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[Anonymous]

improvisation, is an area that i dip into several times a year.
I start it, do it for several weeks, abandon it, then several months later i show a renewed interest and try again. For me its just an endless cycle which doesn’t technically advance any further.

It’s like food, i fancy a curry and next thing i know i’m eating curry, but then several days later, i fancy barbecue spare ribs…
and go back to playing sheet music.

lots of people do various improvisation courses and there’s tons of them out there, and yet when they upload stuff, they never or hardly ever upload their attempts at improvising? to inspire others to keep at improvising.

I get the impression if you want to improvise you definitely want to be able to be free to express yourself on the sax in what ever way you feel fit, but then when you look at some improvisation courses online, they start by telling you “you have to do this”, and “you musn’t do that”, introducing a lot of rules. So the next thing you know, you get the negative feeling, ‘i mustn’t do this”, or “i mustn’t do that” when improvising, then the feeling of being free to improvise goes out the window, as you’re spending more time thinking about various rules of improvising.

The basic underlying feeling of improvisation, is to put on a backing track, and just play a few notes, and to genuinely feel to yourself, wow i like the sound of the note i just played against the chord in that measure – and go from there.

my two pence… as a failed improviser

[john]

I hear you Walley. It can be confusing, and so it really is to many people.
Just curious if you’ve done my “Beginners Improvisation Mini-Course”?
I approached it with those obstacles in mind because I’ve been hearing similar things from people for several years now.
anyway, if you’ve done those lessons let me know where you lost it, and if you haven’t been thru it please do it to see if it helps you.
It’s the Level 3 option on the homepage.

[Anonymous]

i had a one to one about improvisation, its such a grey area about the best way to teach it to students, even to the extent as to whether it should be tailor made to the students abilities.

In jazz the 2-5-1 is the most common chord progression, and the common practice is to use aeberolds volume 3 backing track – where you practice in all 12 major scales the II-V-I chord progression.

I’ve been practicing it several months now, and on average it can take a new student up to 2yrs working with that one backing track, just to be able to play all the arpeggios in those 12 major scales without a sheet.

I use the backing track and quite often get lost, as to the name of the chord i’m playing in, but now i’m beginning to notice, if i’m mentally lost as to the name of the chord i’m working in, my fingers are starting to automatically go to the correct keys for that chord.

In theory that’s not improvising, but by being able to move around in the various chord keys builds a strong feeling in mentally recognising the different chord sounds and what notes are associated with them.

I’m in the process of creating a I-IV-V chord progress backing track, in all 12 major keys, similar to the II-V-I used in jazz, to see if that helps.

i’m not a premium member yet, as i’m spending 4 times the same amount in lessons which are technically progressing further on. In terms of lessons, there is no limit as to how far you want to set the bar.

[john]

Walley, you missed my point…and my question.
Did you try my “Beginners Improvisation Mini-Course”?
it’s not part of the Premium Membership.

I gas nothing to do with what you talked about in your last comment, and it’s no wonder you’re confused and not progressing. spending time learning all 12 chords and scales with a backing track is great but that’s not what beginning improv is about.

[Anonymous]

Yeah i got confused, i assumed your mini-course page was asking me to signup to your premium website, seemed illogical at the time, to signup for something free when i was already signed into your site as a non-premium member. lol

[Anonymous]

you need to sort out your mini-course web page, it still doesn’t work

[Anonymous]

Has anyone else managed to access the mini-course. i tried again today, and it just keeps asking me to sign in to the website and then goes to a screen with no reference to the course. I’m chasing my tail.

Another thing i noticed, i bought the major improvisation course years ago, and i went on it yesterday just to have a look, and a download link to one of alto pages comes up with a 404 ie page missing.

Lesson 2 alto web page, the download alto sheet button at the bottom of the page says the sheet is missing. Might want to fix that.

i started the major improvisation course in 2015 and gave up, when it started wanting me to memorise licks to use while improvising, that i found too difficult way back then. It’s good to have examples of improvising when starting out to get an idea of what is going on when someone else is improvising.

[saxomonica]

It does seem to get hung up on Wishlist Member page and that’s it

Start of Tequila course, solo, on blog here:

Tequila Solo Tutorial

[john]

Ok guys thanks for the info…
I’ll look into these things and sort it all out.
The improv course is set up for unregistered members only so I’ll have to fix that so you guys that are already registered on the site can access it.

[john]

The Tequila solo tutorial is the introduction for the Beginning Improv Course. So that’s all you’re gonna get from that blog tutorial…

[Author]

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