3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

That's Ron Blake. He's a jazz saxophonist and improvisation professor at Juilliard.

He's also been a member of the Saturday Night Live Band for the last 17 years.

So here, you know, it's like imitation, then conversation.

Today, he's taking us behind the curtain and sharing his approach to improvisation.

I'm listening to the bass and just trying to play something that sounds like a story.

We started by having him listen to an existing piece of music and he responded by coming up with his own solo on the spot.

Then this part here, I'm expanding upon an improvisational idea, more or less.

Grab the melody.

I feel it the integration cooperation, you know, the conversation that's happening on the bandstand.

If that is in some way reflected in your solo, then the listener gets a little bit more in tune to what he's doing.

And then a little bit more in tune to what we're listening to, as opposed to just playing a lot of hot licks.

Ultimately, the creative improv process asks, what happens when we free ourselves from expectation and constraint?

How do we let go of the fear of the unknown?

You just have to go out there and just jump off the cliff sometimes or all the time, preferably.

You might remember last season we discovered all the good things that learning an instrument can do for our brains.

Well, today, we're going to talk about what happens in a musician's brain when they're thinking on the fly.

How can a jazz performer, like Ron, hear a melody, and instantly create something new? And even beyond music, we'll explore what happens in all of our brains when we feel that spark of creativity,

of something bubbling up deep inside that just has to come out.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, and it's time to start chasing life.

If I kind of think back on my life, music was the great teacher for me. Always. It's always the music.

That's Charles Lim. As you can tell, one of his great passions in life is music.

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