I’m currently working with a student whose knowledge of theory and playing is sound, but he finds himself uncomfortable when asked to play music with friends in a ‘jam’ setting. We’re working on various musical approaches that can help to alleviate his anxiety and I thought that one of the exercises I came up with might have generalized applicability.
Basically, I wrote half a page of music for him, with every other measure blanked out with rests. His job, and yours should you choose to try it, is to come up with improvisatory playing such that a listener could not tell that there were missing notes at all. Its not an exercise in creativity so much as it is in listening. As we play its important not just to remember which notes ‘work’ but what each note and rhythm we play ‘says’ in the given context of what we have already played.
Here is the page I made up, but you can feel free to take this idea and write your own guided pieces. I think the concept will help anyone trying to better understand the nuance to the idea that we can ‘play anything,’ when we improvise–because that phrase paralyzes a lot of people.
Happy playing!