This is the footage of our two ensemble performances that we had produced to showcase our own use of improvisational skills in a live performance setting. Personally I was playing the guitar for these performances as it is my most confident instrument.
While planning this gig, we opted for a set list of mainly Blues, Funk, and Jazz songs as they lend themselves perfectly towards improvised parts for each instrument.
Our set list in order was as follows:
- West Coast Blues
- Autumn leaves
- My Funny Valentine
- Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
- Sookie Sookie
- Pick Up The Pieces
Now the reason for having two performances as opposed to just one was simply due to our original performance being of extremely poor quality. It had a real lack of professionalism and left the majority of the band unhappy with the outcome. There were several reasons as to what contributed towards making this performance so poor, but the main issues were practice, and attendance. At almost every practice session we had as a group there would be people absent, and people who simply hadn’t put the effort into learning the pieces. This big lack of preparation is very apparent during the first half of our set, in which the drummer is counting the wrong time signature for ‘West Coast Blues,’ followed by most of the group not having the structures for ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘My Funny Valentine’ memorised well enough.
After the first half of the set in this first performance we started to pull it back to sounding better as the following three songs went on, however the damage was already done, with members of the audience even being disappointed in the set we had played.
Our second performance however, went much more smoothly than the first. Unfortunately we had much less of an audience for this performance due to it being a re-do.
For the second performance we had a few more practice sessions as we all agreed that they were needed, however attendance was again an issue as can bee seen from the performance video where our other drummer, bassist, and guitarist were missing. Despite this drawback though, we ended up with a much tighter and professional sounding performance, and this included very fitting and fluently played improvisation sections from each of us. Overall a much better performance, and this should’ve been the standard of the first performance.
While preparing for this module we all would have to look into what improvisational techniques are used in music, and what we can use for ourselves when we have to do it live. The first part of this module required us to look into a key improvisational figure in music, to which I researched into a guitarist called Joe Pass – arguably one of the most influential jazz guitarists of all time. This gave me a good insight into various techniques I can use on the guitar during solo sections and melody lines.
Here is a link to one of his performances that I actually watched several times, showing him performing the song ‘Summertime’ in his very distinct style:
At my stage in my career as a guitarist, I am very clearly not on this level of virtuosity of course, however I learned a lot from watching the way he moves around the chords on the fret-board, and really started to get a feel as to what does and doesn’t sound good when improvising around a chord sequence.
In addition to watching performances like this one, I also actually spoke to other local jazz musicians in the area just asking for advice, and something that really helped me the most was the tip to simply not over-complicate songs. This really helped me out when attempting to solo over the tune ‘My Funny Valentine’ as it has a very unusual chord progression. I was originally switching between the scales C Natural Minor, C Harmonic Minor, various C minor and Eb Major arpeggios, and Eb Ionian. This was a whole lot of information to put into my playing and I really struggled to make it sound good. Coming back to simplicity though, I was told to try just using a standard C minor pentatonic scale over the piece, and this worked brilliantly well to my surprise.
I took a bit of a step back with most of my solos after thinking about the whole idea of keeping it simple and effective, and began basing my playing around a pentatonic scale where possible, and dipping into scales like Mixolydian here and there when appropriate to. My playing suddenly felt and sounded vastly improved as to what I was attempting before. another thing that improved as well was my presence when playing. I think this was because I was no longer having to concentrate as intensely as to what to play where, and was able to enjoy playing the songs more.
Overall I feel this made me a better performer and musician than I was before I began this module, however there are always thing for me to continue improving on, and here is a few skills I think I still need to work on developing the most:
- Confidence in my own ability as a musician – When listening back to some of the solos that I had played, I think some of them had ideas that sounded really good, but I need to project them more and play them with confidence.
- Following the flow of the band – I need to really listen to what the band behind me is doing and play off of them, for example if the band are getting louder then I need to as well, or vice versa.
- Learning various chord shapes – I need to sit down and learn more ways to play chords in different tonalities and shapes around the fret-board as improvisation doesn’t just mean a solo but can be done harmonically as well.
So this is what I will be working on into the future while continuing my development as a guitarist and improving the quality of my own live performances.
References:
Warnock, M. (2020). Learn the Fretboard Like Joe Pass. [online] guitarworld.com. Available at: https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/jazz-guitar-corner-learn-fretboard-joe-pass [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020].
Vaartstra, B. (2018). 9 Important Jazz Chord Progressions You Need to Master [UPDATED] – Learn Jazz Standards. [online] Learn Jazz Standards. Available at: https://www.learnjazzstandards.com/blog/learning-jazz/jazz-theory/3-important-jazz-chord-progressions-need-master/ [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020].
Randall, M. (2018). No More Boring Solos! Master the Minor Pentatonic Scale. [online] GuitarPlayer.com. Available at: https://www.guitarplayer.com/technique/no-more-boring-solos-master-the-minor-pentatonic-scale-tab [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020].