Mission Improvisation: Signing Up for Creative Strings Workshop

May 16, 2017 at 11:32 AM · Kudos Laurie! Sounds fun to me! (no pun intended)

May 16, 2017 at 03:15 PM · Laurie, you probably know about Jamey Aebersold:

http://workshops.jazzbooks.com/

What would be really cool would be for someone like Howes or even v.com to team with Aebersold to do a special one for string players. Louisville is a great location for many of us. I see that Christian Howes's workshop is in Columbus, though, so that's even closer to where I live. Too bad that week doesn't work for me, I have to teach.

This sentence in your essay struck me: "...it was pretty clear to me that this is an extremely underdeveloped aspect of my playing: the ability to play by ear and improvise."

Well, you're not alone. And that's what Mark O'Connor has been preaching for 20 years. His mistake, of course, was to make Suzuki his adversary instead of his ally.

May 16, 2017 at 03:52 PM · That cool photo looks like a Prisma creation. Is it? I got Prisma a while ago and I love it. It really can turn ordinary phone pictures into works of art.

I think outside of standard classical training there is quite a bit of interest in and support for improvisation. Val Vigoda talked about that last year in the interview I did with her. She is teaching improvisation in schools with Mark Wood's "Electrify Your Strings" program.

Embracing Improvisation: A Conversation with Val Vigoda

May 16, 2017 at 04:22 PM · Prisma pictures are cool but I'm not so sure about "works of art."

May 16, 2017 at 04:42 PM · It depends on the picture. I don't think professional portrait artists and photographers have anything to fear from Prisma. But I've used it on some of my own photos and was quite surprised and pleased with the results.

May 16, 2017 at 06:22 PM · It's a nice tool for making graphics, along with Photoshop etc. Ever experimenting!

May 16, 2017 at 07:40 PM · If you can't get to Christian Howes' workshop, try looking up a local jam. I regularly go to bluegrass jams, but you should be able to find them for folk, Celtic, pop, jazz... pick your genre. Many of my fellow grassers, some of them quite accomplished, can't read a note of music - it's all improvisation and playing by ear. And late at night, when everyone is getting into the groove, magic happens. At our last session someone started playing Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally", and suddenly we were all rocking out.

So try it! As with anything else, the more you do it, the better you get. Pretty soon you're losing yourself in the music; somehow the mechanics of playing become automatic and you're pulling out smooth licks with a sweeter tone than you get when you try too hard. It's a tremendously liberating experience, and great for developing your musicality.

May 16, 2017 at 08:05 PM · I agree with Charlie about local jams. But like any kind of ensemble playing, they are the most effective and enjoyable if the participants are at approximately the same level with regard to skill and musicality. That's why my approach has always been to get to know a lot of musicians in my own area and then I can organize the jam myself -- by invitation.

May 17, 2017 at 12:46 AM · In my practice room at home I often warm up by improvising a folk tune - usually in an English or Irish genre, both of which I've been familiar with for many years. It's not difficult when you understand the formal structures of the tunes in those genres (they're mostly for dancing), their usually fairly straightforward harmonic content, and the ornamentation. Actually, I'd never improvise a tune in a traditional Irish or English folk session, because I'd probably get asked some unintentionally awkward question about the name of the tune and where I learnt/heard it, which I couldn't possibly comment on! Not to mention the embarrassment of being asked to play the tune a week later and not being able to remember it!

May 17, 2017 at 04:09 AM · I thought for a long time about what Henning Kraggerud said about improvising -- he is quite the classical player, but he says that he always spends the first 20 minutes of his daily practice improvising:

"Up to this day, I start every day by improvising for about 20 minutes," he said. "One of the reasons I do this is I want the path from thought to output to be instant. I'm personally against this thought of controlling everything, looking at the bow and looking at the fingers; I think the brain works best if you can sort of set it free. And if I need to work on some basic technical thing, I still do that as an improvisation. It's much more fun!"

The local jam sounds fun, but yes, the key is to find compatible people to do it with!

May 17, 2017 at 07:15 AM · Being 62 I learned to improvise from age 17 and yes with electric fiddles too: handmade solid body and Barcus Berry violectra.

Its a shame classic violonists dont learn to improvise, to me its like instant composing, it gives much satisfaction

May 17, 2017 at 11:15 PM · Charlie Gibbs said it so well. He has described my own experience very well, I jam whenever I can, almost any genre. He describes the feeling of letting go as liberating. I'd say that you are playing as something greater than yourself, as the group. It is really thrilling. Jamming is the biggest high there is, I hope you feel thrilled by jamming, too, Laurie,

May 17, 2017 at 11:24 PM · Laurie, jammers are traditionally very welcoming. A jam session often starts as a slow jam, playing relatively uncomplicated tunes that most people know. There are also slow jams that last for the entire session and jams that are described as being for all accomplishment levels. Get out and try some and see where you have the most fun.

May 18, 2017 at 09:07 AM · Hi all, I used to jam a lot, there I learned to improvise, after many years of classical training. I professionally played pop rock, salsa blues etc. But always kept playing classical music, above all Bach and barok music. Living in Amsterdam, many places where one can jam. I love it, especially cause electric violins are not so common on stage, the audience expects awful sounds and are amazed when there is this lovely, raw sensitive fiddle.

Enjoy!

May 18, 2017 at 04:13 PM · Thanks everyone! This is sure to be an adventure!

May 19, 2017 at 07:02 PM · Pauline wrote, "Laurie, jammers are traditionally very welcoming." That depends. There are jams where you'll be scolded if you try to set up a stand for a fake book.

I learned to improvise very early in life (ca. 12 yo) on the piano and I became, over time, a decent jazz pianist. I am a founding member of "Highlands Jazz" and we have been playing gigs regularly in various groupings, from duos to our full quintet (sax-piano-guitar-bass-drums) throughout the area for ten years.

I thought that I would be able to transfer those skills to the violin but found it much more difficult. The violin is much more demanding because of one thing: Intonation. When you are learning a classical piece, you can go over it and take care of the intonation phrase by phrase, section by section, before you perform it. When you are improvising, you're coming up with each phrase, on the fly and at full tempo, so unless you have a very reliable command of the fingerboard, what is in your mind's ear may actually come out as notes, but they will not be in tune.

Part of the problem is that jazz tunes are in a lot of different keys. Even tunes that start out in G major will wander into other keys because, frankly, jazz standards embody a lot more harmonic movement than the average johnny-three-chord folk-fiddle tune, and the chords are not all major and minor triads. You can't get away with blowing the whole tune over a single scale.

I semi-solved that by joining with two other Highlands members (the guitarist and the percussionist, both pros) to form a violin jazz trio. What makes it work is that the tunes are all Brazilian tunes (bossas, modinhos, etc.) These are generally a little more harmonically static than most swing standards, and they're often in friendlier keys. Also playing straight eighths is a lot easier than swinging them. So far, so good. Maybe someday when I do not have so many irons in the fire I will be able to make more of a college try at jazz standards.

May 19, 2017 at 07:57 PM · Wonderful article, Laurie, and I wish you the best with your latest challenge! The day after I read your post I received my alumni magazine from the University of Northern Colorado in which it was announced that it will introduce a new Bluegrass & Folk Program in the fall... an expansion "beyond the three traditional disciplines of band, orchestra or choir." The fiddle player in the new five-person faculty (Natalie Padilla) is quoted as saying "Technique is a serious piece of any lesson, and getting a good sound from a fiddle or a violin -- and there is no real difference between the two -- is more than half the battle." Evidently, Padilla will balance her classical and bluegrass students. I must admit, my first reaction was not 100% positive to the news, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea, in large measure after reading your article! Diana Skinner