On 28/08/2009 08:58, "Boris Shoshensky" <[email protected]> wrote:

> "But, contrastingly too,
> Derek Bailey argues that anybody can improvise musically, they either do so
> with a low or extremely high level of sophistication".
> 
> I think, Bailey is wrong. If sophistication of improvisation is below  certain
> level music dies and noise is born.
> Anybody can't improvise musically.
> 
> Boris Shoshensky

You may be correct, Boris, but this partly depends on what you consider to
be music. Bailey is arguing that idiomatic improvisation is determined by
containment within a music idiom, while free improvisation, non-idiomatic
improvisation has no such boundaries. Thus, jazz improvisation is contained
within the structures of jazz pieces and by harmonic progressions. But if
the idea of harmonic progressions and sturcture is abandoned, then the width
of music becomes larger as an exploration in sound, for some it is also an
exploration of noise, e.g., Japanese Noise music. Bailey argues that
improvisation without precondition is difficult but everyone is capable if
they abandon the idea of preconditions, starting point.

But if you consider music to have some kind of harmonic or structural
progression to is, in the absence of which it becomes noise then you are
correct. If you consider that music is a relationship of sounds with rhythms
or pulses, then the situation becomes more difficult to conclude as that
improvisation without skill is noise.

I am sympathetic to both arguments, but would buy music and attend concerts
of the more skilled improvisors, not the lesser ones.

Toodle-pip,

Allan.

-- 
http://braesidecottage-garden-music.blogspot.com/

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