This week I am sharing ten one-minute improvised guitar compositions. This is an idea I stole from the great Julian Lage, who is my biggest inspiration in the realm of jazz and instrumental guitar.

In an interview on the “Broken Record” podcast, Julian talked about studying composition with W.A. Mathieu when he was younger. One of the things he encouraged the young Julian to do was improvise in short bursts but with great intent.

He told him to improvise an entire song in just a minute, “at thirty seconds you’re at the middle. At forty-five, you’re coming toward the end.” He told the interviewer. Mathieu said to do this with a timer and a recorder (this was before iPhones), and to craft ten of these a day for a week, and don’t listen to them until the week is up.

Then, at the end of the week, you have seventy minutes of improvised compositions. Finally, he said to listen to each song, back to back, and to make a list. On one side, list everything you notice, then on the other – list everything you’d like to develop or further.

When I first heard Julian talk about this, I knew it was a challenge I had to try. Since I had done similar types of things before, including writing fifty songs in fifty days in high school, I knew I could slog through the task and work it into a blog post.

To make sure I got the post up by the weekend, I only did six days of writing. Plus an hour of material seemed like a nice round number.

narrative & Conviction

These are the two great challenges of improvising a song that at 0 seconds you’ve never heard and at 60 you’ve already completed. Because of the nature of the challenge, the song is “over” around the minute mark, but without these two ingredients, even if you’ve ended the recording, to the listener, it won’t feel complete.

Aside from the constraints of the challenge and the task of listing everything you notice and would like to develop at the end, all Mathieu told Julian to do when creating these compositions was to try to create a narrative. The difference between the recordings that just sound like mindless noodling and the ones that sound like songs is the presence of a narrative.This usually takes form in some kind of convincing melody.

The secrets of writing a great melody I don’t think will ever be truly known, but I believe that one of the quickest ways to create something of quality is to have an abundance of quantity. What I mean by this, if you want to write a great song, an easy way to make sure you get at least one good one is to write ten. There’s just no replacement for reps.

The other necessity for improvising a good minute-long composition is to play with the kind of conviction you’d have if were playing something that you already knew. This is almost like world-building, and it might be the most important skill for any songwriting to develop. In interviews I’ve heard John Mayer talk about the importance of pretending an idea into existence, and being able to access that part of your creativity is peak flow-state in terms of songwriting.

The vexing thing about that kind of creativity is its hard to access, which is why I’m only sharing my ten favorite of the songs and not all sixty.

Redefinig Mistakes

Unsurprisingly, when striving to create a number of compositions with great conviction and narrative, you’re gonna make a lot of mistakes. You’re gonna go to a lot of places that you think are gonna work and they won’t. You’re gonna make leaps and land flat on your face, but many times mistakes can be erased by simply repeating them.

This is the power of improvising. Something can go from an error to a bold choice if you just do it again. When composing slowly, mistakes are just forgotten. But when the tape is rolling, that stain is there forever, and yes, there were a handful of mistakes I made that were so epic that it pretty much ruined the recording.

Though there were many times when I was writing and playing that I heard the melody or theme developing one way in my head, and I was unable to move the ship in the direction I had intended, what I found was often repeating what made had made me cringe in the first place could turn a navigational error into a new path entirely.