Improvisation Idea #1: Flamenco Sketches

2 minute read

I got the idea for this improvisation exercise from a couple of songs. Throughout a portion of all three songs, the piano plays the same vamp. It’s a nice vamp, and I thought that it would be fun to improvise over it. So I did, and it is.

You can play this entire vamp with your left hand while improvising over it with your right hand. Incidentally, you get some stride practice in too.

To break down the vamp, the G to C in the beginning of the vamp brings the feeling of the 5-1 root movement. Then we play a C maj 7 and an ambiguous chord. It’s ambiguous because it can be either one of two chords. It could be a Csus4, as we still hear the sound of the C that was played earlier in the bass register. Or, it could also be a rootless G7sus4, where you hear the G being played in the bass at the beginning of the next occurence of the vamp.

As a result, the vamp provides a very ambiguous, open sound that gives you a lot of space to improvise with. You can play the very consonant C major scale over it, or you can play basically any other scale; you can play more dissonant scales because of the tension the G7sus4 brings to the vamp.

This vamp is like a blank canvas; you have a lot of room to improvise without worrying about complex chord changes while also maintaining a sense of tonality and subtle harmonic movement. This allows the mind to be less preoccupied with chord changes, producing an isolated environment where you have the freedom to explore musical ideas as well as test out the sounds of different scales over an unvarying 5-1 progression.

Here is a quick clip of me tinkering around over this vamp. Notice how I don’t stay in the C major scale for too long and constantly shift scales, testing out each of their sounds. Even though the vamp doesn’t contain complex chord changes, you can still create tension and release through scale choice and even note choice in the consonant scale of C major.

Written on July 31st , 2020 by Chris Cheung