Rhythm, Meter, and Pacing
One of the most important aspects of improvisation is to think about pacing, or the rate of speed at which stuff happens. A common issue in beginning improvisers is to play constantly, never letting the music “rest” or feel like it has “highs” and “lows.” To have effective pacing, we’ll want to both orient to the meter and have a bit of a plan for how the music will go.
Given our focus, we will avoid pitch variation: you can perform on a vocal “ta,” with clapping/tapping, or on a single tone on an instrument, as you and your instructor prefer.
First, let’s orient to the meter. The meter may be clear if you have an ensemble playing along with you. If so, just make sure you are feeling it—literally, as in able to move to the beat, the downbeat, and the beat division. If you’re improvising solo or with something more ambiguous, then use our familiar steps to set up an internal sense of meter.
Once you can feel the meter, you’re ready to come up with a plan for pacing. There’s lots of advice on the internet, so it may help to do a search for “improvisation pacing” and see what’s out there. Here’s some basic advice:
- Consider a few rhythms appropriate to the meter. Having some consistency in your rhythms—coming back to some of the same ideas over and over, perhaps on different beats—will usually help the improvisation feel “unified.”
- Plan out how many phrases are appropriate for the length of time you will be improvising, and consciously decide to make space between the phrases.
- Plan where the climax of the improvisation will occur, a basic idea of how you will make it feel like the climax, and a basic idea of how you’ll lead up to it.
Activity: Focus on pacing
Goal: Develop habits of planning out pacing in improvisation
Before you start: We encourage you to use your primary instrument, even though we are working on rhythm alone without pitch variation. Decide whether you will be improvising solo or with an ensemble. Though we are focusing on rhythmic improvisation without pitch, it’s fine if you have an ensemble performing some pitch-based backing music such as a twelve-bar blues to help you think about where you are in the improvisation.
Instructions:
- Decide on a meter type and tempo, and make sure you internalize these following the instructions above.
- Decide on one or two different basic short rhythms (just 1–3 beats each is great).
- Plan out a number of phrases appropriate to the amount of time you have. If you’re just starting out, one or two phrases is plenty. Consciously decide to make space between the phrases.
- Plan where the climax will occur, a basic idea of how you will make it feel like the climax, and a basic idea of how you’ll lead up to it.
- Take a deep breath, and perform your improvisation! We encourage you to use only rhythm, with no pitch variation.
- If time, come up with a plan for improvement, focused on rhythm, meter, and pacing. If your relationship to the meter was tenuous, make sure you are internalizing the meter and revising rhythms as necessary to make it clearer. If your improvisation felt like it wandered around aimlessly, make sure you leave space between ideas and plan out a dramatic shape. Then repeat, trying out your new plan.