Dave Hamar on improvisation
We begin our lives without preconceived notions, and limited instincts. Our parents (hopefully) guide us through life from our infant stages to toddlers, children to teenagers. Once we’ve gained some amount of life skills, we move on as adults into a beautiful world of chaos. Hopefully, we learn tools to navigate this world and go on to lead healthy and successful lives. The crazy part about this whole process is that it’s largely unplanned, uncharted, and uncertain. How the hell have humans been surviving through this uncertainty for 7500 generations?!!
The number of answers to this question may be infinite, but one could argue that the key to our survival as a species has been the ability to improvise. We are constantly improvising, often subconsciously. It’s the human way: unrehearsed, thinking on our toes. Improvisation is an integral part of our very existence.
We encounter unexpected occurrences every day. A car cuts you off in traffic. It rains and you have no umbrella. You lose a loved one and must find a way to cope with that loss. From moment to moment, countless times per day, we face the unknown, make a few calculations, and try our best to get to the next moment. Sometimes it works out well, and we veer to the left to avoid a major accident. Sometimes it’s a complete disaster, and we get soaked to our underwear just before working an 8 hour shift with no change of clothes.
So, if we are constantly improvising simply to exist, why is it that the concept of improvisation in music can be so terrifying for so many of us? Music has the potential to be an experience of freedom on a level we still don’t understand, yet when asked to just “make something up,” we freeze! This is where we can apply a seemingly contradictory concept:
practicing improvisation (and I don’t necessarily mean just shedding scales and arpeggios to a metronome)
There are innumerable factors that can lead us to making musical decisions on the fly while performing. Maybe you’re about to start a piece you’ve played a hundred times before, and as you begin to play, you break a string on the ninth measure. Maybe this is during a wedding ceremony as the bride makes her way to her soulmate. You can’t just stop playing! It’ll ruin their special day forever! (Or at least that how it seems.)
So, what do you do?
Making immediate decisions and acting upon them in these types of situations represents the most practical form of improvisation I can think of. Sure, blowing over bebop changes at blistering speed is impressive and a worthy endeavor, but we encounter other types of improvisation that aren’t so technical. How do you respond to, for example, a broken string?! Well, there are ways. Maybe you play the melody in a different register, or in a different key that doesn’t utilize that string. Maybe you begin to sing the melody while you dig around in your gig bag for a spare string? I’m sure we can find many solutions here. Through this scenario (real or imagined), we can find ways to prepare, such as:
1. practice in different registers
2. practice playing in all twelve keys
3. practice singing!!
4. practice omitting strings or finding alternate voicings
5. quit music forever*
This may sound like a lot of extra work, but in the end, you will have developed a greater understanding of your instrument, begun to embrace the unknown, and found a closer relationship with music itself.
*PLEASE DO NOT QUIT MUSIC FOREVER. THERE’S A BEAUTIFUL MELODY INSIDE YOU THAT THE WORLD NEEDS. THANK YOU!!!
