Students will learn the basics of jazz harmony, melody, and rhythm and will learn how to improvise in a group setting. The emphasis of the Beginning Improv Workshop is to become comfortable with improvised jazz.

UC Jazz Improv

The Improvisation Workshop is for beginning students new to jazz. Musicians of all instruments, with or without solo or improvisation experience and jazz background, are welcome. Those interested should possess technical skill on their instruments at a level at least comparable to an advanced fourth-year high school student and must have good sight-reading abilities. Students will learn the basics of jazz harmony, melody, and rhythm and will learn how to improvise in a group setting. The emphasis of the Beginning Improv Workshop is to become comfortable with improvised jazz.

UC Jazz Improv

Jazz improvisation is the process of spontaneously creating fresh melodies over the continuously repeating cycle of chord changes of a tune. The improviser may depend on the contours of the original tune, or solely on the possibilities of the chords' harmonies. It has been said that the best improvised music sounds composed, and that the best composed music sounds improvised. Composed music and improvised music may seem to be opposites, but in Jazz they merge in a unique mixture. Improvisation exists in almost all music - whilst the term is most frequently associated with melodic improvisation as found in jazz. Duke Ellington said: "You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it."

Typically in a jazz piece, the "head" (the song's melody along with any backing harmony) is played once by the musicians and sometimes repeated. After one musician has finished improvising, another will begin, and no instrument is forbidden from improvising. A repetition of the head will usually end a jazz piece.

Jazz improvisation is the process of spontaneously creating fresh melodies over the continuously repeating cycle of chord changes of a tune. The improviser may depend on the contours of the original tune, or solely on the possibilities of the chords' harmonies.

Duke Ellington: "A common misconception about Jazz improvisation is that it's invented out of the air."

This notion may exist because many small Jazz groups do not read music when they perform. Jazz players will choose phrases that seem to be preordained so you intuitively know where they are going, even though it's being created at the instant you are hearing it.

The musicians are actually spontaneously creating a very intricate form of theme and variation; they all know the tune and the role of their instrument. The guitar, piano, bass and drums, basically provide the rhythm and harmony over which the soloist will create improvised variations. The structure is flexible so that the soloist may venture in various directions depending on the inspiration of the moment.

"In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammar and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others." Wynton Marsalis