The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 13: Improvisation_Part_1

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 2 • Episode 13

Share episode

Send us a text

Episode 13: Improvisation_Part_1 – Unlock the Secrets of Music Theory & Improvisation

Welcome to Episode 13 of our music theory podcast! In this episode, we dive deep into improvisation, a critical skill for musicians and composers alike. Whether you're a seasoned music theorist, a music student, or simply a music theory enthusiast, this episode is packed with insights that will elevate your understanding of improvisational techniques and their relationship with core music theory concepts.

In Improvisation_Part_1, we explore how music theory fundamentals, such as scales, chords, and harmony, directly influence improvisational creativity. We discuss the importance of musical structure and how improvising within these structures can lead to more expressive and impactful performances. We’ll also touch on improvisation strategies that can help students and musicians unlock their creative potential.

This episode is perfect for those wanting to improve their improvisation skills, connect theory with practice, and gain a deeper appreciation of musical expression. If you’re passionate about understanding the inner workings of music and how to apply it in spontaneous composition, don’t miss this episode!

Tune in to Episode 13: Improvisation_Part_1 and start your journey to mastering the art of musical improvisation.

#musictheory #musichistory #musiccommentary #musicpodcast

Support the show

Linear Music Theory Learning For Everyone!

UNKNOWN:

One, two, three

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, music theory lovers in the world like myself. Welcome back to another episode of The Harmonious Blacksmith. I do appreciate you spending some time with us this week, and I hope that you are enjoying the journey we are on so far. I am your host, Kevin Patrick Fleming. Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

baby. Y'all sound energized. Y'all sound rested. Y'all sound ready to learn some music. Let's go, y'all. Let's have fun today. So we're coming off an episode about arpeggios last time in episode 12, which is one of my favorite things. But I got to thinking that we need to do an episode on improvisation. And today's episode, lucky number 13, is going to be all about improvisation. So before we begin with today's episode, let me go ahead and welcome anybody new out there that might not have listened to my podcast before. Welcome. We are so glad that you are here. And I'll go ahead and just let you know, this is a linear and cumulative podcast. And so we're building blocks on blocks on blocks. And our first 12 episodes have led up to lucky number 13 here. And I'm going to be using all the concepts put together just about in today's podcast episode I do appreciate all of you listening and look I just ask that you go into the episode description right now while you're listening click on the support the show link and just take a look at the options there I'm working really hard to put good content out for you every week and so I'm just asking for a little help in return it really goes a long way. Anything that you can offer to support the show so that I can continue to create great content for you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it very, very much. But if you are a beginner at music theory and that's why you looked me up and found my podcast, I do urge you to go back to the beginning to episode one and start listening to the episodes and get caught up with us here. You're certainly willing to stay with this episode at this time, but if you are a beginner, there might be a lot of advanced concepts here that you haven't necessarily heard of before, but that I have gone through thoroughly and with detail. And we are going to be using all of those things to put together this episode today. So here's the first question. What is improvisation? What is it exactly? Well, we know what it is in life. It means to basically do something on the fly without planning, right? We don't need a, you know, super academic definition here. All about just doing something on the fly without planning it, right? But let me dispel some preconceived notions you might have about improvisation. Because I'm sure many of you have been in awe or have gawked at some people that improv like incredibly. And you think, wow, they just make it up on the spot. And that's amazing. I can't believe they do that. I could never do it. The secret is they put practice that improvisation a lot a lot a lot they spend a lot of time in the think tank for improvisation they have things prepared really well they understand what they're doing with all the music theory concepts and they know how to put them together with some organization when the time comes because they have spent that thousands of hours practicing it now don't get me wrong i am not taking away from those who can do it really well it is a beautiful art form and I think of people like Frank Zappa, who do it really well, Herbie Hancock, people like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and even Trey Anastasio. There is a huge skill and art form that those people have that is on a really, really high level, no matter how much you practice. But my point in the previous segment was just that it's not as mysterious as you think, and it's not as impromptu as you think. Remember the old saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master something? Well, improvisation is no different. It really takes time, practice, and effort. You don't just jump in there and just start making stuff up willy-nilly. So let's go ahead and jump into the concepts that we're going to use today. The four main things that you're going to use in your improvisation skill set are going to be chords chord progressions, scales, and arpeggios. And those are the main four things we're going to start with, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of other concepts that we are going to use. Things like harmonies, like double stops, things like bending, harmonics, things like vibrato, things like slurring, which for guitarists would be like hammer-ons and pull-offs, but also slides. And just think of any other kind of musical technique, and we're going to try and we're going to see how we can use it in improvisation. So the best way to start a session of improvisation is really to have a chord progression in mind and therefore also a key, you know, and these are concepts, of course, we've gone over in season one. So what we're going to do is we're going to use the key of G, which is a nice round key with one sharp, which is F, and we're going to use the one, four, five progression. progression in G. So think about what that is for those of y'all who are music theory students right now. What are the 1-4-5 chords in the key of G? They are G major, C major, and D major. The three major chords in the key of G. And just for fun, if you want to think about it, what are the three minor chords in the key of G? Just in case we want to add them along the way. The two chords A minor, the three chords B minor, and the sixth chord is E minor. We're not really going to mess with the diminished seven chord yet, which would be an F sharp diminished chord. It's a little more difficult to use, I think, in the beginning so we're going to stay simple go with the 1 4 5 g c and d in major so let's go so our one chord like i said is g our four chord is c and our five chord is d and then we're back to g again and actually in my intro of this episode which was all improv by the way i recorded the rhythm and then i recorded the lead track above it and i also included the sixth chord the e minor so basically Basically, that track, just to give you an idea of what you were listening to, it was a 1. And then I went to a 4. And back to 1. And then I walked down to 6. Bass lines, walk downs, that's another episode. But that's kind of cool. And then I went to a 5 chord, which was a D. And then back to a 4 chord, but with a little bit of amendment from before. I actually added a C add 9 here.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

So if you remember from our episodes on chord progressions, on what an add 9 is as opposed to a 9, it just means we have the regular C triad, 1, 3, 5, but there's no 7, and we're just adding the 9. So instead of having a full 9th where you would also have the 7th and the 9th stacked on top, we're just adding a 9. Sounds like that. And then we go back to 1. 1. So technically, my chord progression is a 1, 4, 1, 6, 5, 4, and then back to 1. But as you can tell, no matter how much you mix them up, we're using the 1, 4, 5, which as you know in major keys is the prototypical chord progression in any song, really. And then we're just adding one minor chord, and that's the 6 chord, which is really the most common one that gets added. So what do you think? you're going to go to now if you want to start an improvisation. You guessed it. It's scales. Scales are going to be your best friend in improvisation. You're going to be able to build all kinds of things with scales, and we're going to get into that. So let's start with the G major scale that would work with this chord progression, and that would go like this.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_00:

Or I could play an extra octave on top of that. And those are going to be the seven pitches that repeat over and over again that we're going to use for improvisation. It's a place to start. Now, that's not the only scale pattern that you can use. Go back and think about the circle of fifths episode that we did. And I didn't get too far into it, but there are things called relative keys, right? And relative keys are major and minor key pairings that share the exact same pitches they just start and end on a different pitch right so g major goes from g to g and the relative minor of g major is going to be e minor which goes from e to e but the point is they're relatives because they share the exact same pitches they have all the letters in the music alphabet but when we get to f it's sharp so e minor would say Sound like this. And that is also going to be usable here. And now I'm going to go ahead and let you in on my secret of improvisation when I'm teaching for my students, which is that there are four main scale patterns you really want to use and understand in the beginning before you get to advanced. And those are... major diatonic, minor diatonic, major pentatonic, and minor pentatonic. And remember, the diatonic scales also have Greek mode names. So G major, the major mode is going to be Ionian, and the relative minor mode is going to be Aeolian, in case you are keeping tabs on modes. And look, I haven't really talked a ton about pentatonic scales. Let me give you the basic rundown. So let me now explain. A pentatonic scale. A pentatonic scale has five notes and is derived from the diatonic scales, basically minus two notes from the diatonic scales. So if you're playing a G major pentatonic scale, it sounds like this, first of all. Whereas the diatonic has two extra notes in it that sound like this.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_00:

So they're kind of one in the same, except the pentatonic has a different sound because it omits two pitches that eliminate the half steps in the scale. So in other words, a pentatonic scale has no half steps, and therefore it is really the most friendly scale you can use in improvisation. So if you're just starting out, I would start on pentatonic right away before you even dive into diatonic. So the way the major pentatonic scale works is that you play the major diatonic scale but you remove scale degrees four and seven only so as i'm going through the scale i can play a major scale and go one two three skip four go to five and then six skip seven and go to one so you're skipping scale degrees four and seven on any major pentatonic scale let's switch over to the minor when you're in minor pentatonic you're going to be skipping scale degrees two and six every time. So you go one, skip two, go to three, four, five, skip six, go to seven, and then go to the octave. And that's the way they work in every key. I always teach them to start with pentatonic because it's the most friendly. So let's start with an example of what a pentatonic improvisation would sound like. And I'm going to go ahead and just go through a plain old 1-4-5 progression like this. And now for a simple improvisation over it using G major pentatonic to start.

SPEAKER_01:

Bye. that was the most amazing solo ever!

SPEAKER_00:

Look, I know it wasn't. And actually, that's by design. The whole point was to start simple and make it work. So all I did was play very simply and make sure the notes lined up and sounded pretty good. And there are ways to make sure that that happens, and we're going to talk about that. But the truth is, if you want to try an exercise like this, record yourself playing a I did, and then just loop it and practice playing those pentatonic scales over it. The G major, and we're about to get to E minor pretty soon, and you can use both or either of them and kind of just get used to fitting into the pocket. And that brings me to the big two rules when you're first starting improvisation, which are... Stay in rhythm and stay in the scale. It's actually that simple. If you stay in the scale pattern that we talked about and you're able to keep the notes on rhythm, it will sound good, especially if you're using pentatonic. Pentatonic doesn't really produce bad sounds the way diatonics can. So stay in time and stay in the scale and everything will sound pretty darn good to start.

SPEAKER_01:

But Kevin, come on, son. The got to be more to it than that. I mean, come on!

SPEAKER_00:

well you're right in the end there's actually a lot more to it than that it is that simple to get started the two big rules staying in time and staying in rhythm so here's my suggestion and warning it's a boring start to improvisation but you gotta start somewhere and build from there my suggestion is start by just trying to harmonize using whole notes and half notes so i Obviously, whole notes are four full beats, cover a full measure of 4-4, and then you'll have two half notes per 4-4 measure. So the idea is that you start that simple so that you know you're lining things up, they harmonize and are in time, then you can build from there. So I'm going to do one full round of whole notes against a 1-4-5-1, and then the second round will be half notes on the same chord progression. Here is an example of what that would sound like. A one, two, three, four. One, two, three. So sorry if the counting was a little annoying. I just wanted to make sure you knew where my head was at with the rhythm and the beat. And then you could hear the other pitches harmonizing, starting in whole notes. And then the second round, we did half notes. Then the question becomes, how do you make your note choices? And that's where we come back to the concept of... arpeggios. Remember our last episode about arpeggios and how they really are just outlines or individual note sequences outlining triads or chords. So those are the notes that are going to best harmonize with the chord that you are playing against. So let's do a quick review of that. In the key of G major, when you're on a I chord, your outline for your one arpeggio is going to be scale degree one scale degree three and scale degree five when you're on a four chord it's going to be scale degree four then 6, and then back to the octave, or 1 again. Then when you're on 5, it's going to be, of course, scale degree 5, then 7, then 2, and then we're back to 1 again. So you can literally hear the chord progression when you go through those.

UNKNOWN:

. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

You can hear me outlining a one, four, five. And if you're not there yet, that's okay. I have one episode on ear training in season one. If you want to go back and check out intervals, I have more of those to come and they're going to be really fun and educational and necessary for any musician that really wants to hear and process music correctly. And some of you might have already caught something that I already know by now, which is, wait a second. If you're going through those scale degrees like that, pentatonic does not include scale degrees four and seven in major. Ding, ding, ding, ding. That's correct. So that's when you're switching over into diatonic land, because when we're harmonizing with the root of a four chord, that's scale degree four. And when we're harmonizing with a five chord, the third of the five chord is scale degree seven. So we are, in fact, using those two pentatonic. arpeggios. I know, I know, it sounds like I'm being conflicting or oxymoronic or whatever term you want to use, but the truth is all of this stuff works together. So just to recap, stay in time, stay in rhythm, start with pentatonic, then work your way to adding the extra two scale degrees for diatonic, then we go to arpeggio. So let's do a little round of that with 1-4-5. I'm I'm going to start with a pentatonic round that then goes to a diatonic round and then ends up with an arpeggio round. Ooh, we're going to get a lot of little nuggets here. So that would sound like this. One, two, three, four.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So were you able to follow all the different types of patterns there? You may want to go back in the audio and just listen again. Again, the first pass was pentatonic. The second pass included the four and seven of the diatonic. And the final pass was just arpeggios that were outlining the triads of the chords. And again, I know it's not amazing sounding yet, but these are the types of concepts that you lock in and build on in order to find your improvisation voice to find out what suits you in the end what avenue you're going to go to but I do need to bring up my next rule of improvisation which

SPEAKER_02:

is

SPEAKER_00:

Don't overplay. The number one thing people do in the beginning is they try to overplay. They try to over impress. They want to impress their friends. They want to impress anybody who will listen. And look, I totally understand that. I get that. But if you start doing that, I promise you, you're going to sound like a clown at a circus. And I'm not even lying to a seasoned musician. musician like me that's what you sound like so i'm being point blank here i'm i'm giving you this in order for you to gain some wisdom beyond your years no matter how young you are no matter how old you are no matter how experienced you are as a musician i promise you this nugget of wisdom will serve you well do not overplay make things fit don't play too many notes that is the number one signal that you are very immature in improvisation is playing too many notes. So let's go ahead and do a recap of what we learned about the foundations of improvisation. So remember, number one, start with a simple chord progression. I choose to start with major because that is more prominent in our system. And I choose to start with a 1-4-5 progression because that is the most prototypical progression Then once you have that, you put together your pentatonic scale that will work with it, and you practice playing whole notes and half notes that match up with the timing of the chords. Then you can gravitate towards diatonics, and eventually you can start trying those arpeggios. And in the end, you're going to have a lot of fun combining those things together, and I'm going to be doing some workshop-type podcast episodes going forward, including the next one I do, which is going to be an expansion on this one. So if you feel like this was a good start for you on improvisation, on where you're at in your journey, then pay attention to the next episode that's coming out because it is just going to be a part two on this. And honestly, I'm probably going to run this series for like three or four episodes in a row. That's how much there is to talk about with improvisation, which also turns But now it's time for breakdown Today's lucky episode number 13 was all about improvisation Improvisation We learned the main two rules of improvisation. Stay in rhythm and stay in key. We learned the four scales that you can use to start. Major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, major diatonic, and minor diatonic. We learned about pentatonic versus diatonic. And how you can start with one and expand to the other, but what the scale degree differences are. Remember, major pentatonic doesn't have four and seven. Minor pentatonic doesn't have two and six. And in the end, we just learned, do not overplay. Keep things simple. Start with whole notes and half notes. Line things up perfectly. Establish your habits that way. And build from there. Thanks again for tuning in, everybody. I hope that you learned and enjoyed this episode. And I will look forward to continuing this music exploration with all of you. Have a great week, everybody.