Before we talk about actually
improvising on your instrument of choice, let’s talk for a minute
about what improvising actually is.

Improvising is making things up as you
go. That can mean using a wire coat hanger for your car aerial
or using an old cardboard box for the wickets in a game of backyard
cricket. In fact next time that you have a conversation with someone
you’ll be improvising the entire conversation! You’re using words
that you know, putting them into sentences and using those sentences
to express yourself.

If you’re really angry, and if you play
the piano (and even if you don’t play the piano), you can really
express anger at the piano. You put the sustain pedal down (that’s
the one on the right, it makes all the notes keep going even if you
have stopped pushing on the keys) and then you begin to play the
piano, in a way that expresses how you feel…. first you might use
your left hand to make a rumbling sound down on the left hand side of
the keyboard, where all the low notes are… then you will move
slowly up the piano, playing the piano more intensely, slowly getting
louder, then you might add in some stabbing chord clusters up high on
that right… (a chord cluster is where you bash a bunch of notes
next to each other randomly with your hand… I’m sure you can do
that). And then you start just pounding at it BAM BAM BAM BOOM
CRASH!!!! This goes on until you physically can’t do it anymore or
until the owner of the piano races into the room and shouts “What
are you doing to my piano!!!!”.

Well, you’re improvising. You’re
playing the piano. You’re not playing jazz, or rock, or classical,
you’re playing your music in a way that expresses yourself and how
you feel. That’s improvising. Honestly. That’s it. It may not be the
most refined way to play the piano, but you were expressing yourself
on a musical instrument.

You could imagine that our experiment
could travel easily across some instruments; get an electric guitar
and turn it up REALLY loud and go! Or beat the hell out of a drum
kit!… you get the idea. Now, you will be thinking, “But anyone
can do that, that’s not playing music” and you’re kind of right.
There are much more refined ways that you can play those instruments,
and you’ll also find that the more technique you have, the BETTER you
can express your feelings on the instrument, even if you’re having a
wild bash (you’ll sound wilder and be able to do it longer if you
know what you’re doing..).

So anyway, the point is – you can
improvise. All of us can. It’s inherent in all of us.

The next question is, how can I
improvise in a way that sounds attractive to others or is suitable
when I learn to play jazz or rock music?

For the answer to that question keep an
eye on this blog where I’ll get some answers for you or if you can’t
wait, head over to our contacts page, and sign up for a free
introductory lesson at IMA!

It can open you up to a whole new way
of making music. It contains a lot of the tips and tricks that we use
at IMA to help our Clients overcome challenges and have fun making
music (yay!).

It’s a book that you’ll often go back
to, and when you do, you’ll find something new or something useful
that you forgot.

Below I’ve outlined a brief history of
the book and how it’s put together to help you decide if The Inner
Game Of Music is the book for you.

Back in the 70’s, before you would find
an entire wall at your favourite bookshop devoted entirely to self
help books, a man called Timothy Gallwey wrote a book that was
destined to be a classic – The Inner Game Of Tennis.

It spawned various other sport books
(like The Inner Game Of Skiing for example) and the goal in all the
books was the same - to help the sports person to reduce mental
interference so the body can perform to it’s peak potential.

A Californian Double Bass player called
Barry Green spent a skiing holiday working with The Inner Game of
Skiing and was very excited both with his improved skiing and with
the concepts contained in the book. He applied the concepts to his
Double Bass playing, and was so happy with the results, he got in
contact with Timothy Gallwey to ask if they could work on a book
together – The Inner Game Of Music.

The Inner Game Of Music rattled a lot
of cages when it was written - traditional methods of music teaching
(ruler over the knuckles anyone?) were shown to be incomplete. Any
teacher interested in getting the best out of all their students had
to get a copy and start reading.

The book also changed the lives of a
lot of performing musicians.

At the core of the book is this
important idea – what we usually consider as playing music –
wiggling the fingers, practicing scales, performing pieces etc – is
only the outer game of playing music.

The other half of playing music all
takes place in your own mind – the inner game of music.

In the first half of the book Barry
defines the inner and outer games, introduces the concepts of Self 1
and 2, and devotes one chapter each to the skills of the inner game –
awareness, will and trust.

Barry uses Self 1 and 2 to help us
understand the difference between our unconscious, naturally creative
self and our other ‘rational’ self – distracted, focused on
shortcomings, full of negative self talk and doubt.

He provides us with concepts and
exercises to help us ignore our rational self and to play from our
unconscious, creative self. The skills of awareness, will and trust
are critical to this new way of playing music and he provides a
wealth of great ideas and examples to help you master those skills.

One of the strengths of the book is
it’s many examples. Take this one -

A trombonist I met at a workshop in
Minnesota found she had trouble getting enough air at the end of
phrases. When I asked her simply to be aware of the sound of the last
notes of a phrase, a remarkable change took place.

As she put her attention on those
last few notes, she unthinkingly switched from a slide vibrato to a
lip vibrato. The phrase sounded much better – and her desperate
breathing vanished. She had discovered by her own simple awareness
that not having sufficient air wasn’t her real problem – her
‘problem behind the problem’ came from using the wrong kind of
vibrato.

Any wind player
will benefit from using this technique and string players,
keyboardists, percussionists and guitarists will find plenty to keep
them inspired and focused on their music making.

The
second half of the book deals with practical applications of the
Inner Game technique – overcoming obstacles, improving the quality
of your musical experience, teaching, learning and listening, being a
parent or a coach, balancing your personality traits, applying the
inner game in ensembles and the difficult to define skills of
improvisation, composition and creativity.

If you
feel you could do with a bit of this when you
make your music -

…alert, yet at ease with
themselves, their attention fully concentrated in the present moment.
They enjoyed themselves, learned quickly and seemed to be functioning
at close to their full capacity.

Then The Inner Game
Of Music is just what you need.

Blues and Roots festival in Byron Bay at Easter. They changed venues now, so perhaps not the audience unfriendly nowhere to sit down, nowhere to breathe (unless you don’t mind breathing cannabis) event that it was previously, but as always some amazing musicians… Buddy Guy on the Thursday, Stanley Clarke and George Duke on the Friday and Saturday and Maceo Parker on the Sunday and Monday.

Other frustrating news for us Queenslanders is that Taraf de Haidouks, The Terem Quartet and Martin Hayes are all playing at Womadelaide in Adelaide over the 7th to 9th of March. Even if you don’t like world music, these three acts will blow you away, promise.

And Ornette Coleman is playing soon in Sydney and Adelaide (at least we can feel a bit smug that Victoria’s missing out on that one too).

Slightly off topic for a musical blog is the wonderful site www.homestarrunner.com This site was a major waste of time in the formative years of IMA and is highly recommended. Also at GOMA at Southbank at the Australian Cinematheque you can see Jaques Tati’s Playtime this Wednesday and Sunday. I think that it’s a restored print and it’s an acknowledged classic (for those of us who have a list).

We believe very strongly that everyone who visits this website can play music and we work really hard to make that a reality (for hours every freaking day).

At the moment we’re doing some training with a new singing/piano teacher called Yasmin (and this girl can REALLY sing) as well as stuffing envelopes for our first direct mail campaign and of course…. blogging….

On a personal note, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thoroughly reacquainting myself with Frank Zappa’s back catalogue after the most inspiring Zappa Plays Zappa concert at QPAC but the call of the Balkans has just proven too strong again and it’s back into my Gypsy brass band collection I go. I’ll be transcribing this time round though, which is a thoroughly daunting task… (and I’m listening to a lot of Iron Maiden with that concert only a few weeks away… I had no idea they were so pop!)