I'm a pretty big fan of "jam" bands (hence my shaggy hair) such as the Grateful Dead and the String Cheese Incident. And, obviously, these bands are famous for going on long, improvisational jams, and are remarkable at going into a jam, changing the feel once or twice or twenty times, and going back in together. How do they perform and coordinate such things, and how can the rest of my band and I learn to do the same.
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i saw a phenomonal jazz band when i was in Italy.. it did that, ages and ages for a track, everyone had solo parts, and it came together, then split up, back together..
you need the ear to hear the notes and the brain to process what is going on musically..
and have a basic starting point, i dont think its all improvisation, theyre given say, 20-30 lines of a basic tune, and told to keep playing parts of it and add your own stuff.
Add two more things:
1) The musicians know each other well, and have been playing together for years. It's the same with anything else, you'll just *know* what the other guy is up to.
2) There is often a simple structure they agreed to follow. So a rough idea of where they are and where they go, and they improvise around that.
Bands like the Grateful Dead took their improv choruses pretty much straight from the tune. Some others, like Phish, use a bit more chord substitution. You can take it to an even higher level - I saw a band back in the 70s who seemed to be improvising from the get-go, and I asked their bass player that exact question: how do you do it?
In the usual approach to jazz, you've got a 'head', or melody with chord progression. The first time through, a soloist or a whole section will play the melody line as written or as arranged, and the rest of the musicians follow the changes as written. For example, the standard "Sentimental Journey" has these changes in the opening section:
C D7 G7 C F9 C G7 C
/ / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |
Starting with the second time through the tune, solos are taken in a prearranged order, or the band leader will just indicate who'll go next. The rest of the band are now in support roles, and they'll listen hard to what the soloist is doing... and they'll start introducing chord substitutions, and comping with different rhythm patterns to reflect what the soloist is doing, and maybe spur him or her to new heights - because he's listening back. The solo usually starts out as a variation on the head melody, and changes from there... and maybe the second time the progression ends up getting spontaneously dressed up into something like this:
Cmaj9 Fmaj7 Cmaj7 D13 G13 C6 C7 F9+ F9 Am6 Bm6 Cmaj7 D9 Db9 Cmaj7
/ / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |
You can see the root changes happen at the same points in the progression, and only one root really changes - the relative Am is substituted for a C major type. The turnaround got changed from the basic V-I to a II (which is V of V) that resolves to I chromatically... this is the sort of stuff that happens with the rhythm section jamming. It's still the same underlying tune, though, and it will be through every chorus, even though each one will come out differently.
It's typical for a 'standard' jazz band to come back to the head for the last chorus.
Anyway, what this ensemble was doing was taking standard tunes like that one, but not playing the head. The length of the chorus is already agreed, the basic changes are already known, the first soloist has that original melody in his head to tinker with... and what follows will all be based on what happens in the first chorus.
The results were really interesting, and it made sense to me. The musicians have to know the core tune really well... but the audience isn't in on what that tune is. The only problem left to solve is how to know which one will be the last repitition of the chorus for each tune, and they did that with little nods and eye contact.
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Improvising is usually not random, it just looks that way. Each musician usually has an idea which may be embellished on the fly, but rarely are they clueless when the song starts.
The same is true for a band. During rehearsals, where you can talk to each other, someone may say "let's change the key up one step for the 3rd verse" and it could happen on the fly. But during a performance, that is written down somewhere. Tempos, chord voicings or structures, dynamics, and even lyrics can be messed with, but it takes a bunch of very good musicians to do it on the fly without the audience knowing.
Some bands will risk messing up in front of an audience, and in taking that risk, they can produce real magic. But it's not the way to plan your show.
However, it is enormous fun! 8)
-Laz
