ryans
Senior Member
This may be getting into semantics but I ..think.. I disagree with "guided by theory" at least in my case. Improvisation for me is mostly just muscle memory(based on my own internal musical vocabulary) with zero conscious thought. I don't think about music at all. I just hear it my head and let it flow out.But your improvisation is still guided by theory and a number of learned shapes and mnemonics (for lack of a better word), unless of course you’re writing completely atonal music. Which is what truly free improvisation would result in...
I see musical improvisation EXACTLY like speech. I don't think about each word, or sentence structure, or which verbs to use I just talk and then react to what the other person says and improvise a response. A solo in a jazz setting works exactly the same way, at least in my brain.