Bobby on Improvisation

Thanks Hamutzi for sending that link over. I've been a big fan of McFerrin's ever since I found one of his albums ("Paper Music") many years ago. It's one of his first classical albums where he is combining vocal music with orchestration and taking his first steps as a classical conductor. In my mind, he was always that guy he did "Don't Worry, Be Happy." That album opened me up to what an incredible force he is musically.

I was phishing around his site and read what he wrote on improvisation. As an educator, theatrical improviser, and aspiring musician, I can really connect into what he's pointing towards.

Here it is:
I am passionately committed to improvisation, and don't think that any music student in the country should be allowed to graduate unless they've studies it for a term, a year. They need to get back to their own music making, get past the paper. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven - they were all great improvisers. What we have now has been written down, and we forget that it began as improvisation. In some ways, the best part of their music making has been lost.

Improvisation is basically movement - the courage to take steps. You play one note. And then you play another note. That's it. You just keep going. They don't have to go together melodically, or be in a scale; movement is the important thing. You don't have to know anything about theory, you don't have to know what you're doing. Kids don't. Three, four, five year old kids don't know any music theory when they sing. They don't know what a 'picardi third' is. They don't know what an 'Ionian mode' is. Or a 'Dorian mode'.
Major minor thirds. They just sing.

When you get older, it's harder and harder to improvise. Part of the problem is that judgmental voice that says what you're doing doesn't sound right. I used to have students do drawings of their own 'judges' - and then we'd crumple them up and throw them into the trash. We all have these thoughts, these inhibitions. I had them too; I had to 'exorcise my demons'.

When I was developing my own approach to improvisation, the only thing I had to practice was getting over the fear of doing it. I think that's the only thing that really hampers people from improvising: they're just afraid of looking like a fool or not having enough ideas. It's a risk. Most people are afraid of it. It's like opening a door to a dark room and going in. You don't know what you'll find. But I find that fascinating.
The best way to start improve is to just do it. sing . Improvise every day for about ten minutes. Get a cooking timer, set it up for ten minutes and go. At the end of two minutes you're going to start getting very, very bored. Two minutes are going to go by and you're going to think, 'What is this all about? I don't know how to do this; I don't know what I'm doing, etcetera, etcetera.' Keep going. Don't stop. It's like Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones: keep your hands moving. It's the same with improvisation. Just keep going. Even if you're just singing one note. Go for ten minutes and don't stop. That's it. You just move. Just keep moving. Motion.

You can talk about structure, making it last longer, but you have to start with those first steps. Some people freeze up and stand there, thinking they have nothing to play. You've got everything to play: your morning breakfast cereal, the misunderstanding you had with your teenage son last night before you went to bed, your emotions - you can lay them all!

It doesn't matter where you land. Just the act of leaping is where it's at for me. That's the big lesson: the process. I've heard this from all kinds of people who call themselves artists - that it's not so much the final result, it's the joy of the journey that's the important thing.