
Hello good people; when you’re improvising, do you hear the phrase or lick or riff before you play it?
Sometimes, yes, if it's a lick I've played many times before. I wouldn't say I literally hear it in my head, but I do know exactly how it will sound, so there is some kind of aural "shape" to the lick in my memory.

But if I'm trying to improvise a new phrase, I don't hear it in its entirety. I know what notes will work on any specific chord (in any specific key), and I also know the sounds of chord tones and extensions. I.e., I have a kind of mental image of all the ingredients I might use.
It's a little like being a chef, trying to invent a completely new dish using ingredients whose individual flavours he knows. He will have an idea that certain ingredients ought to work together (he will have put some of them together before). He also knows enough not to put things in that he knows won't work at all. But he still doesn't know quite how the whole thing will taste when all his chosen ingredients are put together.

So I know that a certain combination of sounds will work - and sound OK - but I only have a fuzzy image of how the whole phrase will sound. That's how I like it. I like to surprise myself. I can then build more phrases based on what I just played.
I think I would find it extremely boring if I knew exactly how everything I was about to play would sound before I played it. There'd hardly be any point in playing it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin G String View Post
I’m not sure I do, I’m sure it’s a drawback!
Well, it's a problem if you're not sure what will sound good. I.e., if you don't know the set of notes you can draw from that will all be OK at any particular moment - so you're worried about playing a wrong note.

Provided you know a few notes that will fit, just make up something using those. Then you have a foundation to build on, to continue. If what you play doesn't sound the way you thought it would - what's the problem? If there are no wrong notes there, everything is fine. If you think it's a rather uninteresting little phrase - play it again. Immediately it will be a lot more interesting. Play it three times, you've got a riff. Change it's rhythm a little. And so on.

A related problem would be the kind of opposite - you have a lot of great phrases in your head, you can imagine some amazing sounds before you play, but you can seem to find them on guitar. That would be intensely frustrating. I get it a little sometimes - I hear some great solos on record, and remember the sound of some amazing lick, but I can't play it.
But that's because I never learned to play it.

IOW, the lesson is, if you want to have a store of great licks in your head - that you can "hear" before you play them - then you have to get them into your head in the first place. Which you do by playing them over and over. I.e., great phrases don't come into your head of their own accord, by magic. You have to embed them, by playing them first.

That's how all the great players do it. They learn by copying licks from their heroes, as well as by experimenting and memorising anything they come up with that sounds good. Memorising by repeatedly playing, of course.
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Old 07-22-2020, 03:09 PM
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I hear in my head what I'm going to play. It doesn't always happen that way as sometimes my muscle memory screws me up. Or a brain fart. I like to think about musical sounds I want to play when I don't have a guitar in my hands. Like when I'm going to sleep at night or watching nature. Then I visualize the fret board and try to play it and work it out. When I get to my guitar I try to play it and get it into muscle memory. But, hey, that's me.
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Old 07-23-2020, 01:21 AM
Kevin G String Kevin G String is offline
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Quote:
My hands play my solos and breaks, not me.
I just close my eyes and watch them.
I am a clinical hypnotherapist. As part of my training 1 Studied a chap called Milton Ericson. He was considered by many to be one of the greatest hypnotherapists there has ever been.

Much of his success was in his language patterns.

He'd say things like:" And you can watch while those fingers find all of the right notes to create the most beautiful melody all by themselves. Can't you? All you have to do is to continue to relax. And the more you relax, the easier it becomes. That is right. There is a part of you which knows exactly what to play, all you have to do is trust and allow it to be, now."

Reading Sillymoustache’s post reminded me of him ;o)
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Old 07-23-2020, 01:45 AM
Kevin G String Kevin G String is offline
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Thanks all for your input.

I have been practising, as best I can, is to hear, in my head, a simple phrase then attempt to play it. I can definitely see, hear and feel a difference in what I play.

In a way, it's the same as mimicking someone. copying not only the words but also the rhythm of the words along with the speed, the accented sylables, the volume. etc

It’s something I'm going to explore more fully.

Another thing I've been doing is thinking of a short melodic phrase with words. So I think of the line of a song and attempt to play it.

One of my major influences has been Brian May and a lot of his lines are almost poetic. One of my favourite solo's is the one from Killer Queen. I used to be able to play that, many moons ago.

Another thing I heard John Mayer talking about is that very few of his notes are perfectly in tune. He does a lot of micro-tonal bends. This, I believe, makes his phrases more human and lyrical.

I’m not into jazz at all but that thing that John Dankwoth and Cleo Lane used to do was impressive where she’d sing his sax lines. He may have also played her sung melodies. I’ll look them up on YouTube.
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Old 07-23-2020, 05:24 AM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is offline
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I wrote an essay on soloing and improvising and you can find it on my site, HERE. It covers he aesthetics of solo design and how you actually make a solo happen. I think of the process in terms of developing memories, licks, and patterns for your hands that can be fired off as "macros" while you mind and heart surf ahead and intuitively work toward the future. I think there is a lot more of intuitive activity than intellectual activity involved in soloing.

Bob
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Old 07-23-2020, 06:54 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin G String View Post
In a way, it's the same as mimicking someone. copying not only the words but also the rhythm of the words along with the speed, the accented sylables, the volume. etc

Another thing I've been doing is thinking of a short melodic phrase with words. So I think of the line of a song and attempt to play it.
This is good. Pentatonic scales sound allot like people talking. The phrasing along with including the breaths is important. Thinking about how a horn player takes breaths also helps. A good exercise is to learn to play the melodic lines or the notes of the words to a simple song like "Amazing Grace" or something.
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