What is Improvisation in music?

After Bruce Gertz’s inter­views with John Clay­ton,  Eddie Gomez and John Pat­i­tucci, he has a few ideas of his own to share.  What are your thoughts on improvisation?

1. As we learn to use our imag­i­na­tion and build sto­ries in our minds, the same idea can evolve through music.
2. After learn­ing a vocab­u­lary for a lan­guage peo­ple develop their own means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with that vocab­u­lary. This might be called a style or even a stereo­type, how­ever it can vary to large degrees within these frames. Peo­ple can be more or less dra­matic when speak­ing, depend­ing on the con­text. Dynamic lev­els and accented words or phrases can dras­ti­cally alter how a per­son com­mu­ni­cates both ver­bally and musi­cally. We often impro­vise while speak­ing and telling stories.
3. It is said that there are those who aspire to reach bound­aries and those who move the bound­aries fur­ther. The styl­ist could be described as a musi­cian who is strictly and firmly a swing player. This musi­cian is only inter­ested in work­ing within the bound­aries of authen­tic, sound­ing swing music. There is noth­ing wrong with mas­ter­ing an idiom or period of music and in fact is very respectable within the Clas­si­cal realm where impro­vi­sa­tion takes place in the form of inter­pre­ta­tion and expres­sion rather than restruc­tur­ing the basic musi­cal ele­ments, (melody, rhythm and har­mony). The inno­v­a­tive jazz player would be a musi­cian who busts through bound­aries and con­tin­ues to extend the bound­aries through­out his or her career. John Coltrane, Char­lie Parker and The­olo­nius Monk come to mind as exam­ples of artists mov­ing bound­aries. Some also refer to this as rais­ing the bar.
4. Com­posers are impro­vis­ers in the sense that they form musi­cal ideas from the same mate­r­ial that Jazz musi­cians and com­posers use, rhyth­mic, melodic and har­monic vocab­u­lary. The impro­viser and com­poser both put their vocab­u­lary to use while telling their sto­ries through music.
5. The devel­op­ment of our inner ear and musi­cal recep­tors is a very essen­tial goal for those aspir­ing to be impro­vis­ers and per­form with other musi­cians. Prac­tic­ing rhyth­mic, har­monic and melodic phras­ing both dia­ton­i­cally and chro­mat­i­cally will help develop skills. As impor­tant as prac­tic­ing is play­ing with other musi­cians and lis­ten­ing. The quicker your ears can de cypher musi­cal infor­ma­tion, the bet­ter a com­mu­ni­ca­tor you’ll become.
6. The above five para­graphs can be sum­ma­rized to describe impro­vi­sa­tion in music as the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate with other musi­cians and audi­ences through use of their musi­cal vocab­u­lary to tell a story as both an accom­pa­nist and/or a soloist.
7. I have recently become more aware of the right and left brain phe­nom­e­non that points out strong, poten­tial inter­fer­ence of the cre­ative, expres­sive right brain by the ana­lyt­i­cal and crit­i­cal left brain. The left, brain holds the lan­guage and vocab­u­lary as well as math and ego. The trick is to quiet the left, brain enough to allow access to the vocab­u­lary with­out inter­fer­ence from a crit­i­cal left, brain. There are a num­ber of books out on this topic. My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Tay­lor [ted.com], The New Draw­ing on the Right Side of the Brain Work­book by Betty Edwards, The Art Spirit, The Happy Child by Steven Har­ri­son, Embrac­ing The Wide Sky by Daniel Tam­met [ted.com], The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlight­en­ment by Thadeus Golas, The Brain In Love by Dr. Daniel G. Amen. And more.

8. I’ve been telling myself and all my stu­dents and friends that if we all keep an open mind we can take in a full life with­out too much back­ground noise. Now if the right and left, brain the­ory is cor­rect then an open mind is one with a rel­a­tively well, behaved left, brain. One that shares vocab­u­lary and only the infor­ma­tion required for music. Think of a com­puter (left brain) and open­ing one folder that con­tains only that infor­ma­tion which is needed for the cre­ation of your art. This folder opens and closes like a damper allow­ing the right, brain side to draw what it needs to tell an imag­i­na­tive story.
9. Med­i­ta­tion is a great way to gain peace and quiet. Sim­ply focus­ing on breath­ing. In music while impro­vis­ing I try to allow the sound qual­ity of one note help guide me to the next. This idea works well with singing phrases. All you need to start is one note and then another either above or below. Or you can cre­ate a rhythm while repeat­ing one note and then go from there.
10. Keep an open mind and life becomes easier.