Basic technique

You will be accompanied throughout this site by improvisers. During your visit: click on their photos to discover what they have to say.

"It was the first time I’d ever heard improvisers, but they were not how I’d imagined them and not as good as the writers whose songs I’d learnt.

I was surprised. There’s no doubt about it, I didn’t see them as improvisers. In other words, what they said would never be repeated. They were having a tremendous time doing as best they could, and when I thought about myself, I thought that I could also do as well as them!

Once they had stopped, and almost against my own will, I sang them a verse from the window. They all looked at me and, like dogs, came at me. They didn’t want a snotty-nosed boy to join them.

I fled into the mountains with Lorentzo as if I’d done something wrong.

That was my first improvised verse. I was sixteen years old".

"When you’re given a subject, you immediately have to put yourself in someone else’s position, or think how you’d react yourself to a specific situation, and theoretically you start by imagining the end, because it’s the conclusion which is behind improvisation.

If the end isn’t good, the audience will think the improvisation is bad; if it’s good, the audience will think that the verses are good. Even if the development influences the quality of the improvisation, the conclusion accounts for 90%.  

It’s what gives you the ending and the rhyme.  For example in: ‘‘Hendaiara etorri gira gezur batzu erratera… ‘’ (‘‘We’ve come to Hendaye to tell a few lies’’), you need to find words ending in tera, or atera, or even era. And according to these words, you structure your improvisation point by point. 

Very often once you have the ending, you begin to sing without even thinking, or if you have a little time, you take advantage in order to polish up your verses.

It’s not easy to analyse this process"

"When you improvise, you start by thinking about the final point, the conclusion. It’s no more than rhetoric: whatever you speak about you always try to put the main idea at the end.

Also, what’s important is the development which leads to the main idea. Improvisation is sung, measured and rhymes. With practice, you anticipate the final argument. And it’s the last word of this argument which gives you the rhythm.

After a lot of practice, you remember a list of steps and words which have the same endings. With this list, you begin to compose your points. But you can’t wait for two minutes before starting to sing, so you begin, knowing that the other points will come as you go along.

When there are two of you, you must make your last idea answer the previous improvisation, because improvisation is a debate"

"When you’re on the stage and you hear the subject, you must first of all ask yourself what you want to say to that audience on the subject. It only takes twenty seconds: thinking about what you want to say and organising your ideas according to what you want to say before singing.

The listener hears the improvisation backwards, it looks like you’ve thought it out in the order you sing it, and that’s the trick. You control the situation: you know where you’re going, but the listener doesn’t. That’s one of the charms of improvisation. And the end is important.

Improvisation is a concentrated speech, whose impact is in its conclusion. Improvisation must be efficient. Until now efficiency was associated with a good argument, a strong image or a solid comparison. But there are other simpler ways.

I may not be a great explorer of these ways because to explore new ways you must first of all know the old ones well and have a good level. But I think there are improvisers capable of innovating. That’s the case of Maddalen Lujanbio, Iturriaga and Maia.

Currently, the level of improvisation is so good that the way is open to creation. I think that’s the direction we need to go in"

"Once I’ve been given the subject, I think of the idea I’m going to place at the end of my improvisation because the audience always remembers the end.

I then have to work backwards, preparing the last point, the one that carries the idea, and develop the explanation of this final point in the points which precede it. Melody isn’t a problem because we choose it amongst ourselves and we use melodies we know. New melodies can be created and we learn them.

I have more difficulties than the others because I don’t have a musical ear, but nevertheless I manage to learn them. For me, the most difficult part is finding the idea. But now we have a certain amount of experience, we always end up finding something.

Our teacher gives us techniques to improve our verse and our voice, mine is a little clumsy …

At the moment, at the beginning of each lesson we spend ten minutes studying old improvisations. We read and sing them. That’s how we learn"