Chapter: Basic Considerations

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

While subsequent chapters will deal with theoretical aspects of note selection, it cannot be emphasized too strongly that this is not all there is to improvsation, or to music in general. The goal of playing music is to communicate emotionally with the listener. However, emotional expression is too personal a matter to be taught by a computer program. You will have to explore that aspect of your music on your own.

There is some middle ground between the extremes of music theory on one hand and emotional expression on the other, and that is the subject of this chapter. In the chapter entitled Improvisation, from the series of chapters on the Elements Of Jazz, improvisation was described from the perspective of the listener in terms of style, structure, and creativity. In the following sections, I describe, from the perspective of the performer, some factors to keep in mind in forming an improvisation that will be satisfying to the listener on these levels.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Chapter: Basic Considerations