Since the beginning of the academic year I have been attending creative workshop sessions that have revolved around experimenting with ideas through collaboration and developing creativity as a practice. The specific piece I will be focusing on is our latin groove piece from our November to December term. Over the course of 5 sessions we explored how the different elements of a band can interact on paper and then how those interactions work in practice, everyone would bring something different to the table, then once shared with the group these ideas could be changed and evolved to fit the music. We also explored how improvisation can influence the creation of music and as a Jazz musician I applied my knowledge of harmony and improvisation into creating ideas for the sessions.

The main focus at the start of these sessions was to bring our own ideas and share them with the group. This immediately challenged our creative abilities and we had to learn to allow ourselves to run with ideas, regardless of whether we could create better ones eventually. In the first session Keano, our pianist began playing a latin inspired piano part, using the chords Em9 F9 B7(#5 #9) as seen in example 1. This immediately gave the piece a jazzy feel and laid down the foundations for experimenting with ideas over the top of this. Harry Preston, our drummer accompanied this with a latin inspired drum groove and one of our guitarists Ioan began to experiment with lead line ideas over the top of this groove. By quickly choosing a simple chord progression we were able to collaboratively bounce off that initial idea and begin to add ideas from other instrumentalists to turn that into a groove with melodies and improvised lines.

In our second session with these fundamentals set down we began to explore how improvisation could affect each other’s work. This personally challenged me to think outside of the box, we had 3 chords and I wanted to work a catchy melodic line over the top of these. So we began experimenting as a band with the groove and what could work over the top of this. After improvising a few ideas I finally came across one that I thought worked well as a leading melodic line for the piece. Bringing my Jazz background to the group I labeled this the ‘head’ of the piece. After watching Jo Jo Mayer’s (2019) ‘A Plea for Improvisation’ Ted talk, I started wondering how the ‘mistakes’ of improvisation could become new interesting ideas. This led us to expanding the structure of the piece adding new sections that used different rhythms and riffs, taken from the accidents of improvising in a band setting. 

In our third session, we experimented with creativity around the form of the song. We tried creating a new section this session, repurposing the chords from the head and changing the rhythms. I then decided to compliment this with a staccato guitar riff, using a montuno rhythm, which can be seen in example 3. I was inspired by the drum groove and some suggestions from our teacher James Squire, this part helped to break down the piece and give it a new feel. We then worked on developing the bridge using descending 2 5 1s from D to A, which gave the piece some harmonic variation and allowed us to create the right kind of sound to fit the latin jazz aesthetic we were aiming for. Harry then began to experiment with adding a drum fill section led by improvisation, to support this the rest of the band decided to play stabs on the 1, 2, 3+ and 4+ of every other bar, to create a call and response feel, and to inspire Harry with ideas from his drum fills. We were the challenge of having to put all these sections together, this required a lot of communication and general band awareness, Harry was able to que the break down with the hi-hat, and then for the other section we decided to experiment with various amounts of bars, using eye contact to cue the rest of the changes.

In our 4th session we created another breakdown section, however this time it had a more free improvised quality to it, with a guitar solo and the montuno riff played underneath, before resolving back into the head, to lead the piece out. This really gave the piece that element of jazz improvisation we were looking for and allowed us to experiment on the spot. I brought my own jazz knowledge and vocabulary to use within the solo and I was listening to James’s piano part and Harry’s drum solo to influence what I played in my solo. As a band we the agreed on the structure length, we settled on an free improvised piano part at the start led by James before beginning with 2 rounds of the A section/head which was 32 bars in total, then 8 bars of the Montuno/break then 16 bars of the A again, then to 16 bars of the B, to 8 bars of the unison rhythm and then another 16 bars of Unison rhythm plus the drum fills. After this we went back into the montuno break with a guitar solo for 32 bars then back to the head for a final 16 bars.

In our final session on this piece we added a vocal line, with our vocalist Maddie. We start the session with a discussion around how a vocal line could work into the piece, over and around how we had made it so far, we settled on it accompanying the melody and creating space for Maddy to create some improvised lines over the top of various sections which can be heard in example 6.

In conclusion, I have personally found developing my improvisation skills in a group setting the most useful part of this collaborative process. It has helped me to visualise composition in a way that forefronts the ideas and through group discussion contextualises and places these ideas into a structure and song. As a band we developed the structure in a way that allowed us to play freely and in tune with one another. Moving forward I want to develop this conversation around improvisation and experimentation further, and develop ways in which this can influence the arrangement of songs.

Bibliography

Mayer, JJ. (November 2019). A Plea for Improvisation [Online] published by TEDx Available at:

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