Free Improvisation is dead! Long live Free Improvisation!

I think free improvisation is the best thing to call what I play, practice, and teach - freeimprovisation.com has been my website for over 10 years.  To me, free improvisation simply means that I am free at any moment to play whatever and however I want.   

I know free improvisation is really, really fun - both for the people improvising the music, and the people improvising the audience.  I truly believe it's something that everyone does and intuitively understands.  But unfortunately, to the general public the phrase has come to basically mean "deliberately unpleasant sounding and/or boring music".  

I want to invite you to join me in reclaiming free improvisation, in re-branding it, so that when people hear the phrase they assume the music and the event surrounding it will be interesting, intriguing, beautiful, fun, enjoyable, stimulating - name your positive adjective!  To that end, I will continue to:

Create events that are beautiful and special, even if that means using more resources on less events throughout the year.

Give my audience the respect they deserve, as fellow improvisers of the event.  Pay attention to them, and perform in a way that invites them to understand and love what I am doing.  

Make music that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of free improvisation as a genre - music that embraces more musical and improvisational possibilities.

Communicate with improvisers from other mediums, learn from each other, and share audiences.

Take improvisation to schools, businesses, and communities, to give everyone an opportunity to appreciate and experience how, as my favorite quote by Mr. Rogers so simply and profoundly says:

"It just feels good to be alive, when you're playing and making up things".

Improvisation and Form Part 4

When a group of improvisers are aware of what is happening in the course of an improvisation, are able to remember it, and can reproduce and refer to it,  it greatly increases the possibility of spontaneous group improvisation of longer and more diverse forms.  

But even then, formal development and compositional improvising won’t happen unless the people in the group want to explore that aspect of group improvisation.  In order for an improvisational group to naturally and fluidly compose together in this way they must be willing to allow awareness of formal elements to become a part of their group improvisation. 

The group must also develop an individual and group awareness of the possibilities for improvising in this way.  Spontaneous group composition requires an constant awareness of the possibility of using the ideas and materials from earlier parts of the improvisation, and the willingness to choose to let go of any individual idea and embrace these possibilities when they occur.

There are many ways to think about and develop longer forms and each group will develop a different set of possibilities based on their interests.  Try as many different forms and approaches to musical form and development as you can imagine! The more possibilities your group has experienced, the more possibilities will be available to you in the course of an improvisation.  There are lots of ways to go about this, but the simplest is to say: “This improvisation will have (X) form.” and then try to do it.  See how it happens (or doesn’t happen), then try again.

All improvisation has form, whether you pay attention to that form or not.  If you do pay attention, it can open up a whole new world of group improvisational possibilities.

Improvisation and Form Part 3: Memory

The second important skill for creating form in improvisation is memory.  Except for through composed improvisation (ABCD, etc.), every form involves returning to something that was played previously in the improvisation.  But in order to return to something, you have to remember it.  You have to remember what you played, what the other people you are improvising with played, and the relation between the two.  Awareness exercises like those in Part 2 help you be more aware of what is going on while you are improvising.  Now how do you remember it, so you can use it again later?

Remembering what is played during an improvisation does not come naturally, because the kind of present moment consciousness so vital to improvising stores what we are doing in short term memory.  This memory is what allows us to create continuity in our moment to moment existence, to remember the beginning of a sentence by the time we get to the end.  But it only stores information for a short time.  Unless something happens to transfer the information to longer term memory it is quickly discarded to make room for new information.

Everyone has to figure out for themselves the best way to make that transfer, how best to tell the brain to mark a musical event for longer term memory storage.  This involves not only memory of the music that happened and how it sounded, but also muscle memory of what you were doing and how you were doing it.  It is a learned skill set, and the only way to learn it is by doing it. 

You can practice remembering with any simple improvisational exercise, as long as part of your intention is to remember what has been played.  Here’s a few, off the top of my head, to get you started.  Although you can do these exercises with melodies made up of notes, you can also use any group of sounds as the “melody”

Improvise a simple melody.  Stop.  Now play it again.

Once you can do that easily, try this:

Improvise a melody.

Continue improvising, using the material of the original melody as the source material for your improvisation.

Play the original melody again.

Once you can do that easily, try doing it with other people.

One person improvises a simple melody, while the others provide accompaniment.  Stop.  How many people in the group can remember and play the original melody?

One person improvises a simple melody, while the others provide accompaniment.  Pass the melody around the group.  Play it with all different kinds of accompaniment, in all kinds of variations. After improvising with it, play it again.  

The simpler and clearer the intentions of the group are, the easier it will be to remember.  The more the group has worked on understanding and naming the relationships that occur in improvised music (but that’s a different subject, for another day!) the easier it will be to remember.  The more you have practiced remembering, the easier it will be to remember.  After awhile, it will become a habit to recognize the parts of the improvisation that may be useful in creating longer forms, and to remember them.

Once you have gained some individual and group facility in remembering, then you can start applying that skill to spontaneous group composition, which will be the subject of Part 4.