Improvisation in Music by Gertrude Price Wollner

[feelingfresh]

Ways Toward Capturing Musical Ideas and Developing Them.

This book was published in 1963. Do you think any member of The Velvet Underground read this book? Afterall, they were experts at improvisation. The author was a New Yorker, as well.

Improvisation, the art of capturing and playing spontaneous musical ideas, sounds as if it could not be taught. But it is being taught. Given the proper guidance, it can be self-taught.

Gertrude Price Wollner, a well-known teacher of music, offers amateurs and students an entertaining guide on ways to capture these spontaneous ideas and feelings in sound and rhythm, ways to develop and express them completely. And she prepares her readers to use the basic laws of music as expressed through improvisation and as applied to the playing of all music, simple or advanced. She shows how the same principles govern improvisation of a simple accompaniment to a folk song, making music for dancers on demand, making your own free improvisations, or playing the music of any composer from Bach to Bartók.

Chapters are devoted to developing understanding through rhythm, melody, counterpoint, harmony, form, and imagination, and through the blending of all these elements. The book presents the simple techniques and basic concepts of improvisation in such a way that physical and mental facility develop automatically as the reader progresses and has the fun of trying experiments. The author's approach is always toward freedom, toward helping the reader capture the genuine flash, express it, and develop it. Spontanaeity, the essence of all improvisation, can be achieved only through the firm discipline of knowing the basic intermediate steps. With countless examples and entertaining things to do, this is an enjoyable and informative introduction to the inner-workings of music-making.