The Song and the Improv

I hope it's all right to post again. I have been thinking a lot about what it means to improvise "on" a particular song. Traditionally it has meant that you must first play the song as written, and then use the chord progression from the song to build a new melody. My artistic experience, and performances I have seen and heard, are showing me that this is a limited approach and there are in fact many definitions to the word "on" in this context.

Take "La Cucaracha" from our Gabriela Montero video. The chord progression from the song is roughly | I | V | V | I |, creating a mirror. The improviser can build a solo using this concept of mirror. Melodic lines can be mirrored, a clave can be adjusted and mirrored, or a new chord progression can be created and then mirrored. The improviser could play anything as long as he could remember what he played, and then play it backwards! The chord form of La Cucaracha has many possibilites for extension. Instead of | I | V |, you can substitute | bV | bII |, using the tritone substitution, and then instead of | V | I | try | bVII | I |. And to "jazzify" it, try reversing the order of the first pair of chords, and make the first chord minor, turning it into a ii V.

So, now we have a chord progression that might not be recognizable to the audience as La Cucaracha, but it is born out of a deep focus on the song and an exploration of one of the song's central concepts. I think that certainly counts as "on" the song. Of course, it might not hurt to throw in some recognizable elements now and again, to make sure the audience is with you as you move through it.

I have also seen jazz pieces in which the composer has written solo changes that are different from the head changes -- the term is "through-composed." But the solo changes reference the head (or the head changes) in some way. They explore a new aspect of the song, but from start to finish the song sounds like one complete idea.

I think that as modern improvisers we need to seek out new ways to identify with our chosen songs. This is especially valuable when we are playing something that has been played many times. Within the different elements of the song -- rhythm, melody, harmony, lyrics, historical context, instrumentation -- we need to find what speaks to us, and it might not be the chord changes. We will craft an improvised "response" to the song, striving to make it artistically valid.