Improvising - overrated?

[stormx]

I wonder why IMPROVISATION is regarded as something so valuable. Even some music genres, like Jazz, are based upon it.

If the composer takes his time to polish and perfect his composition, it is logical that the result would be a much more accomplished piece compared with another that is created "on the fly".

Isnt improvising a little overrated?

Some probably would argue about the spontaneity that comes with improvisation. But i wonder how sopontaneity traduces in better music. After all, as listeners, we dont care if the composer is just "creating" it or has taken months to compose the music. We just evaluate the beauty (or whatever) of the "result".

I can see it as a good excercise, but great pieces, it seems to me, need work from the composer, and cannot be created just improvising in "real time".

What do you think?

[Petter]

I think that perhaps Thierry can shed a little light on this subject.

[stormx]

I think that perhaps Thierry can shed a little light on this subject.

Petter:

I indeed like Jazz and i dont consider it inferior to any other musical genre, including of course classical. I just mentionned it on my original post because it is where improvisation plays a central role.

[Petter]

Ok I understand what you mean and I agree with you to a certain extent. But most improvisation that I find interesting is group based. And isn´t improvisation a tool for composing?

[gyzzzmo]

Improvising is just a piano skill. Its like playing classical music: Doing it alot will make you better at it. I dont think its overrated either since people who find that amazing, find playing fast dumb scales amazing too  

gyzzz

[quantum]

Improvising is often the genesis of composition, so in such a sense it is essential to both the construction of thoroughly worked out compositions and the spontaneous creation of music.  Just because improvisation is not called for in the performance of a work does not mean the full creative process of bringing such a work to fruition was void of improvisation.

Should compositional accomplishment be judged on the ability of a composer to achieve preconceived perfection? 

[cluster]

The value of improvisation is the insight and awareness it gives you of how music is put together.  This helps general coordination (you can't imrovise 'hands seperately') and learning ability and, particularly, fingering. Paradoxically improvisers can absorb and learn printed pieces quicker: the hands know how different textures work from inside and the brain more aware of structure. An improviser learns a piece by sying 'Oh, I see what composer has done here' instead of by saying 'Oh dear now it's the bit with all the  C-flats in'. The recognition hit-rate goes up dramatically.

Extempore playing (as it used to be called) is often done badly, especially when arpeggios are involved, but if you can improvise in a restrained way you will have better musical literacy.  And you are no longer tied to pre-arranged fingering when expressive requirements suggest changing it on the fly.  A couple of centuries ago improvisation was the primary musical skill, reading off the page was second and playing a memorized piece was regarded as an amateur joke, almost cheating.  Now it is the other way round

Improvising is a necessary skill for organists, but guess what? their geneal musical skills such as sightreading, memorization and live interpretation seem to be higher on average than pianists of equivalent playing-level.  Their repertoire is often huge compared to that of pianists. 

[ted]

I would tend to say it is grossly underrated. I had not noticed that it is commonly regarded as having any value at all, never mind being overrated. Very few pianists outside the confines of jazz seem to do it. The small minority who habitually improvise no doubt do so because of the heightened mental states engendered in the player by the best of it. These states, from what I have seen, are hardly ever obtained through performance of pieces and seldom encountered during slow composition. Improvisation for the player is not quite like any other musical experience because it combines composition, performance and listening in the one mind at the one time.

However, I can understand how the point of it completely escapes those who have never tried it to any extent, or perhaps tried it solely with the object of imitating structured forms of the past. Of course there is no reason somebody cannot enjoy everything - interpretation, composition and improvisation - no law against doing it all.

[Bob]

I'm thinking underrate also.  I which there was more emphasis and training in improv on the classical side.  It's just a different way of thinking about mustic that the traditional approach does use much.

[cygnusdei]

It seems that 'improvising a piece' is in and of itself a half-baked undertaking from both points of view. From the composition side; why settle for something less than perfect whereas it can be achieved given ample planning? From the improvisation side; why must it be limited to a composition mold (e.g structure, duration)?

Also just for the sake of argument, composing via improvisation takes as much as time as the duration of the 'piece'. Whereas if you compose serial music with computer aid it would only take a second.   

[stormx]

I would tend to say it is grossly underrated. I had not noticed that it is commonly regarded as having any value at all, never mind being overrated. Very few pianists outside the confines of jazz seem to do it. The small minority who habitually improvise no doubt do so because of the heightened mental states engendered in the player by the best of it. These states, from what I have seen, are hardly ever obtained through performance of pieces and seldom encountered during slow composition. Improvisation for the player is not quite like any other musical experience because it combines composition, performance and listening in the one mind at the one time.

However, I can understand how the point of it completely escapes those who have never tried it to any extent, or perhaps tried it solely with the object of imitating structured forms of the past. Of course there is no reason somebody cannot enjoy everything - interpretation, composition and improvisation - no law against doing it all.

Ted:

i understand your argument, but you are basically pointing out how useful and interesting is improvising for the PLAYER. However, my question was made from the LISTNENER side. I still dont see how listening to improvised music can be a richer or more enjoyable experience than listening to well crafted compositions corrected and polished over some time.

Let us make a parallelism with other arts:
Can a painting made in 5 minutes be better than one painted in 2 months, carefully analysing every detail?
Can a a book written in 2 days be richer or deeper than a novel elaborated over 2 years?

[Derek]

I also agree it is vastly underrated.

stormx said:

Ted:

i understand your argument, but you are basically pointing out how useful and interesting is improvising for the PLAYER. However, my question was made from the LISTNENER side. I still dont see how listening to improvised music can be a richer or more enjoyable experience than listening to well crafted compositions corrected and polished over some time.

Let us make a parallelism with other arts:
Can a painting made in 5 minutes be better than one painted in 2 months, carefully analysing every detail?
Can a a book written in 2 days be richer or deeper than a novel elaborated over 2 years?

My answer to that is that I don't think the time it takes to compose something matters. If the listener/reader/viewer finds it beautiful...then who cares how the artist made it?

I've personally heard many improvisations, by friends, Keith Jarrett, others which I find just as beautiful and transporting as compositions by Chopin/Rachmaninoff, etc.  I don't think the amount of architectural structure or time taken to write the composition has much of an effect on the beauty of the resulting sound...for me anyway. 

[steinway43]

Nothing like argueing a subjective question. I think it's more a matter of what turns you on personally. To do it well takes great skill, but few can do it to the level of an art, at least as far as I'm concerned.

At the University of North Texas I heard a lot of jazz and a lot of terrible improv. I lived in Bruce Hall, where they put a lot of musicans, so I heard it in the lobby and from their rooms almost daily. The one o'clock band, a jazz lab reserved for the top players, was quite something, in fact they were consisttently fantastic as a group, but even so the improv was hit and miss, sometimes great, but often nothing to write home about. Regardless, if they still play on Friday afternoons at one o'clock in the student union building, and you're anywhere near there, go and listen. It's always a treat.

Improvisation is a different skill from playing something as written, and a bit like comparing apples to oranges, if you ask me. I found a lot of jazz students seemed to almost worship at the improv altar, as if anything else was utterly inferior. I can enjoy it for a while but much more enjoy Beethoven's Fourth Concerto. 

[quantum]

I'm wondering how much of this apparently greater enjoyment of pre composed music stems from the musicologist perspective of needing to dissect a composition and know what makes it tick in order to appreciate it more.    Do we need to know how a piece works before we can appreciate it?  Do we need to know how an automobile works in order to enjoy the ride?

Just because one is improvising does not mean one is not analyzing and refining.  A skilled improviser can continually take what he has just played and further refine and shape it. 


I wonder what would result if we collected several unlabelled recordings - some improvised some composed - then presented them to listeners so that they may rate their enjoyment of each piece without any bias toward the creative process. 

[pianochick93]

Can a a book written in 2 days be richer or deeper than a novel elaborated over 2 years?

Most definitely. A book written over two days may well have come to be about because the author had a great flash of inspiration, and found themselves able to write continuously, until the book was finished.
A book written over two years may well be over thought out, dull, and lacking inspiration.

[indutrial]

I'm wondering how much of this apparently greater enjoyment of pre composed music stems from the musicologist perspective of needing to dissect a composition and know what makes it tick in order to appreciate it more.    Do we need to know how a piece works before we can appreciate it?  Do we need to know how an automobile works in order to enjoy the ride?

Just because one is improvising does not mean one is not analyzing and refining.  A skilled improviser can continually take what he has just played and further refine and shape it. 

I wonder what would result if we collected several unlabelled recordings - some improvised some composed - then presented them to listeners so that they may rate their enjoyment of each piece without any bias toward the creative process. 

I'm with you on this. I have taken a heavily musicological approach to appreciating both improvised and composed music. Both should be looked upon as simply musical material to analyse or enjoy. I've spent countless hours transcribing and dissecting improvised jazz solos for all sorts of instruments (mostly guitar and sax) and it's often nearly as rewarding as rooting through the score for a classical piece. As you move closer to the present, improv is sounding more like classical and classical is sounding more like improv, so there's really no point in treating them with any hierarchy. For chrissakes, Scelsi used to have people transcribe his improvs and later release them with composition titles. Improv and composed music are repositories for ideas, and good ideas can develop over any time frame ranging from an instant (an improvising musician's usual time to think) to several months (the careful composer).

Improvising and composing are both NOT overrated. Both are avenues for creativity and originality (when they are approached with the right mindset). On this forum I would argue that "bitching about improvisation" and "bitching about composers" are the only overrated things. That and Lang Lang

[pianowolfi]

Music is always improvisation. I met an improviser who said: "I prepare for my improv concerts exactly as much as for a concert with repertoire". Interpretation without "improvisation" is often boring. Practice the rep as exactly and as carefully as possible and then let it flow. Improvise as if you are playing a sonata or whatever form from the spot. Bach was able to improvise complex Fugues. Beethoven's improvisation skills are legendary.

[Derek]

Music is always improvisation. I met an improviser who said: "I prepare for my improv concerts exactly as much as for a concert with repertoire". Interpretation without "improvisation" is often boring. Practice the rep as exactly and as carefully as possible and then let it flow. Improvise as if you are playing a sonata or whatever form from the spot. Bach was able to improvise complex Fugues. Beethoven's improvisation skills are legendary.

Heh, too bad Bach and Beethoven are dead! We'll never know how their improvisation sounded---. It's our turn! 

[gyzzzmo]

Go have a look at Mozart's 'twinkle twinkle super star'. I gues thats an excellent example of those day's improvations.

[pianowolfi]

Heh, too bad Bach and Beethoven are dead! We'll never know how their improvisation sounded---. It's our turn! 

Well Czerny says about the fantasy op. 77 that it represents very well Beethoven's style of improvising But sure, you are right, it's our turn. Long live the "improvisation mafia" 

[quantum]

 

Future text book will list:

Mozart, Beethoven, Wolfi......

[pianowolfi]

Future text book will list:

Mozart, Beethoven, Wolfi......

...quantum...

[timothy42b]

The small minority who habitually improvise no doubt do so because of the heightened mental states engendered in the player by the best of it. These states, from what I have seen, are hardly ever obtained through performance of pieces and seldom encountered during slow composition.

I agree, and further think that there are heightened states within the listener that are probably only reachable through this process in the player. 

On a pure analysis basis, carefully composed music is more correct than improvised.  And recorded digitally edited performances are FAR FAR better than live. 

But I still buy concert tickets.  Why?  Apparently there is some element of live music that is worth me paying to hear it even when I already own the best CD version available.  I vote with my wallet on this issue, and so do my peers.  And by extension this applies even more so to improvisation when done well. 

Let's face it, some of this disdain for improvisation is the snobbery of the classically trained pianist.  The jazz pianist works just as hard at his craft, only in a different direction. 

[gerry]

Years ago, I used to subscribe to the organ series at St. Mark's in Seattle where they would give the visiting performer an original theme at intermission with the requirement that he/she play a series of improvised variations at the end of their concert. I can still feel the excitement in the audience as we looked forward to how they would develop this theme. I think an artist can reveal much about his/her mind and soul by how they spontaneously develop a theme and the listener can be enriched by that.

[indutrial]

Let's face it, some of this disdain for improvisation is the snobbery of the classically trained pianist.  The jazz pianist works just as hard at his craft, only in a different direction. 

In recent decades, more and more jazz/imporv artists have been throwing around the seemingly paradoxical terminology of 'instantaneous composition', a term I initially doubted but that I've come to understand more and more as I've listened to more improvised music. While there's certainly still plenty of blowing sessions going on that sound like other blowing sessions (please no jokes about this, it's actually part of the terminology  ), there are more and more players taking a more careful and restrained approach to making sure that their improv is pointing towards a different overall group texture and not merely being just another rip-roaring solo with the band pumping the changes underneath. Some free improv recordings I've heard are simply groups of musicians reacting with one another to create new sound-worlds that do not pull any ideas from jazz's traditions and deal with the most unprejudiced approaches to sound and musical structure imaginable.

[Derek]

On a pure analysis basis, carefully composed music is more correct than improvised.

What do you mean by correct? Lack of parallel fifths? Lack of doubling the leading tone?
I don't think that could be it---it is easy to do avoid those things if you want to. What else does that leave as a basis for "correct?"  Form?  All kinds of liberties with form are taken by composers...thus...I can't see where "correct" really applies in music.

In recent decades, more and more jazz/imporv artists have been throwing around the seemingly paradoxical terminology of 'instantaneous composition', a term I initially doubted but that I've come to understand more and more as I've listened to more improvised music.

"Instantaneous composition" is a good term... more people should use it. The word "Improvisation" makes people think of elevator jazz music and "noodling." But many fluent improvisers know you can actually generate melodies, progressions, entire form all at the same time and all spontaneously. You don't need any guides...no charts, no preconceived melodies, no preconceived progressions, no nothing. You can literally compose on the fly.  It is challenging but very rewarding especially when it "takes off" as it were.

[indutrial]

"Instantaneous composition" is a good term... more people should use it. The word "Improvisation" makes people think of elevator jazz music and "noodling." But many fluent improvisers know you can actually generate melodies, progressions, entire form all at the same time and all spontaneously. You don't need any guides...no charts, no preconceived melodies, no preconceived progressions, no nothing. You can literally compose on the fly.  It is challenging but very rewarding especially when it "takes off" as it were.

Well, even amongst a great number of modern improv musicians, the charts are still there but they play a different role in the overall music. Beginning with free jazz, the importance of the changes was waning big time. Several pieces by Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Tim Berne, were written with parts that featured no chord harmonies, sometimes very specific in time signature and instrumental structure, but oftentimes leaving an incredible amount of space for creativity. Here's a track by a group called Hard Cell (sax - Tim Berne, drums - Tom Rainey, electric keys - Craig Taborn) which takes improv into some really unconventional territory. They groove on the 2-part head for about 2 minutes before going into completely spontaneous territory, occasionally referring back to bits and pieces of the theme. Eventually they morph the music into another theme at the 8 minute mark (with some great written chords that sound nothing like stereotypical jazz piano) that closes the piece. This might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's representative of the fact that improvised music has come a long way.

P.S. I would highly recommend any of Berne's work. He is a monumentally great sax player who has crafted his own unique style in a scene where a lot of musicians end up sounding alike.

[rc]

I remember refining my improvisation on guitar.  After a while of just noodling around in a key I began to add some basic sense to it: developing themes and motifs.  Then some basic structure: beginning and ending on a tonic, shaping towards and away from a climax, and some simple modulation.  It all felt like a very natural development.  Not like analysis, but the shaping and refining of ideas.

It's like the difference between a clear, interesting orator and somebody who can't seem to find the right words, or has a lot of words but little coherence.

Now if I could just do the same on piano   I really miss that feeling.  'The zone', the experimentation and personal discoveries.  It's not like it sounded bad either, people love hearing a good flowing improvisation.

A good literary parallel to inprovisation would be Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.  If I remember right, he wrote it in a stream of thought over something like 2 weeks.  Putting sheets of paper together so he wouldn't even have to break to put a new sheet in his typewriter.

[indutrial]

A good literary parallel to inprovisation would be Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.  If I remember right, he wrote it in a stream of thought over something like 2 weeks.  Putting sheets of paper together so he wouldn't even have to break to put a new sheet in his typewriter.

I think Kafka wrote "The Judgment" and maybe some of his other early works ("Description of a Struggle" perhaps) in single extended sessions. Those were some of the only works of his towards which he had any positive feelings. Anything that involved several days of work and required planning always seemed to turn into dogshit (at least in his mind).

An interesting take on improv in the recording world can be seen in the methodology of CIMP records, a label that almost never involves multiple takes and absolutely never any overdubs or edits. They've put out some fine records these past few years.

[popdog]

I think improvisation is vastly underrated.  As others have pointed out, when was the last time part of your lesson was dedicated to improvisation?  Perhaps this is because it's difficult to teach. 

At the age of 14, I was a very one-sided pianist - good at playing learnt pieces, but with poor improv, sight reading, theory and aural skills.  Somewhere when I was 15-16 I started fooling around with keys at the piano when tired of my pieces and I became proficient with music theory and aural skills as a result.  As a musician I became much better.  When I was 15 I had to play in a band with a few wind instruments, and I had a chord progression and some rhythms in front of me and little assistance.  It was terrifying, I had no idea what to do.  Simply by improvising I learnt how to cope with these situations.  And then I started studying Jazz. 

A person who could improvise well can definitely play music of great merit.  One thing to consider is that often people have a theme in mind (from a piece they play, from one they've heard or one they invented) or at least some ideas before preceding to improvise.  When playing jazz, soloists often have a phrase which they have considered before hand and use that as a starting point.  I think this is the same in more classical-based improvisation. 

Basically I think the musical culture would be much richer if more emphasis was placed on improvisation.  I remember once when I had a chance to study/play with Don Burrows, who spoke why eh considered jazz to be the best form of music: "...because you can take three adept Jazz musicians who've never met, from different continents and they can be playing excellent music within minutes, if not before then."  He gave us an example of when he was in some South American country, and heard some locals playing  .  He came up with his clarinet and started playing with them.  Then one of them pointed at the beginning of a chorus and he took a solo.  After they finished the song they asked "How did you do that?" to which he replied "I've trained as a Jazz musician".  They were confused and one of them said "But we wrote that song ten minutes ago - how could you possibly know it?" .  Don had listened to one chorus and had the chord progression by then, which is when he started playing along. 

popdog.