Spontaneous Improvisation

[Mark Kleinhaut]

My daily practice

[ragman1]

Very nice, but I suppose the question is whether anything is literally spontaneous :-)

[Mark Kleinhaut]

Very nice, but I suppose the question is whether anything is literally spontaneous :-)

in other words, if I practice spontaneous playing every day is it still spontaneous? Or, my only plan is I play with no plan. I may have no safety net but there’s always the floor

[ruger9]

“Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation.”

Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

[Sam Sherry]

“{T}he quality of immediacy {is} essential to jazz. That quality originates, not from the assumption that the notes have never been played before, but from a sense that they have come into being, in real time, as urgent creative impulses.”
-- Thomas Conrad in JazzTimes, April, 2004

That would be Mark.


After all, each of us here is walking the path paved by John Dowland.

[Mark Kleinhaut]

“{T}he quality of immediacy {is} essential to jazz. That quality originates, not from the assumption that the notes have never been played before, but from a sense that they have come into being, in real time, as urgent creative impulses.”
-- Thomas Conrad in JazzTimes, April, 2004

That would be Mark.


After all, each of us here is walking the path paved by John Dowland.

My modus operandi is to just start anywhere, impulsively, and then just hang on. Recovery is where the real juice lays, so mistakes are essential.

[charlieparker]

Can you elaborate? Is this free jazz ala Ornette Coleman?

[Mark Kleinhaut]

Can you elaborate? Is this free jazz ala Ornette Coleman?

This kind of free jazz is also called free-form jazz because there is no pre set song-form being followed. Ornette composed pieces with set a melody (or head) but no prescribed harmony ir chordal form. The improvised parts generally track the melody- but how loose and far out can be debatable.

in a piece like this one there is no set melody, no chords and no form structure. The best way to describe what happens is impulsive motivic development with harmonic and contrapuntal language used to fill in the spaces implied by the melodic bits. Rather than form in the sense of measures, I’m thinking about creating a story arc, with beginning middle and clear ending. Characters enter the stage and the colors used seem an emotional resonance. Tension and release generally shapes the contours of the piece. Yikes, this sounds like music school BS (I better quit while ahead