054: How to Improvise For Real, with David Reed

Today we're excited to welcome on to the show someone we were particularly hoping to feature as part of improv month: David Reed, the creator of Improvise For Real.

You may have heard of this popular method for learning to improvise and it's one of the few we feel is totally aligned with the ear-led approach we recommend at Musical U and which we've been talking about on this podcast lately.

In this conversation we talk about:

• David's own musical beginnings and two big pivotal moments - one which let him finally really enjoy the learning process and the other which involved totally reframing his mindset about how music fit into his life.

• We discuss the traditional approaches to music education and to learning improvisation - and the limitations these ultimately place on musicians.

• And we talk about how learning to improvise the right way can be like the difference between blindly following directions versus using Google Maps to immerse yourself and explore the world you're navigating in rich, clear detail.

This episode's going to be particularly useful for two groups of people. Those who feel like improvisation is kind of a side-topic, and are not necessarily particularly interested in it. We think you're going to discover you may have dramatically underestimated how learning to improvise could help you in music.

And those who are interested to improvise, and have maybe tried one or two ways before - and found themselves a bit bewildered or disappointed by the experience. David does a fantastic job of describing how learning to improvise should be and how rewarding and straight-up fun it can be if you approach it in the right way.

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Full Show Notes and Transcript: Episode 054

Links and Resources

• Improvise For Real

• The Rhythm of Success, with Steve Nixon

• How to "Just Play", with Nick Mainella

• An Ear for Jazz, with Brent Vaartstra

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