About Improvised Music

Improvisation in opposition to what most people and "experts" in music believes or see and value as a lower kind or way of making music; turned to be a new tradition marked by new ethics and rules. Abstract or concrete rules dictated by aesthetics of sound. If music is sound that suffices itself no that any sound is music but any music is sound, Is this fair? I don't think so.
Maybe affected by our vicious Western functionalism of turning everything into a profitable and understandable link to boredom. More probably that maybe.
When in case "they" decide that improvisation is good, it is good or "make sense" only as part of a bigger piece, like in Jazz where the improvisation is based and expected to be performed on the basses of a theme or in Rock where virtuosity plays a main roll and turns the player into a super hero, a cartoon a ridiculous object of desire. To be artistic the image of the artist should disappear as much as posible to leave not even the minor chance for the ego to project any shadow. Of course Progressive Rock and Krautrock are exceptions here, this two types of Rock Music if well written are focused in the invocation of the magic or assaulting realities. Isn't it a reflection of its own nature. . .?

But also this physical virtuosity that characterize Rock Music takes the act of music making out of its artistic context and re-locate it as an Sport. And this is what Rock Music has turned to be at least for the last 15 years. Rock music after Nirvana has turned into a Sport. A competition Sport far away of of the prestige of being called Art.
There's no way that you can find any remains of Art in it. Not anymore. No wander why major Rock concerts are performed in stadiums....
And what is that aim for getting the best and more expensive instruments when nobody really play more than two chords on them.. ?

Notwithstanding the almost political opposition that permanently confronts it,
Improvisation it is today not only a genre in its own right but also a superior one.

Why superior? :

Because written music not always happen to be catalyzed by emotions or by artistry but most of the time by automatic execution and by repetition of patterns and cliches that are guaranteed to "work". As the predictable and safe seems to please and secure the expectations of the mainstream whose members are marked by regular standards of intelligence and therein deprived by their own limited capacity to perceive "other worlds" or simply, more of this one.

Improvised music often seen as apparently elitist and arrogant (and sometime it really is ), however Improvisation socially developed for the last 20 years and represents today not only a new genre but also and probably the future of music.

The future is here, it is happening now...

"If written music is merely related to memorizing or an automatic lifeless way of "reading and play" improvisation is a deep relationship between the musician and the instrument."

Of course both ways of music enclosures good and bad exponents but improvisation when made out with quality it is far superior to written music, at least in experience because it requires mental velocity, a very fast way of thinking and play, an exigency to react faster to send the signal to your instrument than that of your own thoughts; something like a 6th sense or higher intuition. And finally a lot of guts to accept the big risk of falling into the abyss.

But you know what? Down in the abyss is where knowledge lies.
Many musicians this days have decided to leave the comfort zone if they ever were there and jump definitely into the abyss. Even if the chances of surviving and success are none,
the trip will be indeed interesting.


D.O.