jagrell@mchsi.com

Right. Many traditionally trained musicians (aka classical) never sample the joys and benefits of improvisation (which is just very quick composition that doesn't use a lot of ink) because the implicit assumption is that improvisation = jazz, and jazz = bebop, and that's not for me! Improvisation simply means making your own decisions about what you play (not something we ever get practice in in school). This approach takes what you already know and gives you ways to put it to use creating music on the spot, i.e. "thinking in music," something that every composer should spend a lot of time doing. But the system promotes the separation of disciplines (performing - theory - history - composing) and discourages the performer from composing and the composer from performing (composing becomes more cerebral and removed from performers, performing, and audiences) and both from improvising. Complete musicianship requires familiarity with both aural and literate sides of music - and it's a lot more fun. It's a revelation to find out you have a voice - that it's not just jazz players who get to have something to say. And there are an infinite number of styles or voices possible - it is the sum total of each individual's musical background, abilities, likes and dislikes. The style or styles or fusion of styles is up to you. What the book promotes is daring to experiment, invent, discover, play (in the sandbox sense), with music, with friends in real time. There are over thirty categories of games (Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, Accompaniment, Composition, Nontraditional Score, etc etc), over 500 games overall plus extensive explanatory and resource material. Jazz players have endless materials available to learn jazz. Nonjazz players (everyone else) now have a resource to know how to get started on the wondrous journey of creating one's own music. The result will be different for everyone. If you'd like to hear some of my personal samples (both very different), see my CD "Repercussions" (at CD Baby: AGRELL/MAZUNIK: Repercussions) or "Mosaic" (MS1158: MOSAIC - New Interpretations of Early Music, Duende Trio). I'd love to hear what you come up with using the ideas and approach in the book.

If you're interested in nonjazz improvisation and composition games, you might check out my new book Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians - Jeffrey Agrell 500+ nonjazz musical games for performers, composers, educators, and everyone else.

Here's a thought: All compositions start out as... improvisations.

Ways to compose... (that you might not learn in school) 1. Improvise. Not jazz (necessarily). Not necessarily on the piano. Start with a mood, a rhythm, a motif, an image. Try out all kinds of things: melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm. When something interesting comes along, stay with it a while, turn it up, down, sideways. 2. Listen. Listen to all sorts of music. Listen to kinds of music you have never heard before. If you listen to opera a lot, try country western. If you listen to Bach, try African drumming or a gamelan orchestra. Listen with wonder. Listen and see what you can steal - rhythm, timbre, extended techniques, form, atmosphere, harmonies. 3. Write the program notes first. Describe in words what the piece is like in a sentence. Then a couple. Then a paragraph. Then two, then four. Keep adding detail. Don't stop because you're not sure; write something, anything. You can always change it later. Keep going at all costs. Give it a name (a title). Then translate the text into notation, perhaps very generally at first: a key, a style, a mood, a tempo, an instrumentation, an amount of time or number of measures. Add detail later, the way a sculptor creates a statue. The detail comes last. Just get the general outline done first, very briefly. 4. Make a diagram. Something like a city skyline or mountain range can show how you want the piece to build, where the peaks are, how long or how fast you want to go up or down. Make squiggles, loops, jagged lines, playful doodles. Draw how you feel. If you allow yourself to precede music notation with other forms of graphic notation, you can get a lot of place quickly that only notation can't take you. Eventually you can start translating the squiggles into regular notation. But let your fancy off its lease for a while and see what happens. 5. Write lots of short stuff. Write quickly; throw a lot of it away. Grab for more paper and write some more. If you go for quality - i.e. try to write an immortal work for the ages - you'll agonize over every note and soon grind to a halt. Be playful. Write and write some more. Writer's block? No problem. Write whole notes. Lots of them. Write quarter notes. Play your piece or sing it at the top of your lungs. Have a good laugh at yourself, throw it away and keep writing. Read Joel Saltzman's "If You Talk, You Can Write." Just substitute "compose" for "write" all through the book. 6. Be honest. Write what you like to hear, what you would like to play - not what you think is going to impress someone else. That's a start....