How exactly is jazz ‘improvised?’

Question

I understand that often times jazz is improvised, but how, exactly? For instance, who leads? Is it always the same person/instrument leading?

In: 48

Answer 1

The secret to improvising is very often to structure it.

Here’s a very standard way of doing it in jazz:

* You’re playing a particular song in a particular key.
* You start off playing through the song, or maybe a verse or two. You may have a certain amount of adlibbing, but everyone will usually stick more or less to the song.
* Then you’ll have solos. You’ll agree the order of soloists in advance. You might agree how long each soloist will play, or maybe they’ll just signal when they’re done.
* Each soloist will play over the chord scheme of the song. So if you’re playing Summertime, the solos won’t play the melody, but everybody else will play the same chord structure, meaning the soloist has a particular backing.
* When the solos are done, you’ll play through (a verse of) the song again, then finish in an appropriately climactic manner.

Of course, the more experienced the musicians, the more they can improvise. Often, you’ll hear whoever is playing the melody improvising over the melody, not playing exactly the way the song is written. And the backing players will also improvise, adapting to each other and the melody/soloist. Maybe a solo will turn into what’s known as call and response, where one player will play a line, then someone (maybe the whole band) will respond with either the same line or one that resolves or responds to the first line.

When playing a solo, you’ll play tones that conform to the chord that’s played at the moment – though that can be more tones than you’d think. Very often, players will use something called “licks”, which is just little bits of melody that can be strung together into an improvised melody. You might also quote the main theme of the song, or you might quote other songs.

As you get better, you might abandon the main song altogether. Some groups do songs that are all impro. One variant of this is twelve-tone jazz, where the musicians aren’t restrained by conventional tonality.

In short: Most players don’t just rock up and start improvising. That takes a whole lot of skill. Instead, the group will agree what they’re doing, setting up a framework within which they can improvise.