The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 14: Improvisation_Part_2

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 2 • Episode 14

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Welcome to The Harmonious Blacksmith,

your go-to podcast for mastering music theory and unlocking the secrets of musical improvisation. In this episode, Ep.14 Improvisation_Part_2, we dive deeper into the art of improvisation and how to apply essential music theory principles on the fly. Whether you’re a music student, a professional musician, or a music theory enthusiast, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical tips to elevate your improvisation skills.

We explore key concepts such as chord progressions, scales, and modes, and show you how these can be used to create improvised melodies and harmonic structures. By breaking down real-world examples, we provide you with the tools to confidently navigate through complex musical landscapes. If you’ve been looking to sharpen your jazz improvisation, classical improvisation, or any other improvisational style, this episode is for you!

Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of how music theory can fuel your creative expression and improve your ability to improvise effortlessly. Don’t miss out on this episode of The Harmonious Blacksmith—your key to mastering the language of music and improvisation. Subscribe and stay tuned for more insightful episodes!


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SPEAKER_00:

A one, two, a one, four. Hey, what's up everybody out there, fellow music theory lovers and enthusiasts. We are back with another episode of The Harmonious Blacksmith. Welcome, and I hope that you're enjoying my podcast so far. This is going to be episode number 14 of season two, and it is part two of my improvisation series. I am your host, Kevin Patrick Fleming.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh no, don't do it. No. No, don't do it. Oh my

SPEAKER_00:

God. Oh, they did it. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much. So today we have a extra saucy episode about improvisation part two. And I want to go ahead and address any of my new listeners out there. First of all, welcome. You found your home to music theory and the exploration of such in a podcast form. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I will go ahead and let you know this is a linear and cumulative podcast. And so if you're coming in for the first time on this episode. I do recommend going all the way back to season one in episode one. It starts from scratch and builds from there. We have been building on multiple concepts to get to the point where we are now. And so if you are a flat beginner, you might not be able to follow everything I'm talking about today. And look, that's okay too. And if you don't, you might just want to go back and start my podcast from the beginning. So let's go ahead and start with a quick review of what we did in episode 13 is we were learning the components, the building blocks of how to create some good improvisation. Do you remember what those components were? I'm going to answer that question by posing another. Where does everything in music theory come from in the beginning?

UNKNOWN:

Music

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, it comes from scales. So we're starting with scale patterns. Does anybody remember the second component? It is arpeggios. So quick review. Scales are a melodic succession of notes one at a time that go in a stepwise order from a low note that we call a root all the way up to what we call an octave, which is the higher version of the root. And in between, the notes are formed based on formulas that have conditions previously. And what is an arpeggio? Can any of y'all remember it from the arpeggio episode? It is just the components, the outline of chords. So as we know, chords are three or more notes played simultaneously, but arpeggios are when you break that up into its individual notes or components. And that's where we can really have fun and get creative. Arpeggios are one of my favorite things in music theory of all time. I just really think that people have the ability to to really do their creativity and their art with arpeggios combined with melodic scale tones. So that is really how we're going to improvise. So let's start with the scales. There were four main scales that you use that can allow you to improvise to literally like 90% of music. Do you remember what they are? They are diatonic major, diatonic minor, major pentatonic, and minor pentatonic. So those four patterns combined can allow you to improvise over the overwhelming majority of music that you hear or come across. I promise you that. So let's play through all of them first. I'm going to go ahead and start in the key I was in when I recorded the intro. which was G. Let's do G major pentatonic, which sounds like this. And G minor pentatonic would sound like this. G major diatonic would sound like this. minor diatonic. Okay, and I'm assuming most of you are probably familiar with these by now, but let's go ahead and review the differences between the pentatonics and the diatonics. Do you remember what they are? So for example, we start with the major diatonic, which starts on root G and goes whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, right? And how do we extract, I'm doing quotes in the air right now, how do we extract the pentatonic? Because it really lies in the same realm, right? For major, all you do is remove scale degrees four and seven.

SPEAKER_02:

So,

SPEAKER_00:

So we start with scale degree one, then we go to two, then to three, skip four, go to five, six, skip seven, and go to eight. From major diatonic to major pentatonic is really just a matter of removing scale degrees four and seven. So now I'm going to play those back to back. This is diatonic. And this is pentatonic. So you can tell they are similar. They do share the same pitches basically, except diatonic has a couple more. Another friendly reminder, you get yourself in trouble using diatonics because they have half steps in them and pentatonics do not have half steps. This is an important thing to remember because if you're playing something melodically with a scale and improv, if you're You can get yourself in trouble if you play the wrong half step over the wrong chord. So like if I'm playing a C chord and I accidentally play a B underneath a C chord, it could be really harsh sound and things like that. So really, you want to start with pentatonics and then graduate to diatonics from there. Pentatonics are more friendly. They don't contain the deadly half steps of the diatonic that can cause pitfalls and really just bad sounds. So we're going to start with pentatonic. So let's also explain the minor. Do you remember which scale degrees get moved there? So minor diatonic would be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And two get removed from this one, but they're not the same as major. What are they?

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

They are scale degrees two and six. So we're going to go scale degree one, skip two, go to three, then go to four, five, skip six, and go to seven, and then to eight. So we're skipping two and six. So again, in major, we're skipping four and seven to get pentatonic. And in minor, we're skipping scale degrees two and six. All right, so we're almost ready to start our improvisation with just the scales. We'll add arpeggios as we go. But what I want to know is who that listened to my previous episode can remember the two golden rules of improvisation in the beginning. They are stay in the scale and stay in time or stay in rhythm. If you simplify, make sure you're staying in your scale pattern and make sure you're staying within the bounds of the rhythm. Your improv will sound good. And just remember, don't, don't, don't overplay. It's so easy to overplay and try to play too many notes and you get yourself in trouble. You sound sloppy. Okay. So don't do that. Start simplifying. Simple. Start with long notes. Start with whole notes and half notes and quarter notes before you start trying to chop it up into eighths and sixteenths. Keep things simple. All right. So ready to start your first improv? Here's what we're going to do. My suggestion is start with literally one chord. So I am going to be starting with a G major chord, and I'm just going to play it in time, and we're going to experiment with the scales that would work with that. So I'm going to start with a simple jangly G like this. One, two, ready, go. So Okay, so now I'm going to let that run in the background as a rhythm. And then I'm going to solo over it, starting with the G major pentatonic scale, the most friendly scale for this. And just as a bonus for y'all out there that have been listening to my podcast, what is the relative minor of G major?

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. It's E minor. So you can also use E minor pentatonic, but I'm just going to start with G major pentatonic for now. And that would sound like this. One, two, ready, go. Okay. Okay, that's simple enough and sounded pretty good. Let's see if you can now tell the difference between that sound and adding scale degrees 4 and 7 to turn it into a major diatonic. You'll just hear the other two colors, and that would sound like this. 1, 2, ready, go. 1, 2, ready, go. Hmm, interesting, right? So we really do have a different palette of colors there, despite the fact that they're so similar. You're going to get this sort of boxy, even sound in pentatonic, and then with diatonic, when you add the half steps back, you just get these sort of subtle colors, these sort of in-between colors that come in that really do make it a little more interesting in the end. So now let's try this experiment over an A- minor chord. Just to switch the palette a little bit, I'm going to start with an A minor strum, and we are going to do A minor pentatonic and compare that to A minor diatonic. So first, A minor with just pentatonic, and that sounds like this. A one, two, three.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that is so fun. All right, now let's try that same A minor jangly strum, but with the diatonic notes. See if you can hear the colors and tell the difference. And it sounds like this. A one, two, three, four.

UNKNOWN:

A one, two, three, four.

SPEAKER_00:

So again, hopefully you can hear the subtle shading that goes on when we add scale degrees two and six. back from the minor pentatonic to the minor diatonic. So again, we just displayed that four scales can play a whole lot of music. And isn't that wonderful? But there is one cool component that I haven't even gotten into yet, which again is arpeggios. So let's break down arpeggios real quick. Basically, arpeggio is taking a chord. So I'll just take A minor, the one I was just using and breaking it into its components. Now, how many ways can I do that? It is practically infinite, okay? Like there are so many ways that you can do it with rhythm, that you can do it in the order of the chord. You can do it with different voicings and things. It is almost infinite the way that you can spread out arpeggios. That's why I love them so much. And so basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a few passes with just arpeggio tones. So again, if I'm doing, I'm going to go back to Who out there remembers where those chord tones come from, by the way? they come from the scales wow like that's a big surprise if you've been listening to my series so recall the skipping method to build triads and remember triads turn into chords and both triads and chords lend themselves to arpeggios so let's do some examples all right so if i have a g scale with scale degrees one two three four five six seven eight remember the skipping method you start with one And then you go to three and then you go to five. And those are the three pitches that create the triad, right? Which ultimately creates the chord. You probably remember that. I just wanted to remind you. And so one, three, and five are going to be the main pitches we're going to use as our arpeggio tone. So now let's do a pass where you hear a jangly G again, and we just use the one, three, and five and see what that sounds like and it would sound like this. One, two, ready, go. So you can tell right away that arpeggios have this kind of bouncy jump around kind of sound because obviously we're skipping notes and skipping notes just, it makes the ear work a little more because it bounces around. The intervals are bigger. If you remember intervals and the distances between pitches, it's just a lot easier and more agreeable for our ear to latch onto scale tones where the pitches are close together. But Arpeggios are so cool. They do a lot of interesting things, and you can tell they bounce around and really give you this sort of open, bigger sound. So now let's ramp it up a little bit. Let's do a little combo exercise. So over the jangly G strum this time, I'm actually going to use pentatonic scales along with arpeggios to show you what that sounds like. One, two, ready? Go. Oh, now we're getting somewhere, right? So now when you combine scales with arpeggios, you really get some very interesting and varied sounds. And notice, I'm going to point this out. I haven't even left one chord yet. Did you notice that? And I'm doing that on purpose to make a point. Building improvisation is a process just like building anything that's worth building. It takes time and it has multiple steps and it takes patience and it takes running into issues and solving them, all kinds of things like that. So be patient, start with one chord, learn how to wield pentatonic scales and diatonic scales, learn how to put the arpeggios together, and then learn how to combine them that way before you even leap into a more complex progression. So now for my last audio example on this particular section i'm going to go ahead and go back to a minor we're going to do an a minor strum and i'm going to combine a minor diatonic with a minor arpeggio notes which again will be one three and five from the a minor scale that would sound like this a one two three four so All right. So now again, we're getting a lot of colors there, but they're in minor now. So that was minor diatonic along with arpeggio notes for A minor again. Look, I urge you to try these exercises. All I'm really doing is I'm just hitting record and using a basic metronome to keep my tracks in time. And I'm just doing a jangly strum on one chord. And that way you can just hit play and then you can just practice doing this over and over again and create a loop for minutes and minutes and minutes all this is really easy and you can get started on improvisation really easily so to recap what we just did we talked about how improvisation starts with the four main scales that can get through like 80 to 90 percent of music out there that you listen to and hear and those scales are the major and minor pentatonic as well as the major and minor diatonic we heard the subtleties in the differences between those when you take away those scale degree four and seven from major diatonic or scale degrees two and six from minor diatonic. And then in the end, when we add the arpeggio notes, the outlines of the chord we're playing, you get more of a varied, bouncy sort of jump around sound that has bigger intervals and more colors. So combining these four scales with your arpeggios can take you really, really Okay, so that was a lot. Let's breathe a little bit and take it in. When I switch to a C chord, for example, just think about that. Does my scale change? Are G and C in the same key together? Just think about those questions. What would you change once you go to a C in your scale pattern? We'll get into that in the next one. And I have another question for you. When we switch from a G to a C, what will change about the arpeggio notes that we're playing, right? So we're not just going to be playing 1-3-5 anymore. We're now going to be outlining a C chord, which would be 4-6-1 to give you, a preview of what we'll be getting into. So coming up soon, we're going to do more of this same kind of stuff, but with more of a chord progression rather than just a stagnant chord. That way we can continue to build the skills that we have already started to build. But now it's time for breakdown. Today's episode was the second episode in my improvisation series. We started with the four main scales to use in improvisation. Major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, major diatonic, and minor diatonic. We talked about the scale degrees four and seven being removed from major to get pentatonic and scale degrees two and six being removed from minor to get minor pentatonic. We also reviewed triads, chords and arpeggios and started to add arpeggios to what we do. I reminded you about the two golden rules of improvisation. Stay in the scale and stay in rhythm. Keep it simple. We learned how to start with the pentatonic scale against one chord, graduate to the diatonic scale, and eventually add arpeggios in with that to combine those things. Thanks again for tuning in to The Harmonious Blacksmith. And until next time, I will look forward to continuing this music exploration with all of you. Have a beautiful music-filled week, gang.