Modal improvisation and drones

Hello friends,

In today’s episode, I would like to talk to you about modal improvisation and the use of a drone

In music a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece.

Mastering the ability to improvise melodic ideas over one chord is crucial. It develops the ability to think both vertically and horizontally. Vertically because we need to focus on shaping the sound of a given chord and its inner substructures, and horizontally because we want to build melodic lines that are constantly moving ahead and evolving inside a given sonic space.

This bidirectional thinking is also very pertinent when we improvise in the tonal realm.