8 Tips for Improvising on a String Instrument
Being able to improvise on your string instrument is a level that most musicians – even those just starting out – hope to achieve. It is impressive. It is jaw-dropping. And it can be life-changing.
Musical improvisation is the ability to compose music in the moment. There is no preparation, no months of practice, and no notes on the page. It is simply feeling the music and communicating those feelings through your instrument.
Have you ever seen someone on the stage, eyes closed, swaying as if the melodic tones coming from their instrument were literally flowing through the body? Sometimes it is a piece that is memorized, sure. But, improvisation – primarily among jazz musicians – can sound amazing. Never the same as the last time it was played and it won’t sound the same for the next listener. Musical improvisation is like handcrafted composition.
Everyone can benefit from learning how to improvise – including string instruments. Every artist develops his or her own style that stands out from the rest. And, improvising can help you develop your own musical voice.
Here are 8 tips to help you improvise on a string instrument.
1. Just Start Creating Your Own Variations
It may feel awkward and you may not feel like you are doing at all what you should be doing. And you may even feel a bit silly. All of that is ok. In order to learn to musically improvise, you have to start somewhere.
Music teaches us to be rigid, sticking strictly to the notes on the page, the tempo, and so on. In classical music, there generally is no room for creativity. So, this is where you take a chance and try it. Choose the melody of one of your favorite pieces or one you have memorized. Then play around with it, change it up, add to it, change the phrasing and bowings, and even add a trill.
2. Switch Up Your Scales
You know your scales and have practiced them into memorization, likely in the standard and steady eighth-note fashion. What would happen if you changed things up a bit? What would it sound like if you added your own patterns and rhythms to the scale? Try it.
This is an easy way to get comfortable with improvising using a family of notes you are familiar with. If you’d like to take it a step further, consider adding a drone note on loop. Play your variations against it and watch the magic unfold.
3. Scramble Bowings
Switch up the bowings that you would normally use. For instance, reverse the bowing on a familiar phrase, replace downs with ups, and group some slurs in ways you are not used to. While this is not necessarily the real definition of improvising, it is, nonetheless, getting you to try playing things on your own – rather than what is written on the sheet music in front of you.
Remember, this is a process and it is going to take some time.
4. Try New Things
You have been learning how to properly play your instrument from a structured viewpoint. But there is so much more out there for you, musically, if you just experiment a little. Sometimes you have to bend – or even break – the rules to find who you are as a musician.
Give yourself permission to manipulate the strings. You may find that you can make your string instrument sound like a variety of other instruments. And you may even find the right tone that sounds silly or awful. But you won’t know until you try.
Experiment with boundaries. Experiment with technique.
5. Get Comfortable with Your Fingerings
To improvise, you are going to need to be able to make it through various notes easily. You are feeling the music and you are moving with it. So your fingers need to be able to flow, too. The more comfortable you are with fingerings, the easier it will be to just play with feeling rather than thinking of fingerings. Practice tough fingering combinations and the rest will come easy.
6. Challenge the Metronome
When learning how to play music, you were likely taught to stay in time with the metronome. That is, after all, what a metronome is there for, right? What would happen if you didn’t stay in time? What would happen if you slowed down a bit? Sped up? Maybe slowed and then caught up?
This lesson in time-feel allows you to take control of the music. It allows you to tell your own version of the story. Practice this with songs you are familiar with and listen to how you have the ability to change the entire feeling of the song.
7. Jazz Improvisation
To give you a better feel for jazz improvisation – when you are ready – think of swinging triplets. You want the music to swing and carry you, so it needs to have that upswing. This looks like having the first two notes of the triplet tied together.
Practice altering your bowings so that you can swing with the beat of the music. Feel it in your body and let the bow do the work.
8. Make Use of those Arpeggios
When you learned to play music, you were taught scales and arpeggios. They are, of course, the foundation of music. It only makes sense that when you begin learning to play creatively through improvisation that you would do so making use of the arpeggios.
Arpeggios are chords in a simpler form or broken down. You can begin playing various arpeggios in a sequence of common chord progressions and begin to watch what happens. Slowly you will begin to hear a melody start forming.
Conclusion
Music is meant to be fun and enjoyable. And it is also meant to be a way for you to get your creative juices flowing. Don’t be afraid to step away from the structured piece of sheet music and get lost in your own improvised melody. You may just surprise yourself with what you create.