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What Is Improvisation?


gigeorge17371

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Improvisation is when you create while you play, what you're playing hasn't been previously decided like any other composition, you literally start playing without knowing what's next, or you only have in your mind the very next content but nothing more, is a chain or fast decisions you take according with what you've played so far, it is used in jazz, also church organist use it a lot.

 

To improvise you build that chain or decisions with a large "library" of material you already have in your mind, so it doesn't become so hard because whatever you played before, you have several choices of musical material could work as continuation of the ideas you've used, improvisation doesn't need to be the entire material you use, for instance you can have a chord progression and only improvise the melody (more used in jazz) or the other way, to have the melody but improvise the harmony as an alternative harmonization of a theme (more in church organ improvisations) or both.

 

There is also improvisation as a musical form, but I don't know how well defined it is, I only know it in organ written improvisations, where composer writes a close copy of what he improvised in the past, and turn it into a work can be played, published etc, maybe improvisation as form could be used for other pieces, like orchestrating a theme was originally improvised.

 

Improvisation demands a lot of your musical skills, and it can show yourself how good you are at certain aspects of music, for instance I find easy to improvise in piano, (more as a harmony aspect) but not in saxophone (more as a melodic) aspect because I don't handle melodic lines as good as harmonic progressions.

 

Hope this vid helps you.

 

 

I always improvise at sunday mass exit (when I play it) just I don't play a monster like that, but a much smaller organ.

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