Welcome to this blog! I would like to start by introducing my project 🙂

So..

I am currently in my final year of Master in Music focusing in violin playing. Part of my studies includes a personal project which I will be researching and going into more depth through the art of improvisation. Since my early years of violin playing (almost 18 years ago!) I have always been interested in the idea that one can be “free” and play on the instrument without worrying about reading the notes which the composer has written. Hence every now and then I used to get my violin out of the case and just try some things out.

In my family I am the third of four boys, and my older two brother after some years studying the piano switched to guitar, mainly focusing on jazz music. My younger brother took the drums! So home was always filled with some kind of music, majority being that of blues and jazz. Hence, my ear and my unconscious (sometimes conscious!) brain were always listening to top notch improvisations in these styles. Jazz harmony has always fascinated and was always impressed by the way jazz musicians develop their ears. “That’s a G major seventh flat 5; now it’s a Bb 13th with C at the bottom!” My type of ear training was mainly to identify whether it is a perfect or an imperfect cadence…

There has also been some moments where I got my violin and joined my brothers in a random Sunday jam! They used to give me some tips and I always got more interested in this “try playing around the dorian scale for now” or “make it more chromatic, use blue notes”. These were all terms which in my studies of classical music I have barely touched.

Around six years ago I started Uni in Malta with a Bachelors in Music. In my second year and third year I had credits which involved improvisation. Here I started to explore new possibilities in violin playing and getting more in depth of what improvisation is. The best way to start getting used to improv is to try and do it as much as possible.. Most of the classes involved call and response such as me answering a phrase which someone else has improvised and trying to built on it. This was also very helpful for me to start using my ears in a different way and be more alert to what is happening at that particular moment.

In my first year of masters at Trinity, one of the credits was Generative Music Techniques, which was very useful an inspirational for me to work on this personal project. In the GMT credit we discussed different forms of performances and scores, from a classical traditional music score of five staves to more complex graphic score or simply images which represent a piece of music. This led me to present an improvised piece for my exam built on images of scenery from Malta which turned out to be quite interesting for the audience too!

Talking of audience..in these last few years I have also noticed that improvisation creates a better connection with the audience as one can use the reaction of the listeners to use or re-use certain motives or techniques. Thus helps to give the impromptu piece of music life and a soul which attracts the audience.

In this project I would like to investigate more this form of art, and present it in a different way. My aim is to be able to improvise in different styles mainly in the four classical periods of music starting from Baroque going to Classical, Romantic and Modern music. Therefore during this journey I will write about these four styles and what makes them particular from one another and how to put these identifiable idioms in a new impromptu piece.

What will you be seeing in the coming blogs?

1. My research in Classical musicians improvising
2. Research in the four musical periods
3. Analysis of my daily 5 minute improvisations

and maybe talking about some interesting video I’ve seen on YouTube about improvisation.