Scat!
After you’ve sung the first chorus with the lyrics, you can choose to use the second chorus for an improvisation. In other words, you will be practicing instant composing; you will be doing what is known as ‘scatting’. How do you do that?
To improvise, there are 2 easy ways and 1 that takes a lot of understanding the music theory plus the ability to play an instrument (preferably the piano) really well. In How To Sing Jazz, we focus on the easy ways. However, there’s another alternative to the hard way. You’ll find it in our course”How to improvise”.
First, you can use the melody as a starting point. You sing the original melody, but use scat language instead of words. And after that, it’s just a matter of making variations to that melody!
The second way to start improvising is to use existing solos. In other words, you imitate a solo, and put that into scat language. If a whole solo is a bit much, you can just take your favorite parts.
In this way, you will sharpen your ears and before you’ll know it, you’ll have million-dollar ears!
Wanna know more about the ‘scat’ language itself? Watch this video.
Imagination and a feel for tensions
Improvising can be done effectively on almost any level. Two famous painters, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jackson Pollock, were both able to captivate an audience; yet using very different skills. Imagination and a feel for tensions play a big part in improvisation. You may think you have to create a complete painting when improvising, but that only holds true when your improvising alone. When you’re being accompanied by other instruments, the setting is already there. Now you can think of trees, characters, benches and such to place in that setting.
Always remember: when playing together, you are adding something to what’s already there! It is much like cooking! Taste it first (listen to what the music that’s already played by the other musicians) and then add what would make it taste even better, or add nothing when it’s already perfect: silence is an ingredient as well!
You can compare your improvisation to storytelling. You use a certain language, you build upon melodic and rhythmical lines or patterns – the sentences, you pay attention to your timing and you work towards a climax. All this, rooted in the harmony of the song. There’s much more on improvisation in Songbird’s free theory guide!
For ideas and inspiration: check out great instrumentalists like Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Buddy DeFranco.
For some people, improvising is simply too much or not what they desire. Variations will do nicely for them. Not varying the theme at all is an option, but even little rhythmical variations will give your rendition of a song some character and uniqueness and will help to keep the audience engaged. A perfect option is to ‘simply’ copy solos or variations on the theme by famous singers or instrumentalists.
Whatever fits you best and whatever make you happy! This is a great way to begin your improvisational efforts anyway. There’s no harm in copying others, but copying a complete rendition of one singer isn’t very creative. Combine things you like from different artists and you’re creating something new.
There are loads of famous jazz singers that never ever improvised scat solos.
So you really don’t have to in order to be a jazz singer. It’s an option.
The other way, the way to improvise that takes a lot of understanding of music theory, is only suited for singers that also play an instrument. Preferably the piano. Preferably on a high level. The best vocal improvisers almost always do, by the way. The theory guide of Songbird gives you the necessary info on scales to use on chords, etc.
However, even most famous vocal improvisers learn their improvisations as a whole, or as ready to use phrases, by heart. Very few can truly improvise on par with instrumentalists on the spot.
Assignment
Try to sing along with your favorite improvisation(s), either by vocalists or instrumentalists.
