Life is full of Improvisations

10 ways Learning to improvise makes a difference in life

I’ve often said throughout my life that I didn’t choose music, music chose me. When I was 5 years old I begged my parents for piano lessons, and apparently, it wasn’t easy to find a teacher to take on a 5-year-old piano student at the time in Munster, IN (a suburb outside of Chicago where I spent my first 18 years). When applying to college I was given the choice of classical music programs or jazz. Although jazz had never been my favorite style of music (I was a grunge rock listener who was inundated with 90’s Rock). I was in the jazz programs in my middle and high school and was taught improvisation by my private lesson teacher Kirk Garrison, who still teaches trumpet and jazz and performs with the Lt. Dan Band.

I attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and finished my Bachelor in Music for Jazz Studies and also in Music Education from The Ohio State University. Eventually, I earned a Masters in Music from The Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at Cal State Long Beach. By the time I completed all of these degrees, I had spent my entire adult life learning improvisation and by the time I finished my degrees in jazz studies, there were very very few professional opportunities to perform for paying audiences.

It’s ironic that as a professionally trained jazz musician, the most important decision that I had to make was how to make a living improvisation in music.

Improvisation is a performance technique by which a musician creates melodies or harmonies to a piece of music at the moment. This doesn’t mean though that they are simply making everything up as they go along. Most of the time an improvisation is created to a very specific set of musical rules or trained skills. The most basic way I can share this is to explain that most songs are in specific musical keys, and most keys only use 7 of the 12 musical notes in Western music. When improvising, the musician will choose to either stick to those 7 notes or slide past or through the other 5 remaining notes to cause tension on the way to the notes that will sound more harmonious. Improvisation is not exclusive to jazz and has been around as long as we have records of music.

Classical Indian music and some Classical Western music by composers such as J.S. Bach and many others were improvised.

All aspects of music can be improvised: Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Timbres, and even improvised changes in styles. As a jazz trumpet player who spent the most formative years of my life earning degrees in music and improvisation, I have now often commented that I have the most financially worthless degree that one can buy. When was the last time you hired a trumpet player for anything? And if your answer was, “I think we had one at our wedding” then you are telling me that you haven’t hired one since.

Improvisation is simply informed decision-making. This has often left me thinking about how I can use the skills gained in improvisation in other aspects of my life. So, here are the skills that I gained as a professionally trained improviser:

1. When playing a wrong note you are only one note away from the correct note. Sometimes a small shift in a different direction is needed to create harmony.

2. When communicating with music and otherwise it is best to create and use silence as a technique just as much as it is to create sound. Too much sound or not enough silence is never welcomed.

3. You can never lose from having more education and a deeper understanding of how to improvise and make decisions that are deeply informed and based on knowledge instead of opinion.

4. Learning from masters of the past helps to create integrity in improvisation and decision-making.

5. Imitating other experts or innovators and how they improvise will help to gain skills and integrity, but you will eventually have to create your own voice. People will respect you more in any field if you learn from others and then become an innovator to advance the skill.

6. When working with children as a parent or mentor it is extremely helpful to be able to improvise smoothly and move from your planned techniques to trying new techniques to meet their needs.

7. We hear with our eyes and see with our ears. Become as familiar as you can with your surroundings and you will realize that many of the things that you see you are aware of because you hear it before you see it. Also, our eyes are used as tools of communication to share words and emotions to share things that people “hear”. When improvising musicians look at each other and communicate whose turn it is next. Then we make decisions on what to do often with our eyes closed and using our ears to “see” what others are playing and how to react musically.

8. Sometimes your ideas aren’t the best, and by listening to and studying other people’s ideas you can have a more educated approach to just about anything.

9. Teaching others improvisation skills is the best way to learn and is extremely rewarding, especially for younger people or those who need a mentor!

10. Adapt. This is the best advice that my Dad ever gave me and I use it in music, I even use it in my daily practice in business and my relationships with others. Adapting is a trained skill and requires improvisation and a willingness to explore other people’s ideas, and other options, and the formation of new habits.

Like other lifelong learning skills improvisation isn’t something that can be learned in a book or learned overnight. It is a life practice. It requires a willingness to put others first. It requires deep listening and understanding and the ability to shift your mindset and your approach.

For me, jazz music was the path that has led to an awareness of how improvisation can help me in business and my everyday life, but the skills of improvisation can be learned and applied to just about any action in our human experience.