The Improvisation of exciting music can be learned.
The course's focus of attention is the Free Improvisation that means Improvisation as a compositional process of equal players and not the execution of rules or other instructions.
This "freedom" lies - among other things - in the fact that in principle (compositional) decisions are possible in every moment and thus the involved players have the whole responsibility; though the frame of reference within the developing piece gets more complex and increasingly the music takes over the dictation.
Developing of an own musical language; not the learning of a huge number of styles!
If possible individual stimulation of the participants and of their specific capabilities.
Developing of a musical environment (craft) that allows to go independently the artistic way as an improviser.
The most important (trainable!) abilities as a condition for the improvising of exciting music are:
- creation of a common sound space
- the utmost concentration and awakening
- absolute firmness and clarity in the execution
- prompt and precise reactions (behaviour of playing)
- formal survey
- consciousness of the material (economy of devices)
- high developed capabilities of listening
- close familiarity with the used means (technique)
- experience
These aims and conditions are acquired and developed above all within the scope of improvising practice.
Recording of the improvisations to listen to them and to discuss them.
Analyze the performance. Recognition and naming of form building levels and elements; recognize interfaces; etc.. Listening considering the structure and the form.
Elaborating of causes, criterions of the process of the "piece" at issue, of pivots, of formal key passages, of consequences of definite musical actions etc..
Practical and theoretical treatment of questions of form-building (so: development, series, contrast, repetition, proportions, time, courses of the energy, understandability, form, gestures, spatiality).
Discussion and elaboration of criterions to review the performance. Development of the consciousness of quality. How does quality arise?
Thoughts on connections, so: material structure; structure form; timbre pitch; internal tempo ("ductus") duration of the piece; energy construction; etc. (can be extended ad libitum and is hardly to systematize exhaustively).
Thoughts and Conversations on elementary questions of music language. Narrative, spatial, physical, intellectual, psychological aspects of music.
Walter Fδhndrich