How do you improvise a countermelody? Listen to things in the music and respond: imitate, vary, fill in gaps. Which tracks, though? Start with music that is harmonically uncomplicated enough that you can predict where it’s going, but with enough rhythmic interest to give you something to react to. I do not recommend the blues for this purpose. It’s a popular strategy among well-meaning music educators, and I get why, but blues improvisation is not a beginner-level skill. So what should you use?
I like the first three and a half minutes of “God Make Me Funky” (or the shorter single version.) The tune is in E, and you can use Mixolydian, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic or any combination of the above. Try following and responding to the guitar.
In a similar vein, try “You’re Gettin’ A Little Too Smart” by the Detroit Emeralds. There are chord changes but they more decorative than functional. You can more or less just blow in E.
How about songs with more chords? You want your improvisation to accent the important chord tones.
“Seven” by Prince is mostly in A Mixolydian mode, alternating A and G. But there are also prominent E chords, which include G-sharp rather than the G-natural from A Mixolydian. You should have no trouble hearing the difference.
“Nobody Knows” by Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir is a step more complicated. It’s an open-ended loop of Cm, Eb, Ab, Fm and G7. All those chords come from C natural minor except G7, which includes the raised (natural) seventh characteristic of C harmonic minor. So make sure to raise B-flat to B-natural when the G7 chord comes around.
Leading tones are even more important to be able to hear and play in songs that use secondary dominants. The bridge of “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams is a gentle introduction to the idea. The song is in C, and the chords in the verses are C, F and G. Sing or play C major all the way through and you will be fine. When you get to the bridge, however, there’s a D chord on the line “you’ll toss around”. This chord is the V chord in the key of G, and it resolves to G on the line “and call my name”. The active ingredient in the D chord is the note F-sharp, the leading tone in G. This note is outside the key of C, and your improvisation will sound more musical if you highlight it, along with its resolution to G on the next chord.
For greater funkiness, try improvising over the James Brown version of the tune. He does it in G, so the secondary dominant in the bridge is A7, and you want to accent the out-of-key leading tone, C-sharp. This is more of an improvisation challenge, because James Brown uses bluesier harmony and funkier rhythms, but maybe these elements will inspire you more.
For a more complex chord progression, try “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free“, as recorded most famously by Nina Simone. Here’s my chart. The tune is in Bb and you can mostly play Bb major or Bb blues over it, but there are several secondary dominants too. In the first bar, there’s a D7 leading to G. In the seventh bar, there’s a C7 leading to F. There are also a couple of bluesy E°7 chords. You can intentionally aim for the out-of-key notes in these chords, or see if you can find them by intuition.
For another gospel-flavored tune with nice secondary dominants, I like “Baby’s In Black” from Brad Mehldau’s beautiful Beatles album. He plays it much slower than the Beatles do. I suggest looping the section from 1:55-2:20. The tune is in A, and the bridge section chords are F#m7, B7, D, E7. Notice that the B7, the secondary dominant in E, doesn’t resolve their right away; instead, the D-sharp in the chord resolves down to D.
Where to from here? Jazz standards like “Autumn Leaves” or “Blue Bossa”, Grateful Dead modal jams, or the blues once you are well enculturated. I have an extensive collection of one-chord grooves, but beginners can find them daunting because there is less structure to hold onto. More conventional songs give you some improvisational footholds.
Do I need to learn to identify chord changes by ear on the fly to improvise countermelodies?
You can learn the chords ahead of time; certainly when you are getting started, you will have to do that. Once you get familiar with the most common chord progressions, you will start recognizing them on first hearing. If I hear a tune that uses a common trope like I-vi-ii-V or bVII-IV-I, I don’t have to “figure the chords out” because I already know them inside and out.
Loving this theory series you’ve been publishing lately. And this is such a great lesson here: so many players miss out on the leading tone aspect of improvisation and just focus on what scales sound good over which chords. This is a way more useful way to dive in.
Curious why you recommend against improvising over blues changes since so much western popular music is based off of that I-IV-V 12-bar blues form. I get that there’s a lot of vocabulary that you need to absorb in order to sound like a credible blues player. But that’s also true of a lot of genres (country, bluegrass, rock) that rely on the same progression.
It seems to me that learning to improvise while targeting notes over variations on the basic I-IV-V is a useful skill that would serve a learning player well even if it doesn’t sound particularly genuine / authentic (and arguably more useful as a foundation for expression than having your teacher hand you a minor pentatonic and telling you that now you can play the blues). If nothing else, knowing how to build a melody around those chords helps you understand how the vocabulary work when you go back and start trying to learn it.
I am not opposed to anyone improvising over blues changes, but that is different from playing the blues. Sure, if you’re just learning how to follow changes, play I, IV and V organized into the twelve-bar form, that’s a perfectly fine pop, rock or country structure. But if you are going to think of it as the actual blues, with I7 and IV7, that is not something you should treat as the shallow end of the pool.
Yeah, that’s totally fair. And I also realized *after* I posted that comment that I hadn’t read your piece on the blues yet, which answered my question.