Jazz Improvisation for Beginners

Today I want to share with you a jazz improvisation technique that I used in high school with great success.  For most beginners the idea of having to improvise in front of others is quite daunting.  They really have no idea where to start.  They typically can't read chords and they have little experience on their instrument.  This leads to a fear of improvisation.  I can't tell you how many peers I had in high school and jr. high that were afraid to improvise just because they had no idea where to start.  I want to help with that fear and concern.

Jazz improvisation can be a tricky subject so I understand a beginners concern, especially when they are required to improvise but they're not ready.  Personally I found the idea of learning to improvise a challenge so instead of backing down I took every opportunity I could to improvise.  This led to me getting the first tenor parts  even though there were older  more experienced students around.  In my journey I discovered a lot of things, but I found that most methods of learning jazz improvisation just didn't help a beginner.  Often times your told read the cords, use scales, play notes that fit, transcribe the greats and so on.  These are helpful for learning to improvise in jazz, but just plain overwhelming for a beginner. What scales do you use, what notes fit the chords, how can I transcribe the greats when they play so fast?  These are challenges and questions that beginners have.  To get through these challenges a beginning saxophonist just needs to simplify things.  That's what I did in high school and it worked wonders.  Let me explain.

In high school I was reading a lot of jazz charts.  So many in fact that I never had time to truly learn the chord progressions.  What I ended up doing was looking at the key signature of the chart, and figuring out what key the piece was in.  I would then look to see if the chart had any accidentals that showed up frequently.  Then when it came time to improvise I would just use the major or minor scale that fit the key signature as my base.  If the tune had accidentals I would add those too.  From there I just played by ear.  When I started doing this I no longer had to worry about the chords, or what scales to use, or even what notes to choose.  This technique worked great for me and it gave me so much more freedom.  Instead of having to think about a million things all at once. I was able to focus on creativity and music. So in a nut shell here is the technique that I recommend beginners use as a starting point to learning to improvise jazz.

1. Use the songs key signature as a basis of finding what scale or scales you should use in your improvisation
2. See if the tune has frequent accidentals.  If so use those accidentals in your jazz improvisations.
3. Play and have fun.

It's that simple, find the key and use that scale as your base.  If you do this the notes you play will for the most part fit, and you will be more free to be creative and to experiment.  The jazz improvisation technique I just mentioned is a great one for beginners.  It is fairly simple and it's a good starting point.  I do have to say this however it is not a start all, end all technique.  Meaning you will still have to work at it and that there will become a point where for you to progress you will have to learn other techniques and you will have to learn how to read and play over chord progressions.  For beginners this technique works great because the music they play typically stays in the same key and doesn't have crazy stuff, but when you get more advanced music this technique won't work nearly as well because advanced music changes tonality from time to time and if you try to play the key signature when the tonality changes it will sound wrong.  Also for this technique to work well you will have to listen to jazz so you get an idea of how to build your ideas.  I hope this is helpful for all those beginning improvisers.  Later I plan on sharing other drills and techniques that help with learning to improvise jazz.  Good luck

Caruso