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Another way of looking at improvisation


Terje

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Posted

There is this version of Twinkle, twinkle little star by Mozart where you can hear how he's experimenting with the song. He's just trying out different ways of playing it really. He never actually leaves the theme, the melody, and one could say that instead of just playing the melody he's playing with the melody.

 

That's how I've come to look upon improvisation more and more. Also, I've accepted that although each new performance is a new situation there's no reason why I can't build upon what I found the last time. So what I have now is more an ongoing development of my variations on certain songs.

 

If you listen to some of the jazz greats doing several takes of the same song during one session you'll realize they did it too. Sometimes the second take was an improvement on the idea, sometimtes it wasn't. Sometimes what was done was very spontaneous and other times it was carefully thought out.

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Are you thinking of the theme and variations that mozart wrote on the melody? That's a standard classical form.

 

 

Probably, I wouldn't know. I've only heard it once. It sounds like someone messing witha melody, having fun as he goes along, then writing it down.

  • 4 weeks later...
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I don't think improvising is any sort of trick at all because I look at it as an opportunity to "daydream".
I love doing this because I don't have to worry about keeping in time, because that's not my job... it's a fookin' vacation!
But...
Sooner or later I have to come back in on "one".
Am I any good at this???
I don't know... I never assume that I am some kind of "star".
Like I once said to one of my buddies who asked me if he had done something wrong on drums during a jam because he thought I gave him a dirty look, I replied, "when I get good enough to tell you how to play, you let me know"!

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Posted
but was mozart thinking of mode scales or chords? that is the question.


:)



We'll never know. Tragically, the analog bulletin boards that he participated (known at the time as "blackboards") in were lost. There are many accounts when Amadeus Mozart (nicknamed "Moz-man") was flamed repeatedly for his tendency to "not think" while playing.

All this information was tragically lost when "Big Eraser" virus hit the blackboard!

Life isn't fair!

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