I yanked the paper out the of the typewriter violently, with a delicious sound of judgement. My hands met with a clap, the sheet crumpled, and then was tossed across the room in disdain, self-edited. The space for this action lets me write the occasional decent thing. Let’s get into it…
This one goes out to “Katrina.” I just posted an Instagram video of some guitar doodling, and she mentioned that she’d love to be able to improvise someday.
That is a fascinating topic. (And thanks, Katrina!) When I first started playing, I remember exactly where I was when this hit me. It was a road in late winter, and my dad was driving the cruddy by charming old ‘82 Honda Civic hatchback. (That was an art in improvisation, come to think of it. We never knew exactly what it was gonna do.) We had a tape of Stevie Ray Vaughan playing, and I marveled “How do they know what to play?” He said they had some framework upon which to work, and went from there.
Fast forward a few years, and I would sit for hours in my little teaching room, answering the same question from guitar students. First it started out “well, you take this scale, and then you mix it up a bit.” Then a series of steps were developed to take the student from a robotic recitation of a formula to genuine creative expression. (Mix up the notes, vary how long you play them, repeat some, add some “sauce”, etc.)
Interestingly, the main impediment to success wasn’t lack of technical ability. Rather, it was the terror of “messing up.” This seemed to affect my female students more, although that was a casual observation. Universally, it was anyone with a higher standard that they held themselves to. (Smelly teenagers seemed to pick it up the quickest, because they just didn’t care.)
Most recently, I’ve become intrigued with how it’s impossible to “know” what to play when improvising, because that’s the whole point. One can’t plan spontaneity and authentic expression. Unlike a historical fact that can be recalled (WWII ended in 1945, boom), the articulation of your innermost feelings of the moment through sonic expression has never existed before.
So, there’s a bit of Jungian psychology that could be applied here - artists rummaging around in the dream state and hastening the realization of an idea or a feeling. (This would be a song “speaking” to you.) And then there’s the bravery that comes with the rummaging. It likely won’t be in order, neat, pretty, or even sound good at first.
That’s why the crumpled paper at the beginning of this post is so important to me. If I can be terrible without penalty, that gives me the space to find the greatness.
That being said, I’m not advocating for being bad at one’s craft. The better a vocabulary one has, the more dexterity, understanding, etc….the greater likelihood an accurate translation of your thoughts will occur. However, it doesn’t have to be all sophisticated. If I drop a hammer on my toe, I tend to yell nonsensical sounds (or worse), instead of saying “golly gee, the pain in my lower extremities is quite bothersome at the present moment!” As a musician, I’d like to be able to both manage the primal scream, and a subtle conversation.
To sum up: 1. I start with learnable technical ability and a rudimentary vocabulary. 2. I use that to rummage around in half-formed thoughts and feelings, knowing that the finished result doesn’t already exist, but must be created, and 3. by giving myself room to be both terrible and great, I can inhabit both of those spaces. (And with practice, I can keep the terrible offstage, or at least know how far from home I’m getting, and rein it in.) (Hopefully.) Ah, the excitement of live music!