Guidelines for receiving helpful feedback on your improvisations

[Derek]

This improvisation forum I think could benefit from a sticky thread that contains general guidelines for receiving helpful feedback on an improvisation.

What I see happening most is someone will post an improvisation and not much discussion will ensue. Sometimes this may be desired; the person posting may simply wish to share and does not care much whether they get a ton of responses.

Other times, someone will post seeming to ask for criticism, suggestions, help, etc. The challenge in responding to these posts is that taste can vary tremendously. Some people like New Age, some like highly elaborate, chromatic modern playing, others like a mix, others like baroque, romantic, others like jazz, etc. etc. etc.  Different improvisers may not always enjoy the music of another.

Thus, I think anyone posting who wants feedback must establish what their goals are. This goal could be very specific like "I want to learn to improvise fugues" or it could be more general like "I wish to grow as an improviser."  "I'd like to try to step outside my comfort zone."  etc.

So perhaps any time we post an improvisation there should be a brief statement of the reason or goal as to why we posted it:

Examples of goals:
-I just want to share this piece---if you like it, let me know, if not, I don't care (this could be assumed if no goal is stated)
-I want to grow as an improviser
-teach me the ways of the force
-I want to learn to improvise fugues (in the baroque style? in a modern style?)
-I want to learn to imitate Beethoven/Chopin/favorite composer here
-I would like criticism, even if your taste is totally different from mine. Tell me if there's something you liked, or something you did not like and why.
-I would like musical responses in the form of improvisations

Discuss---additional good ideas I will add to the top of this thread and if it seems to go somewhere maybe we can get it stickied.

[pankrpec]

I'm glad you wrote with this post, Derek.
For a while now, I actually thought that I should perhaps write that I want some criticism on my posts, but I was not sure how to go about it.

One other thing. It's really silly, but I always feel pressured to post an improvisation while starting a topic. This improvisations sub-forum, just doesn't feel like a place to ask questions really. I don't why, but I always think that no one is interested in talking about learning improvisation. There were some good posts, but not enough I think. On the other hand, they would probably be useless for me, because I'm too hard-headed to learn from others. But, perhaps someone else could benefit from it.

[ted]

I think I would sit firmly in the class of poster who just wishes to share. Not through obligation, desire to prove or impress, or to seek praise or criticism. These things ceased to interest me many years ago.

I have to consider an improvisation I have played to be in some sense "beautiful", not in a universal sense but just for me. That goes for all music and all art. Larger philosophical theories and arguments about music on an intellectual basis are way above my head. Good luck to those who enjoy that but my approach is too individual for me to understand the point of most of them. I post the occasional recording simply because a few people might also perceive beauty in it and enjoy hearing it. It might as well be a flower I have grown in the garden, one of the algorithmic pictures I post elsewhere, pretty well anything.

Subjective beauty is my only absolute. Fortunately, I can see beauty in a fairly wide range of musical idiom; in this I'm probably very lucky.

What I would perhaps welcome more of is specific criticism of my playing mechanism, e.g. "I think section xyz would have been better with less pedal", "The double notes at section abc are a bit heavy and clumsy for the effect" - that sort of thing.  Technique rather than content, if you know what I mean. This might help me, as I am usually so engrossed with content that technique is the last thing on my mind, even after the event. Disregarding it might just have contributed to that pseudo-dystonic thing I had recently which took two years to get rid of.