Improvisation for Classical Musicians

Improvisation for Classical Musicians
Author: Eugene Friesen
Publisher: Berklee Press Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780876391297

(Berklee Guide). Learn the creative mindset and acquire the technical tools necessary for improvisation. These concepts and exercises will help you to discover a deeper source of music making, a greater quality of authenticity, and a discernable change in sound and phrasing that will enhance your performances of written music. You will learn to play by ear, apply musical theory to your instrument, and engage creatively with the elements of music, giving you a long menu of musical options. The accompanying recording includes demonstration and play-along tracks. You will learn: tools to connect melodic imagination to your instrument, with an enhanced sense of physicality; how to use scales, chords, modes, progressions, and other structures in your improvisation; a broad rhythm vocabulary; improvisation techniques for standard progressions, such as blues and II V's; to create richer lines by using approach notes, neighbor tones, and embellishments into an improvised melodic line.

Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians

Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians
Author: Jeffrey Agrell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2008
Genre: Games with music
ISBN:

Why don't classical musicians improvise? Why do jazz players get to have all the fun? And how do they develop such fabulous technique and aural skills? With these words, Jeffrey Agrell opens the door to improvisation for all non-jazz musicians who thought it was beyond their ability to play extemporaneously. Step-by-step, Agrell leads through a series of games, rather than exercises. The game format takes the pressure off of classically trained musicians, steering them away from their fixation on mistake-free performance and introducing the basic concepts of playing with music itself instead of obsessing over a perfect rendition of a written score. Agrell draws an analogy with sports that illustrates the absurdity of the traditional approach to classically-oriented music performance.

The Musician's Way : A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness

The Musician's Way : A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness
Author: Gerald Klickstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2009-08-06
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199711291

In The Musician's Way, veteran performer and educator Gerald Klickstein combines the latest research with his 30 years of professional experience to provide aspiring musicians with a roadmap to artistic excellence. Part I, Artful Practice, describes strategies to interpret and memorize compositions, fuel motivation, collaborate, and more. Part II, Fearless Performance, lifts the lid on the hidden causes of nervousness and shows how musicians can become confident performers. Part III, Lifelong Creativity, surveys tactics to prevent music-related injuries and equips musicians to tap their own innate creativity. Written in a conversational style, The Musician's Way presents an inclusive system for all instrumentalists and vocalists to advance their musical abilities and succeed as performing artists.

Improvise for Real

Improvise for Real
Author: David Reed
Publisher:
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-02-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9780984686360

Improvise for Real is a step-by-step method that teaches you to improvise your own music through progressive exercises that anyone can do. You'll learn to understand the sounds in the music all around you. And you'll learn to express your own musical ideas exactly as you hear them in your mind. The method starts with very simple creative exercises that you can begin right away. As you progress, the method leads you on a guided tour through the entire world of modern harmony. You will be improvising your own original melodies from the very first day, and your knowledge will expand with each practice session as you explore and discover our musical system for yourself. Improvise for Real brings together creativity, ear training, music theory and physical technique into a single creative daily practice that will show you the entire path to improvisation mastery. You will learn to understand the sounds in the music all around you and to improvise with confidence over jazz standards, blues songs, pop music or any other style you would like to play. And you'll be jamming, enjoying yourself and creating your own music every step of the way. The method is open to all instruments and ability levels. The exercises are easy to understand and fun to practice. There is no sight reading required, and you don't need to know anything about music theory to begin. Already being used by both students and teachers in more than 20 countries, Improvise for Real is now considered by many people to be the definitive system for learning to improvise. If you have always dreamed of truly understanding music and being able to improvise with complete freedom on your instrument, this is the book for you

From Sight to Sound

From Sight to Sound
Author: Nicole M. Brockmann
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2009-04-07
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0253220645

From Sight to Sound provides practical and creative techniques for classical improvisation for musicians of all levels and instruments, solo or in ensembles. These exercises build aural and communicative skills, instrumental technique, and musical understanding. When students use their instruments to execute and improvise on theoretical concepts, they make vivid connections between abstract ideas and their own playing. This then allows students to unite performance with music theory, ear-training, historical style and context, chamber music skills, and listening skills. Many of the exercises in this book are designed for players working in pairs or small groups to encourage performers to communicate with one another and build an atmosphere of trust in which creativity and spontaneity may flourish.

It's About Music

It's About Music
Author: Jean-Michel Pilc
Publisher: Balquhidder Music/Glen Lyon
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2013-03-08
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0985903945

Jean-Michel Pilc, jazz pianist and faculty member of Steinhardt School, New York University, has written a remarkable book about the artistic and creative process in the arts. The conversational style well suits the wide ranging topic which draws examples from art and music both classical and jazz. A beautifully expressed work on a subject otherwise impossible to write about. Hailed by musicians around the world as enlightened and inspirational.

Improvisation for Classical, Fingerstyle and Jazz Guitar

Improvisation for Classical, Fingerstyle and Jazz Guitar
Author: Paul Costello
Publisher: Paragon Publishing
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2012
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1908341580

Improvisation for Classical, Fingerstyle, and Jazz Guitar - Creative Strategies, Technique and Theory: Is the product of over twenty five years experience as a professional musician and guitar tutor. Contains more than sixty exercises, in both standard notation and guitar tablature, ranging from simple, clear examples of the topics under discussion, to longer more complex sections of music that illustrate how these ideas can be developed. Suggests new techniques, and strategies, offering guitarists practical ideas for solo or group performance, recording, music exams, and expanding musical horizons. Demonstrates how to use improvisation as a universal way of making music, enabling Classical, Fingerstyle, and Jazz players to learn the essential skills to create sophisticated and rewarding improvised pieces. Places theory and practice in a much broader context, by including discussions on the historical development of improvisation, along with supplementary information on a wide range of inter-related literature and listening. Contains an extensive appendix showing how to adapt and apply the CAGED system, demonstrating how its five basic patterns can be transformed into hundreds of interlocking modes, scales, arpeggios and chords. www.paulcostelloguitar.co.uk www.facebook.com/pages/Paul-Costello-Guitar/328473160531215

The Piano Improvisation Handbook

The Piano Improvisation Handbook
Author: Carl Humphries
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2009
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780879309770

"The Piano Improvisation Handbook" offers a comprehensive overview of the practical skills and theoretical issues involved in mastering all forms of piano improvisation. It explores a wide range of styles, including classical, jazz, rock and blues. Whereas other books on improvisation typically offer little more than models for imitation and exercises for practising, this one adopts an approach specifically designed to encourage and enable independent creative exploration. The book contains a series of graded tutorial sections with musical examples on CD, as well as an extensive introductory section detailing the history of keyboard and piano improvisation, an appendix listing useful scales, chords, voicings and progressions across all keys, a bibliography and a discography. In addition to sections outlining how melody, harmony, rhythm, texture and form work in improvised piano music, there are sections devoted to explaining how ideas can be developed into continuous music and to exploring the process of finding a personal style. A key feature is the distinctive stress the author puts on the interconnectedness of jazz and classical music where improvisation is concerned. This book is best suited to those with at least some prior experience of learning the piano. However, the rudiments of both music theory and piano technique are covered in such a way that it can also serve as an effective basis for a self-sufficient course in creative piano playing.

Music Theory Through Improvisation

Music Theory Through Improvisation
Author: Ed Sarath
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 113521526X

Designed for Music Theory courses, Music Theory Through Improvisation presents a unique approach to basic theory and musicianship training that examines the study of traditional theory through the art of improvisation. The book follows the same general progression of diatonic to non-diatonic harmony in conventional approaches, but integrates improvisation, composition, keyboard harmony, analysis, and rhythm. Conventional approaches to basic musicianship have largely been oriented toward study of common practice harmony from the Euroclassical tradition, with a heavy emphasis in four-part chorale writing. The author’s entirely new pathway places the study of harmony within improvisation and composition in stylistically diverse format, with jazz and popular music serving as important stylistic sources. Supplemental materials include a play-along audio in the downloadable resources for improvisation and a companion website with resources for students and instructors.

Harmonic Experience

Harmonic Experience
Author: W. A. Mathieu
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 724
Release: 1997-08-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1620554011

An exploration of musical harmony from its ancient fundamentals to its most complex modern progressions, addressing how and why it resonates emotionally and spiritually in the individual. W. A. Mathieu, an accomplished author and recording artist, presents a way of learning music that reconnects modern-day musicians with the source from which music was originally generated. As the author states, "The rules of music--including counterpoint and harmony--were not formed in our brains but in the resonance chambers of our bodies." His theory of music reconciles the ancient harmonic system of just intonation with the modern system of twelve-tone temperament. Saying that the way we think music is far from the way we do music, Mathieu explains why certain combinations of sounds are experienced by the listener as harmonious. His prose often resembles the rhythms and cadences of music itself, and his many musical examples allow readers to discover their own musical responses.