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When most people think of music improvisation, they think of Jazz greats from the 50’s such as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. This type of music improvisation usually involved a structured ‘song’, arranged by the composer. The difference between orchestral scores and s jazz scores is that jazz scores are open to the individual musician’s interpretation of the music. For instance, in an orchestral score an instruments individual part is written out note for note, and the pitches, rhythms and dynamics are adhered to strictly by the player. In a jazz score, the instruments individual part is usually indicated by a chord, and maybe a loosely followed rhythm. Some main melody parts are spelled out, with significant sections of the song left open to improvisation, or soloing. Where traditional orchestral performances will differ only slightly from night to night, a jazz performance is rarely duplicated.

Eventually, musicians of other genres began to pick up improvisational techniques from both jazz and blues players. Bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream would often drift into long, unstructured ‘jams’ during live sets. The band the Grateful Dead is well known for its freeform improvisations interludes, sometimes stretching a song for an hour or more. This new type of improvisation is devoid completely of any type of structure. Since rock and roll music is rarely written down, improvisations have become much more organic and intuitive. Every person in the band must be listening to every other person, and be able to anticipate chord changes, tempo changes, and overall changes in the mood of the music. Bands such as Phish and Galactic have taken this type of improvisation to new levels of complexity.

A band that I recently played in also used to do improvisational music, yet our style of jamming was a bit different than any other band that I have encountered. Often, when we would improvise on stage, we would just start playing and what sounded like a ‘song’ would come out. Our singer, Steve Janiak, could improvise words and melodies so well, it was hard to tell that he was making them up on the spot. The rest of us knew each other so well musically; we could improvise whole song structures that sounded like they were completely pre-planned. Eventually, we started recording these jams in our makeshift recording studio.

Here are two examples of the band ‘The PubSigs’ improvising music. Both of these songs where complete improvisations, with no pre planning what so ever. If it wasn’t for the magic of digital audio, nobody might have ever hear them again. Enjoy.

Half Drunk Limo Driver
Put Out the Warning

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