Dave Frank lesson in improvisation: flow-phrase-breathe
It was my privilege recently to talk with jazz pianist Dave Frank. Dave has performed and taught jazz piano and improvisation (for any instrument) for 50 years, and continues to maintain an active roster of students around the world.
Dave created the Dave Frank School of Jazz. He also created hundreds of videos on his YouTube channel, including master classes on specific topics, such as improvisation. Dave’s YouTube channel is listed on our Jazzikology™ Music Tutorial resource page.
Dave’s view is that learning to improvise is, broadly speaking, a two part process. In the first part of the process, we learn musical elements, e.g., chords, voicings, scales, arpeggiation, extensions, chromaticism, musical phrase variation, how phrases relate, etc. In the second part, we learn improvisation concepts, e.g., elements of phrasing, moving toward actually making music. Naturally, working on those two parts of the process overlap in time.
OK, now let’s dive into the flow-phrase-breathe concept. approach, which Dave demonstrates in his YouTube video, “How to Improvise Jazz - Master Class 50”, which is one of many master class videos Dave has created. Dave says that this innate ability of improvisation is a gift from the universe that we should cultivate and enjoy. So here we go -> flow-phrase-breathe!
Flow - Dave encourages us to tap into our innate sense of flow, and to play groups of 4 swing 8th notes, with a slight accent on the first one. He explains that it helps at first to either sing or think to yourself, “slice of pizza, slice of pizza, slice of pizza pie,” while playing each group of 4 swing 8th notes, and stop playing and hold the note on “pie.”
Phrase - to learn phrasing, Dave recommends that you think of a phrase as a musical sentence that is part of a musical conversation, and that you start the flow with short (1 to 2 measure) phrases of swing 8th notes, then move up to medium (2 to 4 measure) phrases, and finally to longer (4 or more measure) phrases. Regardless of the length of the phrase, it is to end on a held note (pie) that completes a musical sentence.
Breathe - the phrase we created using our sense of flow can be framed around the musical conversation by pausing to listen to the ring of the last note of a phrase. Now for the mystical part - pausing to breath after a phrase allows the last ringing note to tell you when to begin the next phrase, and also informs what to play in your next phrase. According to Dave, you will intuitively know how long to breathe/rest, and that we shouldn’t go too quickly into the next phrase.
He demos the process for the standard tune Autumn Leaves at 11:45 in the video, and narrates the phrase and breath concepts as he is playing.
Dave is a very positive person, and he emphasizes that “THIS WILL WORK” for all of us! He also provides some inspiration remarks at the end of the video master class.
Another resource I found helpful is Dave’s four part set of YouTube videos on Beginning Jazz Improvisation, which are:
Part 1 - Chord Mapping
Part 2 - Improv Over Basic Chord Progressions (which again illustrates the flow-phrase-breath approach)
Part 3 - Adding Arpeggios and Extensions
Part 4 - Using Chromatics
Dave also published two instructional books on learning to improvise, which are The Joy of Improvisation, Book 1, and The Joy of Improvisation, Book 2. (I, myself, am currently working my way through Book 1.)
I want to thank Dave for graciously spending an hour talking with me, and I hope that my readers find Dave’s materials helpful.
You can learn more about Dave at his website. You can also log into the weekly Zoom salon that Dave holds every Saturday afternoon from 2-4 p.m., Eastern (New York) time, for which the admission fee is only US $5.00. Dave can be reached directly here.
Happy playing!
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