The Improviser

Free Music Instruction Software

How would you like to be able to:

• intuitively know what notes will sound good over a chord progression
• anticipate chord changes as naturally as speaking
• learn how to solo effectively no matter what instrument you play
• make a portable shelter from egg yolks
• hear a song and scat sing a cool-sounding melody over it

The Improviser can help you achieve these goals, in a way that makes learning totally fun and natural: through a game.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate how this game works is by describing a session between a guitar student and his teacher. Let's peek in to hear how the teacher is gently and compassionately helping the student to improvise...

Teacher: Man, your playing really sucks! Where's your head been, man? I bet you've been wasting time with that redhead who plays Enya records backwards. Dude, I told you that girl is nothing but trouble!

Student: (Sigh). I know, I know. But I'm still paying you, so you still have to teach me to improvise.

T: Okay. I'll show you how to improvise. Let's start right in. It's real simple. I'm going to play a phrase of music. It's four measures long. Just listen for now.

S: Okay. I'm all ears.

The teacher plays the phrase.

S: I don't think you'll be winning a Grammy with that, no offense.

T: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the hippest bunch of notes, but it'll teach us some fundamentals of improvising.

S: How am I go—?

T: Bup, bup, bup, bup! No questions yet! I want you to start doing before you start asking. Shoot first, and watch westerns later, or something like that.

S: Okay, so let me do something.

T: Okay. I'm going to play that same phrase again. But this time, I'm not going to play the last bar. You are going to play it.

S: But how —?

T: Tut, tut, tut, tut! No ask. Do. Ready? Here we go.

The teacher plays the first three bars. The student hesitates.

T: It helps a lot if you sing it first. Let's sing it.

Teacher sings the first three bars. He then gestures for the student to come in on bar four.

S: You look like a dork when you do that.

Teacher repeats singing the first three bars, and gestures for the student to sing bar four.

The student easily sings bar four.

T: Excellent! Now, play on your guitar what you just sang.

The student carefully and slowly picks out the melody for bar four.

T: Terrific!

S: You know, I could almost see the remote!

T: Cute. Let's make some more music.

The teacher and student repeat this exercise a few more times: the teacher plays four measures of a simple and predictable melody made only of basic arpeggios from a ii-V-I chord progression. Then the teacher plays only measures one, two, and three, leaving out measure four, which the impetuous student plays, his confidence growing with each phrase.

T: Okay, you're getting good at this, so it's time for me to throw in a couple of wrinkles. Wrinkle one: I'm not going to play the whole phrase for you. I'm only going to play the first three bars. You're going to figure out how to play the last bar just by listening to the first three.

And wrinkle B is that I'm not even going to play the first three bars for you after a while. Maybe I'll play two and you play two. Cool?

S: Arctic.

The teacher then starts playing two measures of the simple melodies instead of three. The student finishes the phrase by playing the last two measures. This continues for several phrases. The student is getting the hang of it. Then the teacher throws him a curve: he plays just one measure.

S: Whoa!

T: What, "whoa"?

S: You're playing just one bar. You expect me to figure out the last three bars just from that?

T: 'Already know you all that you need.'

The student looks at his fretboard like it's just turned into a side of beef. New York cut.

T: Forget the guitar for a moment. Actually, cut me off a bit of that; it looks pretty tasty. Okay, now let's go back to singing.

The teacher sings one bar of music: E, C, A: three notes from a C, add 6 arpeggio. The teacher gestures for the student to sing.

S: I have a Shih tzu with less hair than your eyebrows.

Undeterred, the teacher sings the first bar again, and gestures for the student to continue the melodic line into notes from the D minor chord — the next chord in the ii-V-I progression in C major.

The student chokes out some notes.

T: Good! That was it. He sings bars one and two and gestures for the student to sing the rest. The student easily does so.

The teacher commends the student once again, and begins a new phrase. He sings only the first bar, which has notes from the C major chord. The student picks up on bar 2, and is now able to play on his guitar the remaining three bars.

They continue this for several more phrases. The teacher is slowly picking up the pace, increasing the BPM.

Finally, teacher checks his watch. "Time's up," he says.

S: Yeah. Hey, that was a cool exercise. Can we do that again next week?

T: No. Next week, we're making key lime pie. Invite your girlfriend. In the meantime, here's a little computer program for you to practice with.

Teacher hands the student a disk. The disk has a label on it that reads, "The Improviser."

Now for more details on the Improviser program.

Who's it for?

The Improviser is made for intermediate to advanced music students. Many beginners may also enjoy the game, especially with the help of the "Show Notes" button. You do need to know the notes on the piano keyboard.

I'm a guitarist, not a piano player. How will the Improviser help me?

A future release of the Improviser may have a simulated fretboard interface, so guitarists can get more out of their sessions with it.

In the current version, guitarists can still benefit immensely from the Improviser. It helps all musicians understand and create music. How does it achieve this?

You can think of understanding music as knowing what notes sound appropriate over a chord progression. When you understand how to create such notes, finding them on an instrument — no matter what that instrument is — becomes a relatively simple task.

To illustrate this better, take the example of finding yourself in a room with absolutely no light. You can't see anything. If you know that this room is your bedroom, all you have to do is teach yourself how to find stuff with your remaining senses, especially the sense of touch. This is what it feels like to understand music, and to play it on an unfamiliar instrument.

On the other hand, if the darkened room is one you've never been in before, you'll take much, much longer to find your way around the room, and recognize what each thing is in it. This is what it's like to not understand music.

In short, the Improviser helps you find all the stuff you need and want in this beautiful "room" of music, no matter what instrument you play.

How playing arpeggios helps you improvise

First, what do you need to know to improvise? You need to have a sense of what notes will sound good with the chord that's currently playing, and with the next chord that will be playing. Let's define a "note that sounds good."

There are many choices for pleasing notes for any particular chord. Some of those choices are the notes in the chord itself. A sequence of all the notes in a chord is called an arpeggio. If you're soloing over a chord using that chord's arpeggio notes, those notes are going to sound good. Now, what happens when it comes time to change to another chord?

When there's a chord change, you'll want to flow your melodic line smoothly across it. For example, let's say you're playing over a C major to D minor chord change. You've just played the note G, and you're about to change to the D minor chord, whose notes are D, F and A. To make the chord change smooth, you'll want to move to the note in the D chord that's closest to where you are, the G note.

Also, your line will flow more smoothly if you continue moving in the same direction you've been moving in. In other words, if you got to G by coming down from C, you'll want the next note you play to continue descending. A good choice for your next note will then be F. This note descends from G, and is only a major second away.

Flowing from C major to D minor

While this process may sound complicated, actually learning to do it by first listening to a few phrases, and then singing along is totally natural and intuitive. It's only when this process is put into words that it seems complicated. You don't even need to have any "talent" to sing arpeggios over chord changes. With the right training, anyone can learn to do it — and enjoy doing it.

Understand that true improvisation comes only after becoming fluent in the language of arpeggios and scales, and how these are played over different progressions using a variety of rhythms. The Improviser does not teach you all of these things. However, think of learning to improvise and understand music as learning a foreign language. Using the Improviser would be like spending time with a friend who already knew that language, and would talk and listen to you only in that language.

How the Improviser helps you play arpeggios

The Improviser composes a melody made up just of arpeggios, or chord tones, that flow up and down in a totally predictable, yet pleasing, manner. The fact that the melody is totally predictable doesn't necessarily create the most interesting music, but it does make learning to sing, understand, and anticipate arpeggio tones extremely intuitive, easy and fun.

In its current version, the Improviser creates a melody over just one chord progression in just one key: a ii-V-I in C major. The exact progression is C major 6, D minor 7, G7, C major 6. The ii-V-I is one of the most common progressions in Western music. So, when you master playing and singing arpeggios over this progression, you've gone a long way to becoming an effective, skilled player.

Is this a form of ear training?

Yes. Ear training is a set of activities designed to help you think musically. The purpose of ear training is to get you to recognize and reproduce or notate fundamental elements of music, such as melodies, rhythms, chords and arpeggios. The Improviser specializes in playing and detecting arpeggiated melodies. It trains your ear to hear the many possibilities for appropriate notes occurring in a typical four-bar phrase of music.

Most other ear training programs play a phrase, and ask you to play it back exactly as it was played. While this is highly useful and engaging, the Improviser extends this process by involving you in making music as it's happening. It gets you to create music that has not yet been created. It's a bit like playing with your favorite music teacher rather than repeat what he's playing. You become a player rather than a "parrot."

Features

Here is a summary of the Improviser's features:

• cheat function (button Show Notes)
• automatically adjust tempo
• intuitive piano interface
• score reporting
• percussion
• automatic increase in number of notes per bar
• many different melodies possible

The Improviser can play a huge number of different melodies, so you'll be busy learning for a long time.

Here's how to begin using the program:

Once you've opened up the program, you'll see a form that represents a small piano keyboard. Feel free to play away on the piano before beginning to play the game.

Create a Question Phrase by clicking the Make Question button. The Improviser creates a melody, and plays the beginning of it. The program then tells you it's going to play the "question," and it's your job to play the "answer." In other words, the teacher is playing the first three bars, and you, the student, are going to answer by playing the final bar.

You play your answer by clicking the keys on the piano keyboard. to keep the game easy to learn, you only need to play notes on the white piano keys: the entire melody is in C major.

Also, when your answer notes are checked for accuracy, the octave of the note you entered is ignored. In other words, if the answer requires an "E" note, it doesn't matter which of the E notes you play on the piano. In still other words, the Improviser is "octave tolerant."

If you need to replay the Improviser's portion of the phrase, you can do so by clicking the Play Question button.

If you need to replay the entire phrase, click the Play Entire Phrase button.

When you successfully complete each measure, a yellow box will light up for that bar. Continue playing until all four bars are yellow.

When you've successfully played through the final measure, The Improviser will report your score. Your score is based on how quickly you answered the question.

Continuing to play

The Improviser has features to make game play more challenging, as you improve in answering the musical questions. Those features include the option to automatically play the entire phrase or just the question. If you want the teacher to play the entire four-bar phrase, and then play the question, leave the Auto play checkbox checked. As your skill improves, you'll want to uncheck this.

One of the automatic changes that will happen as you improve is the increase in notes per bar — which will be played at faster tempos.

But you can always cheat, using the Show Notes button. This will reveal the names of the notes for the current measure, in the order you need to play them.

If you run out of notes on the keyboard you can change octaves. For example, if you're at the highest available D note on the simulated piano, and you sense that the next melody note is an F, you'll have to descend in pitch — even though the melody you hear in your mind is ascending, not descending. In other words, as long as you play the correct note names, the Improviser doesn't care which octave that note appears in.

When you're playing your answer, you do not have to copy the same rhythm as the question that was played. Again, the Improviser only pays attention to the names of the notes that you play, not the pitches or duration values. This may change in a future release.

Possible future features

• Define your own progression
• Define your own rhythms
• Possible guitar fretboard interface, in addition to piano
• Play in different keys
• Save config settings across sessions
• Liposuction coupons (Windows 98 and above only please)
• Start from someplace other than first chord in bar, such as ii or V
• Allow input from a real keyboard
• Optional swing feel
• Icons of Shania Twain and Phyllis Diller
• Chord accompaniment
• Beat the clock
• Enhanced player stats
• Blood alcohol analysis
• Player must duplicate note rhythms, and not just note names

System requirements

The Improviser runs on Windows 95 or later with a sound card, and uses less than 1.5 Megs of disk space when installed.

Resources

Michael Furstner's online improvisation and jazz class relates the importance of chord tones in improvisation: http://www.jazclass.aust.com/im1.htm

Chris Smith, on improvising over chord changes: http://www.indiana.edu/~smithcj/cjsnet86.html

Pat Metheny on improvisation, at http://www.patmethenygroup.com/scrapbook/interviews.cfm: "...with just the three, four or five notes of basic harmony suggested by the actual chord, a good improviser can find lots of things to play."

Marc Sabatella's online classic, a Jazz Improvisation Primer http://www.outsideshore.com

William Shatner Sings

Improvisation articles on the following sites:

• GuitarNoise.com
• Wholenote.com

Support

If there are features you'd like to see in a future release, or if you need help in using the Improviser, drop me a line here.

Download

Download the Improviser here. Download size is less than 200 K.