I think improvisation is overrated

[James W]

the we in this case is mainstream Western musical education and to some extent, the wider culture. work a few years in mainstream music education, and you’ll get it.

I could talk for hours about this… but probably the simplest way I could put it is that the majority of music educators were classically trained as performers.

I don’t mean this as a criticism or to demean their expertise. I actually really respect this tradition as you know. But, it does tend to shape things. Hegemonic forces are often more systemic and emergent than consciously directed.

there’s also an extensive academic literature on this very issue I could point you towards if you are glutton for punishment. (Tbh it’s mostly classical performers talking to themselves. They like to do that. Some is worth reading. Google the Mayday group for example, David Elliott, Lucy Greene etc.)

That's western music education though. I think Anglo-American pop music is far more deserving of the description of being culturally hegemonic than classical music. Classical music is niche - to most people. Just walk into any HMV.

[Christian Miller]

That's western music education though. I think Anglo-American pop music is far more deserving of the description of being culturally hegemonic than classical music. Classical music is niche - to most people. Just walk into any HMV.

I suppose you could see modern pop music production as the most extreme version of the right of the improv-composition continuum? There’s little role for improvisation in modern pop music, although it still features occasionally in live shows.

In may case there is obviously no question the hegemony of classical music has declined. It however remains extremely pervasive in instrumental education and still has a lot of clout culturally and even politically, especially internationally where countries like India and China view western classical music as having cultural prestige. See also ‘el Sistema’ in Venuzeula, fascinating case study.


(We can probably compare it with sport in this regard.)

So I’d absolutely say there’s still a European classical hegemony there esp. with respect to how we teach instrumental performance and performance practices including improv.

In my comment however I’m mostly speaking historically. My contention is that it’s mostly down to the baggage of European music that we talk about jazz and improvisation the way we do. Now there’s not really any reason to.

[joelf]

Not ‘here’s my shit’ (which is imo an expression of ego.) You can’t force having one’s own voice… come to think of it Bobby Hutcherson said Eric Dolphy taught him ‘music is like the wind… you don’t own anything.’ You ain’t got no shit lol, it all comes from Somewhere Else.

That is true, but I also totally reject what may be an underlying lurking thought---and I may be completely off-base here, not actually knowing you other than on here. (And to quote Ed Cherry 'I say this with love').

Your statement seems a justification for fear of self-expression/self-discovery. It seems self-limiting and self-defeating---though I may be not getting it, in which case I apologize. The guys you cite knew they stood on the forefathers' shoulders, but definitely were on their own journeys.

A lot of people here cite Barry Harris as guru, hero---whatever. Well, I knew him well, since 1976. Loved him too. He was a great man. But once he called me when I was in-hospital. I was feeling doubtful about many things. In that discussion I mentioned that I have (musical) limitations.

'There are no limitations'.

Now this is a guy who everyone seems to think did best systematizing what was already out there. Maybe so, but he also knew his worth and, frankly, had quite the ego about it when you peeled past the 1st layer. So he advised me that day to maybe have more ego, or anyway more faith in myself, what I, Joel Fass, could bring to the table. It's almost as if he was putting the masters, who he certainly revered highly and fought for their recognition, in a certain perspective. One of his heros, Thelonious Monk, insisted we be ourselves, even as he knew whose shoulders he stood on.

Anything can be taken too far, slavish devotion and blind following as well as blinders-on self-worship.To me at least in somewhere in-between, maybe closer but not all the way to the self side of the equation lies the key to artistry...

[Christian Miller]

Gosh this is a really interesting discussion. However now it’s time for small talk with in laws, so I must park this one until later. Thanks to you both …

[Christian Miller]

(I promise I’m not just avoiding talking about the Deep Stuff haha)

[AllanAllen]

Lee Konitz reminds me of that Mad Men scene where the intern tells Don Draper he feels sorry for him and Draper replies “I don’t think of you at all.” Parker being Don Draper.

He seems to have a lot to say about how much better he is, or more authentic. The kind of attitude that leads to pouting at home instead of gigging.

I hope OP comes back.

[joelf]

This thread isn’t a conversation, it’s just a bunch of licks.

And you just chimed in with your own...

[Tal_175]

To me the difference between improvisation and composition is improvisation is necessarily very idiomatic to a style (including the improvisions of "ground up" improvisers like Lee Kontiz) whereas the act of composition allows for a wider range of ideas with more intricate performance elements to be worked out before hand. In other words, a cohesive, improvised solo requires the player to draw from a narrower set of ingrained vocabulary as well as the melody of the tune but if the same player composed the solo instead, he/she could produce an as cohesive solo by integrating ideas that are less accessible to them in a realtime performance. Compositions also tend to have longer motivic and sequenced phrases. That doesn't mean composed music is better, BTW.

Cohesion is the keyword here, not creativity. One can come up with interesting ideas in realtime during improvisation but it's very hard to arrange these ideas into a coherent solo on the fly. Therefore we tend to be more selective about what we are willing to pursue in improvised setting compared to situations where we can "edit" the arrangement or let the rough cut brew in the back burner for a while.

[pamosmusic]

Lee Konitz reminds me of that Mad Men scene where the intern tells Don Draper he feels sorry for him and Draper replies “I don’t think of you at all.” Parker being Don Draper.

He seems to have a lot to say about how much better he is, or more authentic. The kind of attitude that leads to pouting at home instead of gigging.

I hope OP comes back.

Im not really sure what this is about, but Lee Konitz came into the club where I worked. He sat in the front row and just kept chattering and telling everyone all these awkward old man jokes. People kept coming up to me and complaining about the old guy who wouldn’t let them listen. It was hilarious.

The list of people I wouldn’t tell to be quiet was pretty short but I drew the line at Lee Konitz.

[Tal_175]

I also think the similarity between composition and improvisation is overstated. Being a composer is a distinct talent. Most people can be trained to become good idiomatic improvisers within a certain style. I don't think most can be trained to be good composers.

[sgosnell]

The estimable William Basie once said in an interview that there is no sin in staying close to the melody during a solo.

[Reg]

Yea Patrick... improvisation is overrated when you think of it as soloing or single and double stop lines etc...

But take a tune you know... and play it in 10 different styles.

Generally you might even change the harmonic reference, which can also change the melody. Think simple Major to parallel Minor or Relative minor, then try Modal versions etc...

My point is ... that is also improvisation and if you play lots of gigs with different musicians.... that's what you end up doing... and of course you need to be aware of the musicians, the audience, the type of gig... yada yada

So yea... if you can't keep the "FORM" together.... your never really going to play in a jazz style. Or at least give the impression or imply that your aware of the Form.

Who cares... do what you do. But your argument that improvisation is...overrated seems more like you don't... or haven't become aware of all the aspects of improvisation. Reading music is a way to at least stay on Form...LOL

Joel... I agree with you about Peter B... I have always loved his use of Dom. Pents melodically . Remembers when he played with Melvin... and Kenny W. etc.... Healthy Holidays

[AllanAllen]

Im not really sure what this is about, but Lee Konitz came into the club where I worked. He sat in the front row and just kept chattering and telling everyone all these awkward old man jokes. People kept coming up to me and complaining about the old guy who wouldn’t let them listen. It was hilarious.

The list of people I wouldn’t tell to be quiet was pretty short but I drew the line at Lee Konitz.

From what I’ve read on this forum Konitz would put down Parker for composing his solos or having licks he liked. While Konitz thought himself a “true jazz musician” because he completely improvised everything he played.

So that’s where it’s coming from. Based on this attitude he seems stuffy and elitist.

It’s cool that you met him and my perception of him is wrong.

[Cunamara]

Composition is composition. Improvisation is composition. The difference is that what we think of as "composition" is not in real time: it can take weeks or months to write a minute of music. When "improvising," it takes a minute to compose a minute of music. Of course, there can be years or decades of work that are foundational to that minute.

One of my very favorite jazz guitarists is Jim Hall. I often think about the fact that Jim had a bachelor's and part of a master's degree in music, the latter being in composition. I think his formal knowledge of composition is evident in his improvisation- he knew how things go together and how to play with and against that.

Being a jazz hobbyist rather than a professional, working a full-time gig in an unrelated (although often improvisational in its own right) field, I've unfortunately never had the time to develop those skills as much as I'd like*. Now facing retirement in hopefully the next few months, I'm trying to figure out how to finally get after that. Audit music classes at the local university? Find a private teacher? Online courses? Just sit and play along with recordings of the masters until I "get it?" Given the self-evident limits of my innate musical talent, I think I've had a greater contribution to the world in my day gig that I would have ever had as a musician.

* I suspect that every musician ever would say they have not developed their skills to the level they would like. I think in the pursuit of excellence we always aspire to be better.

[princeplanet]

This discussion comes up from time to time on this forum, and those of us that have been here long enough already know what the various responses will be, but for those new enough to not be aware of these past threads, it usually comes down to something like: "Jazz is improvisation" vs " Composed Jazz can still be considered Jazz". People can cite plenty of examples to support either argument, so, like most debates on JGF, we eventually agree to disagree, after all, it's all subjective blah blah blah...

And in the spirit of allowing ourselves to have an objective opinion, I can only offer my own, which is that I probably prefer good composed Jazz to poor improvised Jazz. But even when some improvised Jazz is considered "good" by many, I can still find myself unmoved. However, on the comparatively rare (for me anyway) occasion when a group of good improvisors are playing things I like, ah, well that's when I'm reminded why I devoted a large chunk of my life to this art form. Watching someone walk a tightrope 3 feet above the ground is OK, but it is more compelling if it's 30 ft from the ground, even with a safety net.

However, 300 feet above the ground with no net? Now that's exciting! That's entertainment!! . Good quality Bop based improv, flirting with real changes, is like that for me.

[BradGuitar]

A very wise person once told me,

”My triad is the same as your triad, it’s how we use them that makes us unique”

Possibly food for thought in the wider context of the debate…

[RLetson]

If improvisation is the defining characteristic of jazz, what do we do with musical traditions that employ improvisation but are clearly not-jazz? Christian mentioned a couple, and I would point to, say "Orange Blossom Special," famously a showcase for fancy, improvisatory fiddling. Of course, I'm sure there are listeners who will think of OBS as at least jazz-adjacent, but to my ear there's a considerable gulf between it and, say, Grappelli.

And then there's big-band jazz, with arrangements and charts and spaces reserved for soloists to stand up and do something interesting. Are the charted sections not jazz? (This is a variation on an old philosophy-course chestnut: Is a father only a father when he's fathering?) And, to echo Christian again, Monk might have sounded like he was making it up as he went along, but he spent a lot of time devising his music. Ah, sponteneity--once you've planned that out, you've got it made.

I am not an solo-instrumental improviser--I lack the chops as well as the confidence. I do, however, improvise a good bit when I sing, especially in phrasing (scatting is too scary), something I was sensitized to when studying Shakespeare performance and how actors shape their speeches. John Barton (Royal Shakespeare Company directory) said that the line tells you how to read it--to which I would add, your sense of semantics and prosody and natural language tells you what your options for presenting a line might be, and you shape a performance by grabbing the ones that work at the moment--or that you know have worked in the past. It's a dynamic that can be described in retrospect, but in real time, you just grab the one that feels right. "Training" consists of becoming aware of the resources available and practicing their deployment. The overlap with musical performance is pretty clear to me.

[Navdeep_Singh]

Indian classical music (Carnatic and Hindustani) allows for more improvisation, but it has even more strident form/rules to follow, given the talas and the raga systems, even though it’s purely modal . Jazz music probably has less improvisation, but probably doesn’t have as strident of a form/rules, even though it has to navigate through European harmony. Go figure.

[Christian Miller]

Composition is composition. Improvisation is composition. The difference is that what we think of as "composition" is not in real time: it can take weeks or months to write a minute of music. When "improvising," it takes a minute to compose a minute of music. Of course, there can be years or decades of work that are foundational to that minute.

maybe if you are talking about a modern concert composer with an academic day job trying to find something new to say to a rarified audience…

but again, if we look historically at people we hold up as great composers today, the Bachs, Haydns, Schuberts, Mozarts etc they didn’t have the luxury of time. They had to churn the stuff out. So their compositional process was not far removed from improvisation. Look at their output.

as Gjerdingen puts it ‘We’d be hard pressed to copy music as fast as they composed it.’

today we talk about Mozart’s composition of the Don Giovanni overture on the eve of its first rehearsal as genius, but tbh those turnarounds were not unusual for the elite trained composers of the era. They learned to work fast because they needed to.

A performer spends far more time learning to interpret one of their works than they spent writing it.

They had the advantage of working in a well established idiom even with their own particular voice.

Today we have the film scoring. Deadlines are tight, the music language somewhat ‘off the shelf. Not dissimilar.

There’s a real continuum. I haven’t even really
talked about ‘improvisation’ yet.

[joelf]

Cohesion is the keyword here, not creativity. One can come up with interesting ideas in realtime during improvisation but it's very hard to arrange these ideas into a coherent solo on the fly. Therefore we tend to be more selective about what we are willing to pursue in improvised setting compared to situations where we can "edit" the arrangement or let the rough cut brew in the back burner for a while.

Not always true, and I think looseness will precede and lead to cohesion.

There was an alto player I knew in NY, Clarence 'C' Sharpe. He was very loose. How he got there I'd rather not say---use your imaginations.

The point is that he was one of 2 totally loose improvisers I've been exposed to, Wayne Shorter being the other. (There are many others, but those 2 come to mind off the top). I gravitate a bit more to C. though, he takes me home. Wayne sometimes leaves me stranded, but he's great too.

C's looseness opened the door for solos that were very in the moment, passionate and joyful, yet very organized. And he practiced, but didn't pre-plan.

And conversation? We went up to the roof of his building once and played. Seemed like we played Someone to Watch Over Me for 45 minutes, though in reality it was probably more like 6-10. It was so special it was beyond the temporal, terrestrial or time-focused. And after he spoke his piece this MF accompanied me playing bass notes on alto!

With looseness and listening all is possible...

[Tal_175]

Can anybody name an accomplished jazz musician who cannot improvise in the jazz style?

[James W]

Rather than comparing them to todays ‘art composers’, think of the film scoring world today by way of comparison. Deadlines are tight, the music language somewhat ‘off the shelf.

'Off the shelf' is one way of putting it - another is to say that much of today's film music is derivative of much older music, adding nothing new to it - whereas the music that the likes of Mozart churned out wasn't.

[Christian Miller]

From what I’ve read on this forum Konitz would put down Parker for composing his solos or having licks he liked. While Konitz thought himself a “true jazz musician” because he completely improvised everything he played.

So that’s where it’s coming from. Based on this attitude he seems stuffy and elitist.

It’s cool that you met him and my perception of him is wrong.

The Tristano school guys in generally are/were very wedded to the idea of pure improvisation.

[orri]

It's because I have a handicap, I find it impossible for me to hold the 'form' (the chord structure) in my head. If I look away from the lead sheet, the chords just vanish in my head and I get lost in the form ...

How did you reach that conclusion?
It's a skill you can build and become better at.

I'm quite sure that if you comp 10 choruses of blue bossa with a sheet and a backing track.
And then lose the sheet and try to comp with the backing track but without the sheet, you'll get it after a few choruses. Just make mistakes and find your way back if you get lost in the form.

If you are very comfortable playing with a sheet but uncomfortable without, you need to start practising playing without a sheet with much simpler material than what you play with a sheet.

[James W]

maybe if you are talking about a modern concert composer with an academic day job trying to find something new to say to a rarified audience…

It's funny that you write 'trying'. Is it too much of a stretch for your imagination that composers find something new to say? How can the audience be rarefied if indeed it's true that they're part of a cultural hegemony?