Improv – Baroque Style

It’s the time of year when you start getting more gigs. People like to have live Christmas music played at events and as ambiance. It’s not December yet, but starting in October, everyone wants to fill up their December calendar. They might just call you. It’s a great time to be a musician.

Simple Music

One nice thing about all these gigs is that the music is usually relatively simple. You don’t have to practice much to get them to performance level, which is nice, because there can be a large volume.

Sometimes, though, you want to play something a little harder than what’s available. That’s when it’s good to know how to add some sparkle to the pieces, the way the people of the Baroque period did it – with ornamentation.

Ornamentation

It’s rather ironic that we can decorate Christmas music with ornaments just like we would a Christmas tree. On a tree, ornaments make everything sparkle and look impressive. In music, you can use ornaments to change the feel of the music, making it sound more impressive and fancy. You can use the musical ornaments to emphasize notes (that usually go with words) or just to create a cool ending to a phrase.

The steps below show how to do this on paper. After about a year, you’ll be able to do parts of this without having to write it down.

Step 1

Look at the music and pay attention to the phrase endings – the cadences, to be musically correct. Compare the phrase endings with this list – grace notes, trills, grupettos (turns), mordents, arpeggios, and glissandos.

Step 2

Add ornaments to the phrase endings in the following order:

1. Grupettos
2. Mordents
3. Grace Notes
4. Trills
5. Glissandos (For melodies, leaps of a 5th or more, better on a wind instrument, sometimes sounds cheesy on a piano.)
6. Arpeggios (For block chords, arpeggiate them, piano only.)

I have this order for a reason. I start with the hardest thing to add and move to the easiest thing to add. I only add one ornament per phrase ending and I don’t add an ornament to every single phrase ending. Just the ones that jump out at me.

Step 3

There’s a very important note in each phrase. One of my old teachers called it the sunshine note. It’s the emotional apex of the phrase. If it’s a longer note, add a mordent or a grace note to it.

If there’s a word that you really want to highlight, add a grace note or mordent to that note, too.

Jean-Pierre Rampal once said that a grace note is like a flower pot on a window sill. What notes or words need a flower pot?

Step 4

Play through your new ideas. Did you overdo it? If there are some phrases where there’s more than one ornament, pay extra attention. Does it sound good? You may have to pick and choose what you want to subtract and you may want to add something here or there.

Becoming Fluent

After you’ve done this for a year or two, you won’t have to plan your ornaments ahead of time. You’ll just intuitively know where to add them. Your brain will go through this 4-step process, but it will happen in an instant without you realizing it.

In your head, you’ll go through the list in Step 2 backwards. Easiest first. You’ll find yourself just adding the glissandos or arpeggiating chords without thinking about it. A month or two later, you’ll add a trill, grace note, or mordent without thinking about it. Grupettos might take an extra year or two to be able to add without planning ahead of time.

Practicing This Skill When It’s Not The Holidays

If you know you’ll be doing a lot of Christmas gigs, it’s a good idea to practice the steps above until you can do them intuitively, even in June. If you’re like me and don’t want to play Christmas music in the summer, find a hymnal (not an affiliate link) or a folk song book (affiliate link). Look in thrift stores for folk song books. I find them for a dollar at thrift stores all the time.

You can do this once or twice a week instead of tone work, as described in “Other Options” here.

Listen

Another good tool to learn how to do this is to listen to symphonic metal bands, such as Trans-Siberian Orchestra or Epica. The lead guitars do this kind of improv all the time. By listening to it, you’ll be able to simplify it in your head and do it more naturally.

Conclusion

If you do the steps listed above, listen to examples, and practice at it all year around, you’ll find yourself doing this process intuitively. You’ll have a bunch of fun doing it and it will help you stay in the moment during your easier gigs.