Improvising, Naturally

  There's a comfortable familiarity that starts to develop when you keep coming back to something.  You start noticing details and connections, you become more aware of the nuances and the complexities. For me, it happens with movies like Das Boot and Witness and The Day The Earth Stood Still which I've seen many times.  I now see the relationships between this character and that one in vivid clarity, I know where the lighting changes and the score kicks in and the unique style of editing during the action scenes. I know the font on the credits and the color temperature of the opening scene. 
  There is a quality of experience that is familiar, comfortable,  where you can let go and explore the details, experience the moment more fully and make creative connections.  It is a style of experience we aspire to when we're improvising music - we strive to let go and let the ideas flow and let the elegant connections happen naturally and let all the music and theory that we've studied so hard come shining through in a natural logic that defies the music theorists.

  There is this experience of "non-thought" when we're playing a simple song in a familiar key that is well within our ability to hear - the music just comes out directly and comfortably without calculation and guess-work.  It would be so nice to have that relaxed sense with more complex music and in all keys.  It is informative that we only tend to play at that level in the keys that we play in a lot.  No big surprise there, but the lesson is obvious and simple, that we should just play a lot in the other keys to get to that place.

This ASSIGNMENT  then, is spend about an hour doing this:
     Choose 20 tunes that you know really well ( at any level you're comfortable with -- could be Home on The Range, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Danny Boy, Sophisticated Lady or Giant Steps )  and sit down and play them all in the key of B.  If you're like me, the brain goes into a different mode when playing in an unusual key.  Make it a usual key for an hour and see what it does for your playing.  Are you closer to that place, you know the one?

Kenny Werner  -- Check out his book Effortless Mastery