Improvising vs. composing

[Dan Soltzberg <d.ans@rcn.com>]

Title: Improvising vs. composing

Hi gang,


Would love to hear people’s experiences with this dilemma:

I’ve been doing a project, Orange, for a couple years. Tonight, I packed my gear out of a rehearsal space and turned in my keys after 3 months of struggling with trying to take this improvisational project and make it more structured— i.e., take stuff we’d made up and recorded at various shows and sessions and re-learn it and make a bunch of songs out of it. I just found I wasn’t enjoying the process of trying to do this.

So it seems I’m no longer very interested in writing and playing songs— what I really get inspired doing is going out on a limb and making the music up as I go. I can’t seem to get the kind of spiritual high I get when I’m improvising if I’m playing stuff that’s pre-structured. Not that I don’t like structure— I just like creating it on the fly. 

Problem is, 1. It’s kind of intense to go to every show having no idea of what I’m going to play, hoping the muse is on the guest list 

2. It’s hard to bring other musicians in without having at least some structure.


Thoughts? Similar experiences? Solutions?


Dan


-- 
ghost 7/ Orange
http://www.envelopeproductions.com
d.ans@rcn.com