Paula Verdicchio Ailshie

String Improvisation: No Preparation Necessary?

By Paula Verdicchio Ailshie

As a teacher, I often hear jarring definitions to simple musical terms. What shocks me the most is that some of them actually come from musicians! Recently, after one of these enlightening class period of college level jazz history and appreciation, I took the time to actually look up the definitions of improvisation, an art form I aspire to master, in a college dictionary. The same rancid and incorrect definition curled under my scrunched nose like a million freshman footlockers. “No preparation? Then what,” I muttered to myself, “have I been doing 6 hours or more a day?”

I would like to offer an alternative to an incomplete definition, in hopes that music educators, including myself, will endeavor to correct this common misconception, attesting instead to the validity of a distinctly American100 year old musical art form.

My personal definition of Improvisation:

An instantaneously composed melodic line, usually based on a given set of chord changes or modes, influenced by historical precedence, in which a performer communicates an idea or ideas musically using both the intuitive emotional connection of the right brain and a mastered musical vocabulary of the left brain simultaneously to introduce, develop, climax and bring to fruition an artistic statement.

A skilled improviser combines artistic expressiveness with a cultural sensitivity, social awareness and a disciplined regimen of focused, meaningful, goal-oriented practice.

Contrary to the traditional musical definitions, e.g. extemporization or impromtu, consistent professional level jazz improvisation demands not only a wealth of aesthetic and historical perspective, but extensive preparation. For some, this art can be nearly completely internalized by immersion in active listening and the replication of that listening using their voice and their instrument, but for most, a theoretical and analytical study are necessary at some level for permanent retention and an in-depth understanding. Obviously, this acquired knowledge must be put into not only the memory, but the subconscious in order to serve any practical use to the realistic improvising performer.

Wouldn’t it be fun and giggles if to improv truly meant making something up “on the fly” with no preparation! That would make any beginning musician a candidate for a jazz combo. But, how much more it thrills an advanced or professional performer to so truly know the music inside and out that they instantaneously compose beautiful and even complex melodies by using the farthest depths of their sub-conscious to communicate aesthetically to an audience they have presumably never met!

Yes, anyone can improvise, to a degree. But few can say they earn a living as a full-time, professional improvising musician. Perhaps the goal of this prestigious title appeals to the ethos of so many students and professionals because they know they may be so honored work a lifetime towards the same goal and, in the meantime, live, love and evolve with the only truly American art-form in all of music history.