Improvisation Practice: an Example

Here is an example of how I begin my improvisatory work for the week. My purpose is to take the tune “Fifths” (Sally Ann Morris, with a fine text by the Mennonite author and pastor Adam Tice, “If Jesus is come”) and practice it with my version of Thelonious Monk’s method as described by Mike Garson:

I continue working with the Mike Garson online masterclass, mentioned a few weeks ago. One of his ideas takes “Know the Tune” to a higher level. He quotes the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk: take one tune. Set the metronome (he suggests setting it to play on beats two and four of the measure, and if you are new to this, set a fairly slow tempo), and play the tune. For two hours. You can play whatever notes may happen; you certainly should vary it, add chords or countermelodies, move it to different keys, whatever occurs to you. But don’t lose the groove; stay with that click. For two hours.

It is often good to take the same tune again the next day: he had one of his students play “Autumn Leaves” in this manner for two weeks, two hours a day. One thinks of the disciplines of the Desert Fathers or the Zen masters.

Here, I play for barely over twenty minutes and without metronome, but it is enough to demonstrate the method. As I said in the linked essay, I cannot justify two hours of this, not with my other duties. Most days, I aim for a half-hour, more or less.

It is a tune with which I am not very familiar, so I must learn it. Thus, the example begins with me playing the tune in unison, in the written key (C minor), and singing along with solfege. Here is how it goes from there:

- 1’50” – start adding counterpoint
- 3’50” – a new key (G minor)
- 6’20” – and another (F minor). I did not intend it so at the time, but as it transpired, I stay in F minor for almost ten minutes, because I found it challenging to control the tune in this key.
- 8’35” – becoming more free
- 13’30” – quieter
- 14’50” – to F major (sort of). I like this passage.
- 15’40” – time to head back for tonic: transition
- 16’45” – Tonic. C minor.
- 17’50” – what jazzmen would call the “Head” – a simple playthrough of the tune very much in the manner in which I “started” (that is, about the two minute mark when I began adding counterpoint). Once through, then:
- 18’15” – Coda. It ends up rather big and dissonant.


It follows the pattern that Mike Garson suggested: I have to work through some of my more standard ways of playing such things, but it eventually starts to become more interesting, perhaps around the eight minute mark. By the end, I have discovered things about this tune I would not have expected, such as the F major passage (14’50”) and the rather harsh coda.

Some of this may end up in Sunday’s prelude improvisation. For now, I am not making any specific intention about it.

I have more to say on this: another day.

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The text and tune are available in Adam Tice’s fine collection “Stars like grace” (2013) They are not in Hymnary.org, which implies that they have yet to appear in any hymnals.