Improvisation In Music

I know a couple dozen songs learned perfectly by ear, but if I'm being honest, it's really not anything difficult to learn. To learn by ear, you listen for patterns, and get the general idea of the song, and if you find any fills or licks that you can't figure out or look up, then improvise it! That's the beauty of music - improvisation, you can improvise so much in the musical world and the trick to it, is to make it sound similar so if you've always wanted to learn 'that one song' just improvise! Even if it's dialed down to the simplest version of the song possible, go for it, there's no wrong answers!

Improvisation has become familiar to me, especially when converted to a different instrument, for example, I sometimes play for the church youth group but I'm not behind the kit, oh no, I'm playing a cajon! How in tarnation does one convert a drum track to a cajon??? Good question, I'm not 100% on it yet, but here's what I've got down. . . can you guess? Improvisation! You just make it up on the spot! Seriously, there are only two available notes when it comes to the cajon, bass drum, and snare drum, that's the extent of it. "How do I play the hi-hat pieces?" I wondered, you just play softly on the bass drum section and accent the note when you want to play a bass note! That took me a long time to understand. "How do you crash on the breakdown from bridge to chorus?" You don't. "What about the toms?" That's actually pretty funny. There's not a ton of options when it comes to a cajon, so when someone asks you to solo, you're just kinda sitting there doing a regular beat, and if your bandmates ask for you to play something more complicated and fun, you really can't, all your cards are on the table!

All of this self taught me how to improvise when you don't know something on stage, it's a necessity for musicians to learn. I only recently realized that you can improvise a simple beat on a complicated song and slowly build up from it until you know the song. It goes for anyone, if you're a vocalist and feel like you might forget a lyric or two or even a whole sentence, improvise a new sentence or a couple words that could go with the song and that you can remember, sure, it isn't the song lyrics, but it saves you from mumbling! Although this post is directed towards musicians, try to find room for improvisation in your life!

~ Levi, the weirdo