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Blues, jazz, bluegrass and Indian classical music are well-known for using improvisation. Almost all of the improvisation heard in rock and roll, blues, jam, and metal bands is in the form of lead guitar or other soloing. These musical improvisations are very song-oriented, usually working within the demands of the background rhythm and harmony. Blues and traditional rock improvisation leans heavily on the use of the blues scale (a variation of the minor pentatonic scale), which sounds good in either major or minor keys and simple enough for beginning guitarists to execute. Many rock and jam bands use these, although forms of music are very open to individual interpretation, so the possibilities for improvisation are almost limitless.
Jazz improvisationImprovisation is one of the basic tenets of jazz. Typically in a jazz piece, the "head" (the song's melody along with any backing harmony) is played once by the musicians and sometimes repeated. Improvisation by any of the musicians follows, and this is typically the longest section of a song as each musician improvises their own melody over the harmonic and rhythmic foundation of the head. When the end of the head is reached it is repeated and a solo's length is specified by the number of repetitions of the head necessary. After one musician has finished improvising, another will begin, and no instrument is forbidden from improvising. A repetition of the head will usually end a jazz piece. There are many variations to this pattern; new sections can be added before and after the head, two musicians can alternatively improvise for short amounts of time (known as "trading"), or several musicians can improvise in a group (collective improvisation is common in Dixieland jazz).
In the bebop era of jazz in the early 1950s there was a common theme of urgency and technical proficiency. Performers would often construct intricate melody lines at speeds of up to 300BPM. These improvisations varied considerably from the song's main melody. The modal era of jazz, mainly started by Miles Davis, moved the harmonic framework for a piece from the fast, dynamic chord progressions of bebop to more static, relaxed chords with longer durations. The prevailing tendency of modal performers was to improvise not over specific chords, but in a musical mode instead. Free jazz performers eschew the explicit harmonic framework for improvisation; the harmony in free jazz is less rigid and less traditional. Improvisation is absolutely essential for jazz musicians. Illinois Jacquet, for example, is best known a single solo on the tune Flying Home. Charlie Parker's improvisations were distinctive, helping to shape the bebop period. Many students of jazz transcribe his solos, and groups such as Supersax arrange his solos with their own harmonic backing. Often, an improvised melody can give rise to an entirely new jazz head. Vocal jazz improvisations is known as scat singing and made up from syllables that help articulate jazz phrasing. Western Classical MusicIt is appropriate to discuss Western Classical music last because it really represents the exception rather than the rule in music making. Improvisation is such a natural mode of music making that its absence should be regarded as unusual. It should also be recognised that it is only in relatively recent history that improvisation has essentially dropped out of Western Classical music completely. That trend appears to have taken root in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Original score notations for medieval organ music commonly include instructions for improvisation and embellishments. The scales that were used were selected according to the same improvisational principles now used in jazz. When the single voice plainsong started to develop into the 2-, 3-, or 4-part organum (during the period 1000-1300 A.D.), one or more of the parts were also commonly improvised, weaving free counter-lines around the written melody line. Throughout the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, improvisation was a highly valued skill. J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, and many other famous composers and musicians were known especially for their improvisational skills. Many classical scores contained sections for improvisation, such as the cadenza in concertos. The preludes to some keyboard suites by Bach and Handel, for example, consisted solely of a progression of chords. The performers used these as the basis for their improvisation. Improvised accompaniment over a figured bass was a common practice during the Baroque era, and to some extent the following periods. During the 19th Century, improvisation seems to have fallen out of fashion. Its disappearance from classical music has caused it to be labeled, by some standards, a lost art. Classical musicians are rarely taught to improvise even at a professional level. With the increasing importance of the written score and the rise of publishing, music that was once performed with improvisation such as baroque music and the cadenza section of concertos are now rarely performed with improvisation, . Understanding how improvisation was lost in classical music requires considerable research and understanding. Improvisation and Contemporary CompositionSince the 1950s, contemporary composers have placed fewer restrictions on the improvising performer, using techniques such as vague notation (for example, indicating only that a certain number of notes must sound within a defined period of time). Jazz ensembles formed around improvisation were founded, such as Lukas Foss' Improvisation Chamber Ensemble at the University of California, Los Angeles; Larry Austin's New Music Ensemble at the University of California, Davis; the ONCE Group at Ann Arbor; the Sonic Arts Group; and the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the latter three funding themselves through concerts, tours, and grants. Significant pieces include Foss's Time Cycles (1960) and Echoi (1963). (Von Gunden 1983, p.32) Other composers working with improvisation include Vangelis, Keith Jarret, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Karlheinz Essl,Christian Wolff, John Zorn (Game Pieces, including Cobra), and Karlheinz Stockhausen Improvisation in Mainstream MusicExamples of famous rockgroups who use improvisation as a composition:
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