# Improvisation vs written music? (Not what you think)



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

This isn't a poll or anything like that, but since I began studying French 2 years ago, I've come to realize that the vast majority of words people use a day are more or less the same, and I was wondering if a similar thing existed for music when it was improvised rather than written down? Is an artist more likely to use more notes if they take the time to work on the music rather than just banging it out in a concert say?


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Musical standard phrases in other words? Interesting idea and I'd bet there is some truth in it for all genres of music. But I don't know for sure. It could also be that each performer has an individual bagof tricks to draw from that overlap a little with others.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Yes, I would say it takes a _great _amount of experience as an improviser to match the variety and originality of a composed work. Most improvisers use only a handful of tricks, and thus will end up repeating themselves in one way or another. They will be limited by short-term thinking, with things like phrasing, modulation, patterns, etc. But one can be a skilled improviser who knows how to break out of hackneyed patterns and do something completely different. For example, when I do flute improvisation, my phrases are always limited to how long I can play a whole phrase, and the phrase ends when I have to breathe. A high-skill improviser however will make up melodies that would go longer than a single breath and would in fact physically strain the player in one way or another for the sake of the music and not the performer.

So bottom line, only very experienced improvisers can make music that has the variety of a work that took a long time to compose.


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Manok said:


> This isn't a poll or anything like that, but since I began studying French 2 years ago, I've come to realize that the vast majority of words people use a day are more or less the same, and I was wondering if a similar thing existed for music when it was improvised rather than written down? Is an artist more likely to use more notes if they take the time to work on the music rather than just banging it out in a concert say?


Group improvisation by bands like Weather Report, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Oregon. etc., often resulted in fascinating and complex music that would never have been conceived by anyone using pen and paper.


----------

