How to improvise on Mandolin?

[mandroid]

Me? .. just playing along with the Voices in my head..

[Laird]

??????

[LIST][*]1) Learn the melody
[*]2) Interim stage(s) between improvisation of a "new melody/idea" based on the chords, and playing the melody: Learn to "embellish" the melody

• a) Add connecting pitches between melody notes (adjectives, adverbs),
• b) insert extra notes around melody notes which don't really change the melody,
• c) play with the timing of the melodic phrases;
• d) add "prefix runs" and/or "suffix runs"
• e)...etc. (combining "embellishment" techniques)

[*]3) Improvisation

I love this! Going to print it out and post it on my wall. (I should add that your examples of embellishment were especially useful.)

[cjspiteri]

In addition to all the wonderful advise given check out Stukulele on youtube, I know I may be saying the U word, but Stu has some great videos with regards to improv. I also find learning songs on more than one instrument in the same key helps my improv. Good luck.

[Patrick Sylvest]

The best way to improve your improv is to copy licks from players you like. You needn't mimic entire solos, just pick little phrases and work them into what you already know. Eventually, you'll be surprised at the library of licks and skills you've amassed!

[ckmando]

I am experiencing this now.It's slow but really does work.

[Ronnie.]

Well Im hardly in a position [ 7 years playing ] to give advice to the members here but what I do is live eat sleep Mandolin, I like to try and play words, sometimes reading an article in a magazine and play the words, keep your mandolin handy not cased.
Good luck

[T.D.Nydn]

The best way to improve your improv is to copy licks from players you like. You needn't mimic entire solos, just pick little phrases and work them into what you already know. Eventually, you'll be surprised at the library of licks and skills you've amassed!

To me,,playing someone else's lick's isn't improvising,your just copying, learn to make up your own on the spot...

[Timbofood]

To me,,playing someone else's lick's isn't improvising,your just copying, learn to make up your own on the spot...

But, notes are notes, the manner of their connection and relationships is where improvisation begins. You have to grasp that relationship before you can really go out into the improvisational world. Once you understand and appreciate someone else’s licks you can change things around and make it your own. You have to start somewhere.
Some of us mere mortals need a little direction, you have surpassed me in that, I’m happy that the notes simply issue forth from your talent.

[T.D.Nydn]

Perhaps your right,Timbo,,it's been a long time,but I used to learn licks and phrases when I was young,,thank you for your kind words,questionable,but kind....

[pops1]

Playing along with any recording is good practice. When you know your scales start by finding out where in the scale you need to be for the 1 chord, 4 chord and 5 chord. You will find that you will need to be using different notes for each and knowing the notes available for each chord change makes improvising much easier.

[Timbofood]

TD, I’m a sarcastic schmuck sometimes, this one cup of coffee morning for instance. I need more before the tolerant me is awake.

[JonZ]

Like a few others above, I would recommend The Mandolin Pickers Guide to Bluegrass Improvisation. It answers the exact question you are asking. Scales and arpeggios are the tools that improvisers use, even if they learned completely by ear and don’t know they are using them. When you understand how certain scale tones are used in music that you like, you can generalize that knowledge across all keys and positions.

To use these note collections skillfully, you need to spend a lot of time using them to make compelling phrases. At first, don’t worry about learning a lot of different patterns for each note collection. Use them to make music. When you are getting started, it is a matter of slowly crafting one short lick that you like through trial and error. You do it slowly at first, and eventually you can do it on the fly.

To use your note collections tastefully, you need to absorb good music. For some people this means learning to play other people’s music. For others it just means a lot of listening. Does the improvisation that you like stick close to the melody or diverge from it? Be analytical while you listen.

I never use the CDs that come with books. The iRealb app is better, because you can change speed and key, and loop sections. The ability to adjust these elements will help reduce frustration and help you to focus your practice.

[bigskygirl]

For me improvising is really doing anything that is not the stated melody whether that is copying someone’s licks, making up your own, or just going all out crazy and playing anything, the thing is you have to practice to make it tasteful and you have to start somewhere. I actually find it extremely easy to just play anything...the hard part is to make it sound tasteful and/or close to the melody.

You can geek out as I have and learn scales, chord tones, arpeggios and you can learn lots of fiddle tunes and that will put loads of licks under your fingers. Then you have to apply what you’ve learned..at first I improvised just because the tune was too fast or I lost my concentration and had to survive until I could get back on. Lately it’s become a more purposeful improvisation using licks and chord tones and such to try and make something sound melodic.

It’s hard work but pretty fun actually, you don’t have to rewrite the entire tune just pick out a measure or two and go for it, as you get better it will get easier, good luck!

[T.D.Nydn]

The cool thing is when you play something awesome,but have no idea how you did it,and never to repeat again...

[DavidKOS]

The most realistic answer is to spend as much time as you can listening to, transcribing, and learning by heart the solos of people that you would like to sound like.

yes this is old....but it is true....read on.....

Listen a lot.
Pick a tune or two that you really like, and improvise it in your head or perhaps by whistling. You can do this while you're out walking, driving, etc. I often find that really nice ideas occur to me when I'm far away from any instrument.

You get ideas by all the listening OldSausage was referring to. Eventually you get a vocabulary and can express your own ideas.

Scales and arpeggios are the tools that improvisers use, even if they learned completely by ear and don’t know they are using them.

This is cross-genre. Most listenable forms of music are made up of the basic building blocks of scales, the chords those scales generate, and the arpeggios of said chords. Add the "spice" of neighbor tones, slurs, slides, pitch bends, vibratos, all sorts of trills, turns, rolls, cuts and other ornaments and you can play anything you want.

But like any language, you need a vocabulary so you can actually speak - or in this case, play mandolin.

[DavidKOS]

To me,,playing someone else's lick's isn't improvising,your just copying, learn to make up your own on the spot...

True - but it is a part of learning the vocabulary of the musical style you want to play, so it's a good learning tool.

However, you are correct in that it is just a tool in learning how to actually improvise.

For that matter, stringing together various combinations of your own pre-worked out licks is not exactly improvising either. It may be a good tool for a working live band, though.

[JonZ]

I listened in on a group of jazz pros discussing "lick based" improvisers and "pure" improvisers. Apparently, that is a thing. There are well-respected jazz musicians who have a huge vocabulary of licks and combine them in a huge variety of ways, and there are others that just seem to have unique melodies pour out.

[JonZ]

The most realistic answer is to spend as much time as you can listening to, transcribing, and learning by heart the solos of people that you would like to sound like. Start with mandolinists but don't limit yourself to studying mandolin solos. It's very demanding work, and it will take you some time to develop any facility with improvising if you don't have any previous experience, but that's what it takes. You will need to transcribe and learn at least several dozen solos to develop the skills you will need. It's hard work, time consuming, but absorbing and rewarding. Working on scales and arpeggios will give you the basics and is certainly worth the effort to do, but won't get you anywhere with developing an improvisational style of your own.

My view of this is that nothing that you memorize will make you an improviser until you start to improvise with it. Consider all of the classical musicians who have internalized a ton of music, but cannot improvise. Spend as much time as you can improvising with whatever tools you choose.

[Mark Gunter]

My view of this is that nothing that you memorize will make you an improviser until you start to improvise with it. Consider all of the classical musicians who have internalized a ton of music, but cannot improvise. Spend as much time as you can improvising with whatever tools you choose.

I think you're right so far as your statement goes, "nothing that you memorize will make you an improviser until you start to improvise with it", but ... I also think that your classical musician example strays from much of the core of what OldSausage and DavidKOS were referring to. My view is that listening to and transcribing the work of musicians you wish to emulate requires different processes and skill sets than simply reading music others have written and internalizing it. And I think the difference is compounded if one is tutored heavily in the idea that they must internalize and interpret what is written, but is discouraged from straying from the written page.

Composing music yourself - or listening well and transcribing music yourself - is probably much better suited to helping one along toward the ability to compose on the fly, or improvise.

I may be way off base here, but I've heard a number of folk whom I consider to be good improvisors expounding the virtues of listening and making your own transcriptions. Your point, being that you must actually begin to improvise with the knowledge gained, is well taken.

BTW, these are my uninformed thoughts, I don't claim to have any skill in improvisation as yet.

[JonZ]

I am just very wary of advice on how to improvise that does not make practicing improvising the top priority. Improvising is hard, foreign and daunting to most people, so it is natural to seek intermediary steps. But you can actually avoid improvising while doing those intermediary steps.

You become good at a thing fastest by practicing that thing.

I think it is more useful to address how you can make practicing improvising easier at first: slow down; work on short passages; use a smaller group of notes; use a visual reference, etc. Or, take a lick and add a note, change the rhythm, play it backwards, play the same intervals starting from a different tone, whatever.

I don't discount practicing scales or copying licks, learning melodies, etc. You definitely have to internalize the music. But when you talk about what is essential, it's starting that creative process. In the past, learning by ear was a necessity, so everybody did it. But they all had to start creating at some point, too, if they wanted to be improvisers.

My kids were in a jazz program that emphasized small combo improvisation. The only music they memorized were the heads. They discussed theory and how to use certain notes in certain situations. After that, they were expected to make it up. As you would expect, the students became good improvisers really fast, but were weaker at things like sight reading, learning by ear, etc. You get good at what you practice.

[T.D.Nydn]

" imagination is more important than knowledge"...Albert Einstein ..

[jshane]

The cool thing is when you play something awesome,but have no idea how you did it,and never to repeat again...

Yes.

And for me, this happens when my head, that is creating music in my brain, is hard wired to my hands that are producing those sounds, real-time, with absolutely no intellectual processes involved. No thoughts of scales, triads, arpeggios, modes--- no thought, period.

To me, this is improvisation.

I'll hasten to say it has taken me a LONG time of trying to play what I hear in my head to actually get to experience this, and it happens far too infrequently.... but it is what I am shooting for.

[Timbofood]

The cool thing is when you play something awesome,but have no idea how you did it,and never to repeat again...

That’s kind of my whole take on improvisation.
It’s one of the beauties of music! I used to date a fabulous artist, one afternoon she was listening to me play and said :
“My art is there after I’m done doing something, what you do is only there for that instant!”
I really loved her.

[DavidKOS]

My view is that listening to and transcribing the work of musicians you wish to emulate requires different processes and skill sets than simply reading music others have written and internalizing it. And I think the difference is compounded if one is tutored heavily in the idea that they must internalize and interpret what is written, but is discouraged from straying from the written page.

Composing music yourself - or listening well and transcribing music yourself - is probably much better suited to helping one along toward the ability to compose on the fly, or improvise.

I may be way off base here, but I've heard a number of folk whom I consider to be good improvisors expounding the virtues of listening and making your own transcriptions. Your point, being that you must actually begin to improvise with the knowledge gained, is well taken.
.

I am just very wary of advice on how to improvise that does not make practicing improvising the top priority. .

" imagination is more important than knowledge"...Albert Einstein ..

You need the vocabulary and skills to express yourself - but you have to have something to express. This is where the imagination comes in.

For all that I have been saying about learning scales, chords, theory, fingerings, etc. those are just tools.

You have to just begin improvising to get on the path.

You also have to give yourself permission to NOT sound great while you are learning to improvise. If you are a person that hates hearing a "clam" then get over it, because to learn to improvise you will hit some bad notes along the way.

But that is how you'll learn how to improvise, whereas all the study - even of transcribing and such - does nothing until you get busy and start playing what's not written or composed, but made up spontaneously.

Of course in all musical cultures that have improvisation improvise on certain models and forms, so that very few genres are making things up out of nothing. It could be the head and changes to a jazz tune, a Gypsy violinist, someone playing a taksim in Arab or Turkish music, playing a Persian dastgah, Indian raag, or a Chinese guqin master.

All of those forms vary considerably in what they call "improvisation" - but it is all on some sort of framework or model and not in a vacuum.

[T.D.Nydn]

That’s kind of my whole take on improvisation.

“My art is there after I’m done doing something, what you do is only there for that instant!”
.

this concept is one of the things that amazes me about music....