Improvisation Essentials Course

Improvisation Essentials

Improvisation Essentials, or ‘Improv’ Essentials for short, is a collection of lessons designed to improve your improvisation skills. If you’ve ever dreamed of improvising over jazz standards and other styles of music, this is the course you need! When it comes to improvisation, most students think of creating “lines” with the right-hand. In reality though, we need to focus on much more than just creating licks and patterns with the right-hand. We also need to focus on rhythm, phrasing, sequencing, dynamics, comping, voicing and much more. Improv Essentials has been broken down into these 7 categories to make it easier to master your improvisation skills.

1. Comping & Voicings - without good solid voicings, your improvisation will fall flat.
2. Progressions & Form - music is filled with many common progressions. By learning these progressions, and how to improvise over them, you now have a head start on improvisation over longer forms Also by learning how to hear musical forms you are less likely to get lost in the middle of your improvisation. Every happen to you? It stinks…I know!
3. Rhythm - let’s face it, rhythm is the engine of music. Without good, solid rhythm and a collection of rhythms at hand, your improvisation will sound stale quickly.
4. Scales & Arpeggios - this is what we usually think of when we say “improvisation.” These are the ‘big boulders’ in our improvisation, but are only part of the equation.
5. Neighbor Tones & Approaches - these fill in-between our ‘big boulders’ of scales and arpeggios to make our improv more smooth and linear.
6. Dynamics, Articulation & Sequencing - these concepts fill out our improvisation skills with some subtle techniques that make your playing sound more professional.
7. Styles of Music - we are not just focusing on jazz here! Being a good improviser means knowing how to improvise over many styles of music.

Individual lessons will focus on these 6 concepts throughout the course. Some lessons will focus on many of these concepts at once, while other lessons will laser-focus on just one of these concepts. Course level: intermediate to advanced Time to complete this course: 8-12 weeks Requirements: This course MUST be done in a specific order for maximum results. Skipping ahead in lessons has been disabled.