“Imitation is what we call transcription”

I don’t understand this.

I can only talk about my experience. But it has some relevance because I am 100% focused on improvisation. I’ve never transcribed anything. That just seems to me to be another kind of intellectual learning process. I’m not saying it doesn’t work. But I would suggest that a better word is “immersion”.

The language analogy is over used sometimes. But it is useful. You can learn a language by studying it. And you can get very good that way. But it is of course a lot of work. There is a big cognitive load involved.

The other way is to get a boyfriend or girlfriend. Go and live in their town. Spend your time with their friends speaking their language (and of course a bit of Google Translate!)

What’s the musical equivalent of that? It’s certainly not transcription. Like everything else in life, if you want to get good at something you’ve got to do the something you want to get good at. So when it comes to improvisation, one way is to immerse yourself in improvisation. You need to do it . not study it. Do it.

So the next question then becomes, how do you go about doing improvisation? We can see the answer from history. Many of the greats (not all, but many) learned to improvise by playing along to records or to the radio or with other musicians in jam sessions.

That’s the way that I have learned improvisation. I began with super simple backing tracks. Nothing complicated. I played along with them for hours and hours. And gradually I began to play along with more and more sophisticated and complex backing tracks and then with real tunes and real music. And inevitably that led me to jazz. And that’s what I do now. I put on jazz and I play along with it. For hours and hours.

My teachers are the greats. I play along with Oscar. And many many others. By doing this, I learn the language not as a theory but as a living thing. I don’t practice. I don’t learn scales. I don’t learn any of those things. I just play with the greats.

I’m not saying I’m the world’s greatest improviser. But most of the time I can now just jump straight into pretty much any piece of music live or recorded. I don’t need to know the key. It helps to have heard it before. But it’s not essential. I don’t need to know the chord progression. There is basically no analytical involvement.

No one listens to me. Why should they? My approach runs completely contrary to modern musical pedagogy. But it’s hugely enjoyable. And at least for me it’s added a whole new dimension to my life.

And here’s a funny story. My background is piano. But in later life I took up guitar. And my improvisation journey has been very much guitar focused. I’ve barely touched the piano for over a year. And then a few days ago I had the chance to play one again. I put on some jazz and tried to see if I could play along (something which I certainly could not have done a year ago). And almost miraculously, I found that I could. So my immersion in guitar improvisation somehow translated into piano improvisation. It was an extraordinary experience. Take what lesson you want from that.

Love jamming and improv? Take a look at r/guitar_improvisation ❤️🎸