About this course: Learn the basic concepts of improvisation from Gary Burton, one of the most renowned improvisers in the jazz world, including the mental, melodic, and harmonic processes that contribute to the instinctive skills that an improviser puts to use when taking a solo. While many people are fans of jazz and understand that musicians are often “making up” the notes they are playing during a performance, most people—often including musicians, themselves, who are beginning to learn improvising—aren’t clear about what exact processes take place to enable this to happen. The purpose of this course is to introduce the basic concepts of modern improvisation and how to go about mastering the different musical and mental skills involved. Course author Gary Burton codifies a sought-after approach to improvisation that has been at the core of Berklee College of Music's curriculum for decades. Students who complete this course will know what to practice and how to practice the various aspects of improvising, in addition to understanding how the improviser spontaneously communicates to the listeners through their musical creations.
Taught by: Gary Burton
| Level | Intermediate |
| Commitment | 6 weeks of study, 3-6 hours/week |
| Language | English, Subtitles: Chinese (Simplified) |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
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Awesome course, Awesome professor. All of the material shared in this course was really useful to me, I totally recommend it to anyone who wants to improve his improvisation skills.
It was productive and interesting time. I learnt a lot of new things and got much fun improving my improvisation skills.
Cite from course: You will have plenty to keep you busy in the months ahead.
The lectures are very short but convey all the necessary information to solve the peer-graded assignments. And the assignments are really what this course, and musicianship in general is about: practice. Doings the assignments involves recording yourself playing, and analysing a few songs on paper. Depending on your skill level the assignments may take you between 1-4 hours per week.
This is not a course for beginners. You should be able to play the melody of a jazz standard from a sheet, make sense of chords beyond simple major/minor, and ideally have some basic knowledge of music theory.
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Excellent course.