When talk show bands play an impromptu song, how do instantly play in the same key?
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Thrre is also some stuff people do not know about.
There is 2 audio mixer or more. One for the band*, one for the audience. The one for tbe band is always on. They can strike a chord while the audience mixer is still muted. So it basically go: can you make a (here we go.. chord is played) song? (Audience mixer on) (they play).
Note: often each musician/singers have their own different mixer because they do not want or need to hear everything, or have different preferences. The drummer will have a click track. Basically a metronome. The singer don’t care about clicks. He might want the instruments but mostly the guitar.
ELI5: These guys are very, very good.
Late night talk show gigs are very good gigs. These people are generally session musicians, and this is guaranteed work five nights a week almost every week for what can be decades. And you still have enough time left over to pick up other session work, good stuff since you’re probably in LA or New York.
Which is to say, people very much want these gigs, and so they don’t hand them out to just anyone. They go out to get the best of the best. Typically these guys have a strong background in jazz improvisation, and being able to pick up on key changes and transpose on the fly is something these guys get real good at.
If you actually don’t communicate the key it’s typically up to the bass player. Drummer picks the tempo, bass picks the key, and guitar picks the melody in a typical 3 piece.
It’s up to the skill of the others to keep up. That’s what makes a good jam band. A lot of people are talking about monitors and stuff but thats only for actual bands who are set up. Most people just feel it out when they jam. You don’t need anything but your instruments
Anybody who says they aren’t impromptu or are always planned, have never played in a band. My favorite way to play music is just to start going. Usually when I’ve played with people the drummer will just start going and one by one we all join in. You just add something complementary. After a while you can almost read their mind because you start to understand how they think about and play their instrument
I did a gig like this. It was a private party for a corporate awards ceremony so they had us play a regular half hour set, then wanted “introduction music,” when each person was called on stage. Winging it, we decided, band leader would just call out a song and which section to start with, drummer would count in and we would go. End with some obvious body movement, all good. Basically he would turn around and say, “Take It Easy from the verse…” Honestly it was super fun although it felt really unnecessary.
I’ll add that nothing on a television show is impromptu. If you see it on TV, it’s 99.9994% likely to have been scripted.
Music is a language. It is a sort of conversation that can be tightly scripted (classical) all the way to free-flowing and seemingly random (hardcore experimental jazz, or fusion music), but it *always* follows ‘grammatical’ rules (rhythm and pitch).
These rules can be bent and also broken, as it goes in spoken language, but have you ever heard a non-native speaker trying to sound like a native? Some are good at it, and some are not, and it’s important to know the difference.
Even starting as an older person, music can be trained, but it’s hard. Any person *who has had limited experience with music* will be slower to process changes and anticipate the direction of the musical conversation, but it’s easier when you’re younger and very much harder when you’re older.
Ear training is a huge part of it, like language, learning to hear and anticipate certain shifts in the conversation.
Long story short: these guys have been playing music for a long time. Add to that, they’ve been playing *together* for a long time. They have high level of ear training.
They know how to start the musical ‘conversation’ and how to depend on and support each other to take it to the conclusion.
Played in some bands myself. Usually there’s someone, typically keys player, with a mic that only goes to everyone’s in-ear monitors so they can talk. So they’ll be like “alright we’re gonna be in C major start on the 1.” And count it off.
There are only a handful of popular styles and they all follow pretty basic rules. Even without the ten thousand+ hours of practice musicians of that calibre have, any casual music listener innately feels those rules.
Test it yourself. Listen to a pop song you’ve never heard before and try to guess where it’s going to go next. You’re probably right 90% of the time. Sure, music is art and can be surprising, but not the kind of music that is played on talk shows or in most improv situations.
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