Typically, a musician will go through 4 stages of ‘playing’ and 3 levels of ‘thinking’ as his or her improvisation abilities improve. These are discussed below.
The 4 Stages of Improvisation
Stage 1. Tinkering
The first stage I’ve called ‘Tinkering’. Let’s say I have a student who has never improvised before, and I tell them – “This song is in the key of B♭ Major, so you can use the B♭ Major scale to improvise over it. Go.” Now, they know the B♭ Major scale, but they are scared to improvise because they just don’t know what to play. So they are just playing random notes from the B♭ Major scale, quite softly and carefully and hesitantly. They’re not really thinking about what notes to target, or phrasing, or articulation, or creating motifs, or anything like that. There’s no intentionality in their playing. They are too scared to commit themselves to an assertive phrase, so they just kind of tinker.
Stage 2. The Coltrane
After a few weeks of tinkering, they get used to the sounds of the B♭ Major scale and develop a bit more confidence and they move into the next stage. They can now confidently, but they are possibly too confident. They think “I can use the B♭ Major scale over this chord progression, great. I know the B♭ Major scale. Let’s see how many notes I can fit into each bar.” I call this stage ‘The Coltrane’. If you don’t know why I call it that, go have a listen to some Coltrane. So they play more confidently, loudly, and forcefully. Which is great. They are no longer scared of improvisation or the B♭ Major scale. That’s a big step. But they are still not playing intentionally. The notes and the rhythms they use are still somewhat random. And there’s still no phrasing or articulation. They’re trying to be a bit too fast, a bit too ambitious, a bit too clever – but don’t have the ability to pull it off yet. Their fingers are running ahead of their ability to process the notes. They can’t yet think as fast as they’re trying to play.
Stage 3. The Basie
The natural solution to this is to slow it down. This is where improvisation gets interesting. The student is now comfortable with the B♭ Major scale, and can play lines up and down. But up to this point, their fingers have been doing all the work. They’ve just been playing random notes in the scale. But from this point onwards, it’s their brain that’s going to do all the heavy lifting. And their fingers just externalise the thing they’re thinking or hearing inside their head. You have to play only as fast as you can think. And so naturally, you are restricted to playing short, simple phrases allowing plenty of time to pause and think between phrases. You have to leave room for thinking. I call this stage ‘The Basie’.
So, because you’re now playing slower and simpler phrases, your brain can keep up with what you’re doing. This means you can now play intentionally. You can hear a little phrase in your head, and externalise it on the piano – such that you’re almost singing through the instrument. In fact, many of the great Jazz pianists do exactly that. If you listen carefully to Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, or Keith Jarrett, you actually hear them murmuring and humming and singing the lines they are playing on piano. This means they are thinking as fast as they are playing – they’re not just playing random notes. This means you can now create nice, smooth, melodic, lyrical, and pleasant lines in your improvisation. You’re not just rushing through the scale, you’re creating interesting phrases but still only using the B♭ Major scale.
Stage 4. Moving Outside
Up to this stage, we’ve been using only the diatonic B♭ Major scale. This is called playing ‘inside’. We are using the correct scale to improvise over a chord progression in the key of B♭. So finally, now that we are comfortable with playing diatonic lines and making them sound smooth and melodic, we can start introducing more interesting improvisation techniques such as – guide tone targeting, creating tension and resolution, motivic development, chromatic runs, cycled patterns, side-slipping, and so on. Just like a newborn kitten, you want it to get used to playing inside, before you go and play outside. Then, over time, you will learn to think faster and thus play faster. And you can also dedicate more of you mental energy to phrasing and articulation so that you can create interesting accented and syncopated rhythms as you play. You’ll also be able to start combining slower melodic lines with some faster scalar runs to create variety in your playing.
What to Think While Improvising
Naturally, as you progress through these four stages of playing, the thought process underlying your playing will change. While what you’re ‘playing’ and what you’re ‘thinking’ are very much related, they are nevertheless distinct. As a generalisation, your thought process progresses through three levels – starting very mechanical and gradually becoming more abstract and high-level.
Level 1. Operations
At this level your thinking is very mechanical. You’re focusing on just hitting the right notes/playing the right chords & scales. While improvising, you’re having thoughts like:
- What chord am I on?
- What scale should I use?
- What part of the song am I on?
- What notes can I use?
A good analogy is that this is like writing unrelated words on a piece of paper: cat, piano, marriage, blue. These are all words, but they have no relation to each other and make no sense together.
Level 2. Tactical
Here you’re comfortable playing the basic scale & chords. These are now in your muscle memory so they happen almost on autopilot. So now you have more mental capacity free to start adding ‘colour’ or different improvisational techniques like – licks, chromatic runs, side-slipping, targeting notes, using repetition, etc. You’re having thoughts like:
- I’ll add in a chromatic run here
- I’ll reference the melody
- I’ll end this phrase on a 9th
- I’ll repeat this phrase
Here you are beginning to write coherent sentences: the boy met the girl at the park.
Level 3. Strategic
Finally, at this stage a musician is able to think much more abstractly about improvisation. They can look at the solo holistically, in terms of tension & resolution, and create a narrative over the course of the solo. You’re having thoughts like:
- I’ll add a climax towards the end of the song
- I’ll add tension here and resolve it at the end of the section
- I’ll create contrast by playing loudly and with a dense texture, then softly with a sparse one
Here you are writing an entire plot, with a beginning, middle and end and with a protagonist that must overcome an obstacle to achieve a goal.
The 4 Stages of Improvisation
What to Think While Improvising
