Beginners’ Lesson
Welcome! This month we’re going to take a look at one of the most misunderstood aspects of music-making—improvisation. Improv at its most basic is a ‘choose your own adventure’ approach to music: Are you going to play this version of the bass-line, or this version? You decide!
Conversations about improvising often happen when we’re talking about learning jazz, but are absent from so many other areas, even though the improviser’s mindset is a crucial approach for us to develop. So this month we’re going to explore a few ways to begin thinking about improvisation.
At its core, improvisation is about who’s making the decisions. If someone or something else is deciding exactly what you play, that’s a composition. If you get to choose what you play in a particular situation, that’s improvisation. There are degrees of control outside of
