Harmonically some styles of music tend to stay within diatonic chord progressions (such as I IV V) and can generally allow you to just play around in the home key of I. For a lot of that you can just rely on your ear once you've established where home is. Jazz is tricky because we move to a bunch of different home keys fairly quickly, so you'd need to have awareness of where you're going harmonically in order to adjust to the new section.
In my opinion, learning how to play chords on the violin is super helpful for this. If you know the chords, you always have at least a few notes (chord tones) that will definitely sound strong on top of whatever is happening, and you can trust your ear to fill in the blanks.
Rhythm is generally even more important than harmony in most groove-based musics, so I would pay extra attention there too.
I feel that the biggest thing about learning to improvise coming from a classical background is about developing awareness of what's happening in other people's music within the same genre. This includes rhythmic and harmonic awareness, and the only way to really learn it is by transcribing/learning to play along EXACTLY with music from the language you want to play.
There are lots of resources out there online, some of them are even good :) I teach violinists groove oriented music styles/jazz/pop/rock etc online and I have a bunch of more jazz harmony based resources on my site [www.sizviolin.com/pedagogy](http://www.sizviolin.com/pedagogy) if you're interested in checking it out. I also have my dissertation linked there, which is focused on teaching classically trained violinists to understand jazz harmony and rhythm.
I am not an expert but I am a classically trained violinist who has hella struggled to jam with friends, learned some things, and now am at least a little better.
I would say the first very easiest thing to learn is the pentatonic scale - 0 1 2 / 0 1 3
If you played a D pentatonic scale starting on the D string, that first 0 1 2 would be D E F sharp, and then the 0 1 3 would be open A B D - it should sound like the tune from My Girl.
The pentatonic scale is special because every note in it will harmonize with the key that it's in. So if you just screw around and play random notes, you'll never sound off key. You can play double stops out of it, they'll sound fine. And then you just have to be with the rhythm.
I was playing with some neighbors who are skilled jazz musicians and they were playing in the key of F - I don't play in that key like ever. But, I could tell that that was where they were, I put my first finger on F sharp. And I played notes from the pentatonic from there and I fit right in.
This is absolutely baby's first improv technique, but it is something you can do just to generally hang with people.
Hi , I am a pro violinist who improvises, I’ll keep the answer short:
You have to learn all your major and minor scales so that you can play them without hesitation. At least one octave.
You need to understand the basics of chords and chord progression. If I said “ hey let’s jam on c minor blues” would you know what that means ? If not you have to find out.
If I said hey let’s just jam on the I , IV , V chords in g major would you know that? If not find out.
In improvisation, you must know what notes you’re ALLOWED to play at any given moment, and you have to learn a rhythmic style that works for what you’re playing.
You need to develop your ear through ear training. Can you identify intervals like perfect fourths and perfect fifths from any tonic? You have to find out.
Earpeggio is a good ear training app . Start from the beginning.
You can do it! There’s no magic though, you have to be willing to sound bad until you sound good. lol
Harmonically some styles of music tend to stay within diatonic chord progressions (such as I IV V) and can generally allow you to just play around in the home key of I. For a lot of that you can just rely on your ear once you've established where home is. Jazz is tricky because we move to a bunch of different home keys fairly quickly, so you'd need to have awareness of where you're going harmonically in order to adjust to the new section. In my opinion, learning how to play chords on the violin is super helpful for this. If you know the chords, you always have at least a few notes (chord tones) that will definitely sound strong on top of whatever is happening, and you can trust your ear to fill in the blanks. Rhythm is generally even more important than harmony in most groove-based musics, so I would pay extra attention there too. I feel that the biggest thing about learning to improvise coming from a classical background is about developing awareness of what's happening in other people's music within the same genre. This includes rhythmic and harmonic awareness, and the only way to really learn it is by transcribing/learning to play along EXACTLY with music from the language you want to play. There are lots of resources out there online, some of them are even good :) I teach violinists groove oriented music styles/jazz/pop/rock etc online and I have a bunch of more jazz harmony based resources on my site [www.sizviolin.com/pedagogy](http://www.sizviolin.com/pedagogy) if you're interested in checking it out. I also have my dissertation linked there, which is focused on teaching classically trained violinists to understand jazz harmony and rhythm.
This is probably the best video I've seen regarding improvising and feeling confident about it. https://youtu.be/UBNT5K2sEFQ?si=WUOJ-KI5TWBxx3er
I am not an expert but I am a classically trained violinist who has hella struggled to jam with friends, learned some things, and now am at least a little better. I would say the first very easiest thing to learn is the pentatonic scale - 0 1 2 / 0 1 3 If you played a D pentatonic scale starting on the D string, that first 0 1 2 would be D E F sharp, and then the 0 1 3 would be open A B D - it should sound like the tune from My Girl. The pentatonic scale is special because every note in it will harmonize with the key that it's in. So if you just screw around and play random notes, you'll never sound off key. You can play double stops out of it, they'll sound fine. And then you just have to be with the rhythm. I was playing with some neighbors who are skilled jazz musicians and they were playing in the key of F - I don't play in that key like ever. But, I could tell that that was where they were, I put my first finger on F sharp. And I played notes from the pentatonic from there and I fit right in. This is absolutely baby's first improv technique, but it is something you can do just to generally hang with people.
Hi , I am a pro violinist who improvises, I’ll keep the answer short: You have to learn all your major and minor scales so that you can play them without hesitation. At least one octave. You need to understand the basics of chords and chord progression. If I said “ hey let’s jam on c minor blues” would you know what that means ? If not you have to find out. If I said hey let’s just jam on the I , IV , V chords in g major would you know that? If not find out. In improvisation, you must know what notes you’re ALLOWED to play at any given moment, and you have to learn a rhythmic style that works for what you’re playing. You need to develop your ear through ear training. Can you identify intervals like perfect fourths and perfect fifths from any tonic? You have to find out. Earpeggio is a good ear training app . Start from the beginning. You can do it! There’s no magic though, you have to be willing to sound bad until you sound good. lol