Improvisation for Classical Musicians: Strategies for Creativity and Expression

Learn the creative mindset and acquire the technical tools necessary for improvisation. These concepts and exercises will help you to discover a deeper source of music making, a greater quality of authenticity, and a discernable change in sound and phrasing that will enhance your performances of written music. You will learn to play by ear, apply musical theory to your instrument, and engage creatively with the elements of music, giving you a long menu of musical options. The accompanying recording includes demonstration and play-along tracks.

You will learn: tools to connect melodic imagination to your instrument, with an enhanced sense of physicality; how to use scales, chords, modes, progressions, and other structures in your improvisation; a broad rhythm vocabulary; improvisation techniques for standard progressions, such as blues and II V's; to create richer lines by using approach notes, neighbor tones, and embellishments into an improvised melodic line.

CONTENIDO:

CD tracks
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction for students
Introduction for teachers
1. Your voice
2. Responding reflexively
3. Rhythmic accompanying
4. Melodic play: pacing and polyrhythm
5. Diatonics: exploring the major scale
6. Creative modal play: playing diatonically
7. Hocketing: sharing the rhythm role
8. Chords, guide tones, and V I's
9. Modal explorations: melodic and harmonic minor
10. Pentatonics
11. Transcriptions
12. Blues
13. Transposing
14. Approach notes, neighbor tones, and embellishments
15. II V I
16. Rootless melodic formulas
17. Diminished chords and scales
Afterword
About the authors