One of the wonderful things about playing blues harmonica is learning how to improvise over a 12 bar blues or some other structure that becomes familiar to us. Improvising is related to being creative, and “being creative” becomes a problem for some people, mostly because they do not believe that they are creative. Or that they are sometimes, and other times they are not, and have no control over the process.

So they get all hung up about being creative, being able to improvise, don’t believe they can, and then a funny thing happens. They are unable to see that they are improvising all the time and there is no reason for this to stop just because they have a harmonica in their mouth.

Yesterday I ran across an article on creative writing that gave me a new way to see this process of improvisation, or being creative with music. It has to do with realizing that “creativity” is the wrong word. Once we start using the right words, it is amazing how clear things can be.

The article was written by Eugene Schwartz, a copywriter. Copywriters have to be “creative” on demand. So does a good blues harmonica player.

It is a long article, so I am quoting the most important two paragraphs. Here they are:

“What is creation? Creation is a lousy word. It’s
a lousy word that confuses what you really do to
perform a simple little procedure. Creation
means create something out of nothing. In the
beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. Okay,
only God can do that. We can’t do that: We’re
human. So let’s throw creation out, and let’s
talk about connectivity. What you are trying to
do is connect things together. You’re trying to
practice connectivity. You’re trying to get two
ideas that were separate in your mind and
culture before, and you are trying to put them
together so they are now one thought. You want
something new to come out, but new doesn’t mean
it never existed before, it means never joined
before. New – in every of discipline – means
never joined before.

You’ve got to trick that conscious mind because
that conscious mind isn’t big enough to connect
all these widespread phenomena. So what you do
is you take your conscious mind and you focus it
on making a new cup of coffee! That holds it
there, and then ideas can kind of bleed into the
back of your mind and come into the front of
your mind.”

Eugene then goes on to insist that we can turn ourselves into idea machines by just plain working at it, practicing techniques that anyone can practice. The more you practice, the more ideas you get, the easier the whole process becomes.

The dance of improvisation for me has always been about going from structure, melody, to a surprise version of element of the structure or melody. Back and forth. How this happens, I don’t know. I just know it can and will happen.

When I get someone to believe that they can surprise themselves with new musical ideas while they play, and they learn some way to distract their thinking mind at the right time, they start improvising.

I believe that learning to improvise music, to jam, to be “creative” while playing music is a natural ability that we uncover, and that we all have it.

Getting better at improvising it is a process of learning new ways to trick the conscious mind to get out of the way. Getting into the body through conscious breathing helps a lot. Getting the body grounded in the pulse of the music helps a lot. Physically relaxing helps a lot. A tightly focused conscious mind usually results in tight muscles somewhere. Relax those muscles and some part of your mind opens up at the same time and surprises you with new connections of musical notes, things to say.

And if you don’t believe you are “creative”, maybe the best thing to do for a while is to stop using the word creative, and disconnect it from the idea of improvising. Improvising is making new connections.

I hope these ideas inspire you to approach improvising music in new ways. You may be surprised at what you find.

I hope so!