Improvisation (composing on the spot) vs. composing (improvising & picking the best))

[emanresu]

The topic says it all... or does it?

How do you see it?

I struggle with both. Composition gets results, improvisation needs the stars to align in the shape of Superman beating the Batman.

edit: why the Batman has "the" in front and Superman doesnt?

[Tal_175]

Are you talking about single lines only or does it include other areas of musicianship like comping arrangements, chord-melodies, tunes or all?

[emanresu]

No, I meant the different approaches - when composing, you "go here", "go there" (really fast if apt), tossing the crap, picking up the one that works.
vs.
Bring all the Earth and Heaven together in a jam, and JUST DO IT <--- would be how a miracle happens. Otherwise, without painting pentagrams and lighting candles, it is kinda rare to come up with a nice impro at home, when the house is sleeping already.

Just trying to differentiate. Not to push the method of any kind.

The topic itself - impro is kinda composing but going with the first take, composition is much impro but taking only the one that deserves it.

[GuyBoden]

Improvising while comping is a very difficult task. IMHO.

I'm constantly amazed at the players who can do this.

It's virtually impossible at my low level of comping ability.

I need to work out where the chords are going in a song with studious practice, even using simple three note chords.

[AllanAllen]

Superman is a being, and The Batman is a symbol, like a myth.

[ragman1]

The topic says it all... or does it? How do you see it? I struggle with both. Composition gets results, improvisation needs the stars to align in the shape of Superman beating the Batman. edit: why the Batman has "the" in front and Superman doesnt?

i) I've never heard of 'The Batman'. Batman and Superman are people, albeit fictional.

2) Composing and improvising are two different things. A composer writes a tune as an author writes a book. An improviser plays as he goes but there's nothing magical about it. It's based on what he knows, what he's practiced, and so on. Or, as someone said, 'That's funny, the more I do it the better I get'.

[AllanAllen]

The Batman didn’t name himself, criminals did and he’s got a mythological name and existence. Like the yeti, the Loch Ness monster, the moth man.

Get it?

[charlieparker]

Reminds me of Bill Evans notes on Kind of Blue.

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation.

This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflections, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.

Bill Evans' Kind Of Blue Liner Notes

[ragman1]

The Batman didn’t name himself, criminals did and he’s got a mythological name and existence. Like the yeti, the Loch Ness monster, the moth man.

Get it?

To the AllanAllen - I get it

[emanresu]

i) I've never heard of 'The Batman'. Batman and Superman are people, albeit fictional.

2) Composing and improvising are two different things. A composer writes a tune as an author writes a book. An improviser plays as he goes but there's nothing magical about it. It's based on what he knows, what he's practiced, and so on. Or, as someone said, 'That's funny, the more I do it the better I get'.

1:17

2. Are they really so different? As far as I remember, they both are "finding new good notes".. both processes are samey (unless following some kind of mental rulebook for composing).
You play and try to make something new and good happen. When composing, the real skill was to quickly disregard a bland choice and restart the search (toyingly playing) again.
Improvising has the difference of not starting over but moving on.

And that's what makes impro so weird. It can be new and fresh too. And make good sense.. with various methods - playing as on rails (following the chord notes), or going loose, or intentionally off...
Hm. I think my main issue with it is that I know, when composing, there is a way to make it work 100% - just have to try and search enough... but the impro - I can rarely do something that comes close to what a composition can produce...
and it hurts to know that it IS possible, but just didn't happen... this time.. that time.. again and again.

[ragman1]

So you're saying you have trouble with improvising. Who doesn't?

[joe2758]

The Batman didn’t name himself, criminals did and he’s got a mythological name and existence. Like the yeti, the Loch Ness monster, the moth man.

Get it?

Good luck proving Nessie is a myth, there are MULTIPLE pictures available online. Not to mention documented first hand accounts.

[joe2758]

The topic itself - impro is kinda composing but going with the first take, composition is much impro but taking only the one that deserves it.

Using that frame work, mine might be something like:

1. Composition is experimenting and creating new and fresh material.
2. Improv is taking only the composed material that deserves it, and rearranging it in creative ways

[AllanAllen]

Good luck proving Nessie is a myth, there are MULTIPLE pictures available online. Not to mention documented first hand accounts.

Actually, if we give the Loch Ness Monster a name, Nessie, she becomes an individual, like Superman. So we lose the "the"


In time, The Batman starts to identify as Batman and he too loses his the. Of course this all varies depending on which content you are reading, watching, listening to, or playing.

[RLetson]

Not that I'm a music teacher, but I was a writing teacher, once, and the primary distinction between composing and improvising is that the latter takes place in real time and does not involve revision. Otherwise, the processes are pretty much the same in both linguistic and musical environments. I am, for example, improvising this post (as I have done in the past when this topic has come up), drawing on my general linguistinc skills (the ability to frame sentences, sequence them, choose the appropriate words, and so on) and rhetorical competence (remembering the kinds of sentences that work well in such situations), along with understanding of the subject matter at hand.

Every time we speak, we are improvising, but it doesn't feel like really hard work because our linguistic skills are so deeply embedded and long practices. In music, the skills and rhetoric-equivalents and model-sets are acquired later and feel less embedded--for most of us, anyway. But the longer you play your instrument and understand its resources, the less stressful and mysterious improvising feels. Composing, taking place off-line, as it were, and benefitting from the revision process, might feel different, but that's mostly because the anxiety of real-time generation is absent. The generating machineries are not all that different.

(Note: the only places I have revised are where my fingers have mis-typed words--not unlike playing clams in a solo.)

On edit: I have to resist the urge to go back and correct the typos I didn't catch while composing the above on the fly. But then it wouldn't be a pure improvisation but an edited one. I'm told that they say in the music biz, "We'll fix it in post." Well, I'm leaving the clams there for all to see.

[AllanAllen]

Not that I'm a music teacher, but I was a writing teacher, once, and the primary distinction between composing and improvising is that the latter takes place in real time and does not involve revision. Otherwise, the processes are pretty much the same in both linguistic and musical environments. I am, for example, improvising this post (as I have done in the past when this topic has come up), drawing on my general linguistinc skills (the ability to frame sentences, sequence them, choose the appropriate words, and so on) and rhetorical competence (remembering the kinds of sentences that work well in such situations), along with understanding of the subject matter at hand.

Every time we speak, we are improvising, but it doesn't feel like really hard work because our linguistic skills are so deeply embedded and long practices. In music, the skills and rhetoric-equivalents and model-sets are acquired later and feel less embedded--for most of us, anyway. But the longer you play your instrument and understand its resources, the less stressful and mysterious improvising feels. Composing, taking place off-line, as it were, and benefitting from the revision process, might feel different, but that's mostly because the anxiety of real-time generation is absent. The generating machineries are not all that different.

(Note: the only places I have revised are where my fingers have mis-typed words--not unlike playing clams in a solo.)

I can't believe the writing teacher didn't talk about the grammatical article before The Batman and why Superman doesn't have one.

[luk_luk_guy]

The generating machineries are not all that different.

The line between the two terms ('composition', 'improv') also seems to be arbitrary. At what point does extemporaneousness with preparation become preparation with extemporaneousness? Furthermore, if thought is quantized by learned language, is true improvisation possible at all? (answer: NO)

[RLetson]

I'm old enough that comics (and comix and graphic novels) were not part of the syllabus.

But as a researcher, I'd look to the history of the characters, which reveals that in his first appearance (Detective Comics #27, in 1939), the cover calls the character "The Batman," while Superman is just Superman in the earliest Action Comics appearances. (Though Siegel called an early version of his character The Superman.) I don't know at what point The Batman lost his definite article and became just Batman. (It's interesting to note how many of Batman's enemies have that definite article in their names.)

[ragman1]

Not that I'm a music teacher, but I was a writing teacher, once, and the primary distinction between composing and improvising is that the latter takes place in real time and does not involve revision. Otherwise, the processes are pretty much the same in both linguistic and musical environments. I am, for example, improvising this post (as I have done in the past when this topic has come up), drawing on my general linguistinc skills (the ability to frame sentences, sequence them, choose the appropriate words, and so on) and rhetorical competence (remembering the kinds of sentences that work well in such situations), along with understanding of the subject matter at hand.

Every time we speak, we are improvising, but it doesn't feel like really hard work because our linguistic skills are so deeply embedded and long practices. In music, the skills and rhetoric-equivalents and model-sets are acquired later and feel less embedded--for most of us, anyway. But the longer you play your instrument and understand its resources, the less stressful and mysterious improvising feels. Composing, taking place off-line, as it were, and benefitting from the revision process, might feel different, but that's mostly because the anxiety of real-time generation is absent. The generating machineries are not all that different.

(Note: the only places I have revised are where my fingers have mis-typed words--not unlike playing clams in a solo.)

On edit: I have to resist the urge to go back and correct the typos I didn't catch while composing the above on the fly. But then it wouldn't be a pure improvisation but an edited one. I'm told that they say in the music biz, "We'll fix it in post." Well, I'm leaving the clams there for all to see.

Perfect.