It has long been acknowledged that many "great" players play a lot of "wrong" notes. Clearly pitch and rhythm are not the only bearers of musical expression or ideas.
A player often may give an admirable performance while disregarding much of the notation--still conveying some if not all of the essential musical ideas of the composer, or conveying a full musical experience. Not only that, but once the sanctity of the notation is demystified or demythologized--once the performer's ideas are given as much respect as those of the composer, in all aspects of the music--then the performer may be free to improvise upon or recompose notated music to any desired extent, the better to personalize the message being conveyed.
Changing assumptions of who is the creator, who "owns" ideas, and whose ideas must be expressed can be a very fruitful method of producing new musical experience. There is yet another significant reason, more political than musical, why one might commit music to paper.
A musical score is a lasting document of creative accomplishment. Even after the musical experience itself has passed--perhaps never to occur again--the paper is written proof that a musical experience, considered important by someone even if only the composer , took place.
This proof of a past occurence, and the potential ability to recreate it in some way, even after the composer's death, is essential to many composers. It is essential if the composer desires recognition or some form of imposed immortality. This is another way in which a score is an implement of and a testament to an individual's egotism.
In this century, sound recordings serve a similar purpose of "immortalizing", or at least documenting, a musical experience. Still, the recording does not document the preparation for the experience--the work that went into producing the finished product. This is one reason why improvised music is attributed less importance in a society absorbed by work, accomplishment, and assertion of ego.
A recording of an improvised music session is proof only of a brief period of creative accomplishment; the preparation for the recording is still undocumented. A recording of a composed work, however, is viewed as the culmination or realization of the true, extended creative process which took place presumably for at least several weeks beforehand and is thoroughly documented by the written score. Some composers, not content with that documentation of their labors, derive further recognition by presenting lectures in which they describe their precompositional planning, display working sketches, etc.
The preparation takes on a sense of accomplishment all of its own the labor pains get as much attention and admiration as the baby , all thoroughly documented on paper and perhaps even redocumented in a film or video tape.
This documentation of preparatory work, as opposed to the documentation of the music itself, does not contribute to the composer's quest for immortality, but it is very powerful as proof of serious intent, conscientious labor, membership in the club of serious musicians i.
These proofs help further one's standing in whatever positions society at large provides for such people professor, composer-in-residence, competition jurist, itinerant composer, conductor, film composer, arts administrator, etc. Documentation of the work , every bit as much as the music itself, helps get prizes, grants, pay raises, tenure, commissions to produce more scores, even, in the case of one composer, a role in a commercial endorsement for a whiskey with a "rugged individualist" public relations image.
It is also important to note that, although a musical score is the preferred documentation of compositional work, it is no longer the only storage medium for composed music. A great deal of music has been composed exclusively for sound recording and exists only in that format.
More recently, composed pieces may be stored on computer floppy disk, in the form of MIDI data or other computer files, for resynthesis of the music by computer. A written score for such a work may never exist because the sound recording or floppy disk is a superior storage medium.
Alternatively, the score may exist as a composer's aid in producing the sound recording, but serves no purpose for recreating the musical experience. The score used in the production of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Studie II for magnetic tape was published by Universal Edition in , even though no performance of the work would ever be realized by live players. This is an example of a score which exists only as an additional document of the composer's work, and serves no purpose of recreating the musical experience.
A listener who does not know whether a piece of music is composed or spontaneously improvised will initially use the same conscious or unconscious standards of reception: What is the melodic and harmonic content of the music? How consistent is it? How does the rhythmic placement of notes or musical gestures delineate meter?
How do events form recognizable groups or sections? Do the sections last the right amount of time? How do I like the organization and the expression of the music? When the listener is aware that the music is either improvised or composed either by being told of the fact, or by surmising based on initial impressions of the music , the criteria of evaluation may differ somewhat: Has the material been carefully elaborated or extemporaneously proposed?
Is the performer struggling to do something difficult? Why is it difficult? Are the performers playing interactively or just simultaneously? The listener's concerns may shift more to the interaction between the players in improvised music, or more to the organization of the musical material in composed music.
How do the processes of composition and improvisation differ, and how are those differences heard? One of the most impressive differences is that improvised music is made up at precisely the same moment that it is being performed. The opportunity to make changes retrospectively--out of real time--does not exist in improvisation or any type of live performance.
Of course, an improviser can make musical reference to an earlier point in time, but that reference cannot erase the earlier point in time, it can only modify its meaning by referring to it at a later time.
That new reference must also be part of the improvised piece. On the other hand, the very fact that improvised music is, by definition, made up on the spot means that it can be continually monitored and adapted to the circumstances of the moment. Composed music has, by definition, previously fixed elements which cannot possibly respond to unforeseen conditions of a later time. The real time nature of improvisation gives it strengths and weaknesses which are different from--at times even the exact opposite of--those of composition.
A discussion of these differences must be preceded by a couple of obvious disclaimers. Many improvisers are also composers, and vice versa, and their methods in one activity may strongly influence their approach to the other activity. Also, there are at least as many ways of composing and improvising as there are composers and improvisers, and any comparison of the two activities can really only deal in generalities to which many exceptions can easily be found.
With these caveats in mind, it is nevertheless interesting to consider some common effects of realtime versus non-realtime creation of music. A composer has the leisure to manipulate musical materials in a manner involving any desired level of complexity, even taking days to calculate relationships of pitch and rhythm, both on a microscopic and macroscopic level.
How does this enable the composer to make music that an improviser cannot? A composer, by virtue of this leisurely pace and the ability to notate reliably store ideas, can develop structures in any or all parameters which would be of an intricacy, complexity, or scope too great for an improviser to generate spontaneously. A couple of trivial examples might be, say, a precisely recurring element series or a polyrhythm of 13 against 17 against 23 against Without debating the necessity or desirability of such levels of intricacy, it can certainly be agreed that these are composable but not improvisable because composition does not occur in real time.
A composer can also combine generative processes in a way that defies linear time progression by, for example, composing a developmental passage perhaps similarly to the way an improviser might elaborate a theme then reorganizing that development into sections which are no longer in their original order.
In short, the fact that a composer is not restricted to working in real time enables the generation and elaboration of music by any means that takes a greater length of time than the duration of the music itself.
Composer Roger Reynolds has said that a composer practically has a responsibility to take advantage of this ability, since it is one of the main differences between improvisation and composition. Most all composers use this non-realtime advantage in more traditional ways, refining their spontaneous decisions with more considered revisions.
Although there are certainly composers who have needed less revision of their original "inspirations" than others Mozart and Schubert are obvious examples , and composers who seem to be most comfortable writing down their own instrumental improvisations Chopin, for example , the majority of composers perform considerable revision of their original ideas before considering a piece finished.
These revisions may be in the form of numerous sketches, as with Beethoven, or geometrical formal structuring, as with Reynolds, or simply extensive mental reworking, as with Shostakovich, who claimed to write his music down once only, in ink.
A recent trend in composition is the use of extra-musical processes for generating musical material--that is to say, the use of some system for deriving sounds by criteria other than the sound itself.
How do you, as your character, feel about what she is doing? The words are tools used to accomplish or to pursue a goal objective or need. Good scenes take place somewhere and at sometime. They do not take place on an empty stage.
A location can easily be established in one or two lines without breaking the scene. The zoo manager will be so pissed at us. With the new rudder we should have smooth sailing. You New York City people, Markus, have all the modern things. I knew coming to New York would be exciting, my dear brother. Each of the opening lines above provides an idea of a location. By working with your partner, the specifics of the location are further worked out.
Of course, it is even better when you can establish location without words or with minimal use of dialogue. Details are the lifeblood of moving a scene forward. Each detail provides clues to what is important. Details help provide beat objectives and flesh out characters. Rather than: Like when you stole the medal he won in the war. Improvisation is one of the core techniques used by actors. It stretches the imagination, sparks spontaneity and can lead to unforgettable performances.
To the dismay of script writers everywhere, it has also been responsible for some of the best moments in cinema history! It spans various genres: from improvised comedy nights and stand-up comedy to music. Scripted work of course has great merits, and forms the basis for the majority of acting we are used to seeing, whether at the cinema or theatre.
Unscripted, improvised theatre and comedy are both established art forms in their own right, and are growing in popularity among audiences due to their high-energy and spontaneous moments of comedy.
Improvisation aka acting improv is not a new invention - actors have been using these skills for centuries. Taking a character off-script and seeing how they react in different situations helps create a rounded character and can lead to more natural, believable performances.
There are number of techniques actors can develop in rehearsal to develop these skills. Being a team player. Smart companies ensure they hire the right people. Hiring goes beyond talents and experience, it's also about culture. Will this candidate work well with my team?
Your improv troupe becomes a family. If you aren't working well with your team members, the audience will see it and your performance will fail. Now, consider your own business and career. I bet you're performing improv without even knowing it. Rocker Henry Rollins nailed it when he said, "For the last plus years, I have been doing one long, uninterrupted improv. Dave Delaney is a social media and inbound marketing consultant, author, speaker and veteran improv performer.
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