"Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians."
Using improvisation to create musical performances, including topics such as singing, harmonization, instrumentation and choreography.
Theory: Understanding music theory, such as scales, chords, and harmony, is important to know what sounds good together and how to create musical phrases.
Rhythmic awareness: Learning to play and recognize different rhythms is essential for improvisation, as well as understanding how to use silence and tempo changes.
Melody: Developing improvisational skills requires knowledge of melody, including how to create melodies and how to combine them with other musical elements.
Chord progressions: Understanding and recognizing chord progressions helps improvisers create structure and variety in their playing.
Technique: Developing technical skills, such as finger dexterity and breathing techniques, is important when executing musical ideas.
Style and genre: Different styles of music and genres require different approaches to improvisation, so it is essential to understand these differences.
Listening skills: Listening to other musicians while playing and analyzing recordings of yourself helps to develop your musical ideas and improvisational skills.
Musical communication: Improvisation is about communication between musicians, so having skills in collaboration, cooperation, and responding to other players is essential.
Creativity: Being able to create new and unique musical ideas is what makes improvisation exciting, so developing creativity is key.
Confidence: Finally, having the confidence to experiment and make mistakes is important in improvisation, as it can lead to new and unexpected musical ideas.
Jazz improvisation: A style of music that involves spontaneous creation, typically in the context of jazz music.
Indian classical music improvisation: A style of improvisation used in Indian classical music where the musician plays a raga or a tala, without pre-composed music.
Blues improvisation: Involves the use of the blues scale, where the musicians often incorporate call and response techniques, and play variations on repeating chord progressions.
Free improvisation: A process of creating music without preset guidelines, often led by the musicians' intuition.
Rock improvisation: A style that involves improvisation within a rock music structure, often using pentatonic scales, and driven by the rhythm section.
Experimental improvisation: A style that incorporates non-conventional methods and techniques, such as the use of electronic instruments and live looping.
Latin improvisation: Involves improvisation within Latin American music styles, such as salsa, samba, and bossa nova.
Classical improvisation: Involves creating or extemporizing music, often with a keyboard instrument, that follows classical-era techniques and conventions.
World music improvisation: Improvisation used within various styles of music from around the world, such as African or Middle Eastern music.
Fusion improvisation: A combination of different styles of music that involves improvisation, such as blending jazz and rock music.
"Blues, rock music, jazz, and jazz fusion, in which instrumental performers improvise solos, melody lines, and accompaniment parts."
"Musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous but may be based on chord changes in classical music and many other kinds of music."
"A performance given extempore without planning or preparation."
"Improvisation is often done within (or based on) a pre-existing harmonic framework or chord progression."
"Throughout the eras of the Western art music tradition, including the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, improvisation was a valued skill."
"J. S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and many other famous composers and musicians were known especially for their improvisational skills."
"Some classical music forms contained sections for improvisation, such as the cadenza in solo concertos, or the preludes to some keyboard suites by Bach and Handel, which consist of elaborations of a progression of chords."
"Improvisation might have played an important role in the monophonic period. The earliest treatises on polyphony indicate that added parts were improvised for centuries before the first notated examples."
"In the Baroque era, performers improvised ornaments and basso continuo keyboard players improvised chord voicings based on figured bass notation."
"Some contemporary composers from the 20th and 21st century have increasingly included improvisation in their creative work."
"In Indian classical music, improvisation is a core component and an essential criterion of performances."
"In Indian, Afghan, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi classical music, raga is the 'tonal framework for composition and improvisation.'"
"Musical improvisation combines performance with communication of emotions."
"Musical improvisation combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians."
"However, it was only in the fifteenth century that theorists began making a hard distinction between improvised and written music."
"In the 20th and early 21st century, as common practice Western art music performance became institutionalized in symphony orchestras, opera houses, and ballets, improvisation has played a smaller role."
"The Encyclopædia Britannica defines a raga as 'a melodic framework for improvisation and composition.'"
"Indian, Afghan, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi classical music."
"The Encyclopædia Britannica defines it as 'the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of a specific musical text.'"