Improvisation

Manouche jazz belongs to the jazz family and thereby it means that a lot of room is left to improvisation. A good Gypsy player not only masters the pompe accompaniment, can play the themes, bue he can also improvise. I will detail what improvisation is, I reckon everyone has an idea about what it is.

Manouche jazz is an oral tradition that is mostly played visually on the guitar neck. This is the reason why I have chosen to display diagrams that represent the neck to indicate melodic lines "skeletons".

Improvisation is closely related to the chords used in the chart. Often, improvisation starts by visualizing the chord on the neck (depicted in yellow whereas the notes are in red).

This section will probably not be developed extensively, but it will at least cover the following needs, because many people ask about those:

- Dominant 7th chords (1st part, 2nd part)
- Minor 6th chords
- Major 6th chords
- Rhythm changes

A few advices

Improvisation is a way to communicate: a good improvisation is an improvisation where the musician has a story to tell and surprises to come with. A good improvisation cannot be assessed in terms of note throughput. The best advices I can give you about this are:

- Listen, listen and listen again to other musicians: all the answers to the questions you ask are usually in the records you already have. Impregnate yourselves with that material.
- Know the chart inside out: never should a chord surprise you. You should be able to hear the piece in your head.
- Sing either in your head, or loud, upon the chart played in your head.
- You should be able to play the chords sequence by heart, without any help. The chords sequence should sound logical and obvious to you.
- You could also start woarking the arpeggios on each chord of the song.
- Then and only then will you be able to start improvising.

Cheers up!