Re: memory and improvisation

[jim palmer <jimp@pobox.com>]

so glad you are back.
this is the kind of thread that attracted me to this group.
(other than the gearhead stuff, of course)

i wonder if it is possible to improvise entirely without licks 
("...phrases they remember...")  i don't mean just flashy bebop kind of 
stuff,
even simple three pitch melody snippets and such. even the flashy 
blistering note
explosions can be seen as simple three note concepts.  i don't want to 
digress into
a discussion of schenker analysis here, though...

 i certainly have had moments when i was improvising where what i was 
playing 
was entirely new to me... i have even screwed up a good flow by wondering 
how i was 
doing something instead of just letting it happen.  
carlos santana supposedly said that the musicians are the hose, 
the audience is the garden, and music is the water. 
the job of the improviser, then, is to be the best hose: to allow the 
water/music to 
flow freely through to the garden/audience.  

anyone ever heard the midwestern (u.s.) expression "works like a hose" ?

interestingly the most spiritual moments i have had while improvising 
happened 
while i was feeling like the audience instead of the performer...
maybe that's what it feels like to "be the hose"...

but it seems to me that those new musical ideas that flow during 
improvisation come mostly 
from recombinations of other ideas in the musical meme pool rather than 
entirely new concepts.  


matthias wrote:
>...
>"Real improvising musicians dont remember what they play. Many can 
>play amazing combinations of phrases they remember, but its just a 
>collage of clichees. It really starts where we play what we dont know 
>ourselves. ... Improvisation takes a lot of very quick thinking!"