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in today's quick video I'm gonna show
you how you can get started improvising
even if you've never done it before and
even if you're a total beginner on your
instrument there's a common
misconception out there that before you
can even attempt to improvise you need
to know all your scales and all your
keys and lots of music theory and
harmony and lots of music musicians
practice and play their instrument for
years chained to sheet music and never
even try to play freely I myself took
piano lessons and saxophone lessons for
many years before anyone even introduced
me to the concept of the idea that I
could improvise and by that time I was
so chained to reading sheet music and
dependent on it that the thought of
creating my own music was terrifying so
if you're like me and you started out
being limited to reading sheet music or
if you're a beginner and you want to get
off on the right foot and you don't want
to be constrained by always having to
read sheet music to express yourself on
your instrument this is for you we're
gonna learn a very simple way to
practice improvising that anyone can do
no matter what your level is on your
instrument it also happens to be the
very same method that accomplished
improvising musicians use all the time
and practice all the time step number
one is to choose our limitations we
don't want to have too many choices
especially in the beginning working on
improv improvising because that can lead
to chaos by limiting ourselves we force
ourselves to focus on the things that we
want to improve so in this example we're
gonna limit ourselves to only three
notes so no matter what level you are on
your instrument you can play three notes
and the notes we're gonna play today are
G b-flat and C if you're playing tennis
saxophone those notes are going to be a
C and D after you transpose and on alto
saxophone those No
we'll be e G and a step two is going to
be to choose our mode of accompaniment
this can be a backing track it can be a
song recording that you like it can be
just a metronome by itself it could be
nothing at all you could just play
freely with no accompaniment for today
what we're going to do is we're going to
play over a drum loop and I'll make this
available to download for everybody with
a link at the end of the video step
three is to start improvising in this
sand box that we've created for
ourselves to play in I want you to start
out by playing long notes and by leaving
long pauses between the things you play
don't try to do too much that's very
important make your own music and take
your time with it you don't have to try
to impress anyone yet
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focus on playing in sync
rhythmically with the accompaniment
since we're only playing three notes we
don't really have to worry so much about
what our fingers are doing we really
want to focus on rhythm here and improve
our ability to create our own rhythms
that are in good time experiment with
this and when you're ready for a change
go ahead and change the restrictions
we've placed on ourselves you can change
the number of notes you allow yourself
to improvise with you can change the
choice of notes you can change the mode
of accompaniment you can change the
tempo your options here are limitless
you can do whatever you want you could
even take off all restrictions and just
play completely freely but remember that
it's the limitations that we place on
ourselves that kind of force us to focus
on improving aspects of our playing and
it keeps us from having the natural
tendency to kind become a bit incoherent
with the music
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this method of practicing improvisation
is basically the same sort of thing that
very advanced accomplished musicians do
when they practice improvising
of course the more technical skill and
ability you've got on your instrument
the better you'll be able to express
yourself and that's why we practice
scales and arpeggios and long tones and
all the technical things that we work on
so there's no reason that anybody
shouldn't improvise even from day one of
picking up an instrument once you can
play a few notes you are ready to
improvise so no matter what stage you
are with your instrument and your
ability I hope you take this starting
point that I've given you and start
incorporating the practice of
improvising into everything else that
you're practicing so if you're
practicing scales or practicing learning
pieces of music that's great but at the
end of a practice session there's
nothing to stop you from saying you know
what I'm just gonna play freely and
enjoy it
improvising is fun and liberating and
there's nothing to be afraid of here if
you're afraid of playing the wrong thing
or wrong notes or wrong rhythms or
whatever an easy solution for that is to
create for yourself a set of limitations
like I've demonstrated here that keep
you in your comfort zone
so just make it so that you can't really
play anything that you're not good at
and that avoids the fear of of playing
the wrong thing once you get more
comfortable and the fear kind of
subsides then you can have fun with the
risk-taking and and being a bit more of
interest if you want to learn more about
improvising and playing music by ear
without the constraints of sheet music
head over to better sax comm I've got
some great free resources for you there
click the link on the screen to sign up
for my play sax buy your crash course
it's entirely free to enroll in if you
liked this video and got some value out
of it please let me know by clicking the
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you're here go check out some of my
other saxophone videos
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