When I was looking through some easy classical piano anthologies for examples to illustrate the “I’ve Got Rhythm…” article , I was struck by how much repetition, melodic as well as rhythmic, the tunes contained. I knew there would be plenty of combinations of two phrases – ABAB, ABBA, etc., but I wasn’t prepared for the number of pieces (or sections of pieces) that were built on a single rhythmic pattern. I’m always trying to drive home the point that less really is more if you want to create a memorable tune but I don’t think I’ve ever suggested sticking to a single rhythm.<\/p>\n
Once the beginner improviser has absorbed a feeling of phrase length, the next challenge is to strike a balance\u00a0 between repetition and variation: too much repetition is boring – sorry Schubert! – while too much variation will quickly lose the listener. The problem is that, if you’re going to repeat a phrase, you have to remember it.<\/p>\n
A good way to work on memory is to create tunes four phrases long, in which the first idea is played three times and then a different idea is used for the fourth phrase, rounding off the tune. Actually, this is a very common structure in melodic construction, although the fourth phrase is often an extension of phrase three rather than a new idea. Lots of ‘Blues’ use this idea. In fact, once you begin to look for it, it crops up all over the place!<\/p>\n
The next stage is to to improvise using two or three phrases ABAB, AABB, ABAC, ABBA, etc.. A really extravagant use of resources, apparently! :>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was looking through some easy classical piano anthologies for examples to illustrate the “I’ve Got Rhythm…” article , I was struck by how much repetition, melodic as well as rhythmic, the tunes contained. I knew there would be plenty of combinations of two phrases – ABAB, ABBA, etc., but I wasn’t prepared for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improvisation","category-music-education","tag-composition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}