Music + Improvisation in Music 128

This semester, I enrolled in Music 128, a class centered around the study of musical improvisation. Although currently part of the Music department, it is a pilot class for the L&S ‘Big Ideas’ initiative, which aims to involve instructors of several different departments to converge on teaching a single “big idea.” The “big idea” in this class is improvisation, and true to this, the curriculum goes far beyond music. Most weeks, experts of studies like literature, business, computer science, and more, share with us the importance of improvisation in their respective fields, allowing a well-rounded appreciation of the study.

Improvisation is, in fact, ubiquitous. It is so central to our activity and existence as humans that we don’t even realize we do it all the time. Interestingly, improvisation isn’t always 100% spontaneous. It requires specific mindfulness and skills. For example, our day-to-day speech is improvisational, but the reason it flows so effortlessly is because we’re so accustomed to practicing it, repeatedly, every single day, for years. Being familiar with certain skills first can better grant us the comfort necessary to manipulate them to improvise. If music is a language, it might work just like speech – and it does. We’ve had several talented improvisational musicians perform for us and explain their unique perspectives on their music in practice.

Professor Myra Melford, the founder and instructor of this pilot course, is an improvisational pianist herself. Creating songs on her piano as a girl, improvising came naturally to her. Her mixed musical background in classical music, blues, and jazz shaped her talent. Her first exposure to an improvisational music performance in college led her to realize it was truly what she wanted to do with her life. According to her, the most noteworthy aspect of improvisational music is that it allows artists to find something new each time they dive into their art. The freedom to create your own music, she said, “Offers the infinite ability to find something fresh and unearth new ideas.” Check out her own new ideas at local Berkeley performances by her improvisational band, Snowy Egret.

Historically, improvisational music, or free music, stems from improvisational jazz and modern classical music genres. It defies conventional rules and structure that surrounds many traditions of music and allows room for unbounded creativity and authenticity. Musical improvisation is thrilling not only because of its aesthetic value, but also because of the depth of connection and collaboration fostered between musicians. Music has this ability just on its own (see my last piece on concerts), but improvisational performance takes this to another level because of its in-the-moment fluidity and the unexpected progression of the piece.

In class, the perfect manifestation to this philosophy was our group construction of Skatchboxes, simplistic percussion instruments that grant users the ability to produce sounds via their hands, combs, or other trinkets glued on a slim cardboard box. Over the semester, we’ve revisited the Skatchbox and explored the diversity of sounds it can produce. Something new emerges each time. In essence, music doesn’t have to be a four-part harmonic ballad, it could just be a cardboard box, a comb, and a little open mindedness.

Professor Melford’s joint performance with clarinetist Ben Goldberg was one of my in-class favorites this semester. Their back-and-forth was like a conversation, and neither the sound of the piano nor the clarinet overpowered the other, but rather built upon each other like a story. Here is one of their collaborations from a few years ago.
Lisa Mezzacappa, a guest bassist and musical improviser, introduced us to graphic scores, which are fluid, abstract representations and symbols of whatever sound the composer wishes to communicate. They seem to be far removed from the stringent, traditional musical scores of classical Western music. In class, getting used to this took adjustment, but it was a breath of fresh air. It allowed so much more creativity and flexibility in sound, and felt like a much more inclusive and accessible format of musical notation. It didn’t require an extensive background of musical theory, and this was refreshing.

Although less emphasized in present-day Western classical music, there exist entire traditions of music that are built upon the practice of improvisation. From Indonesian gamelan, to Indian classical music, it has had years of success. Jazz is a genre rooted in American history that deeply engenders improvisation, even to the point where the expertise of a jazz musician often can be gauged by their ability to improvise. Even rap music, one of the recent fastest-rising and most popular modern genres, utilizes improvisation in its practice of “freestyle.”

Improvisational skills extracted from music apply now more than ever. The semester obviously hasn’t gone the way any of us had planned – we worked on our group midterm projects and wrote musical scores virtually via Zoom – but this is just the manifestation of the most vital human skills: the skill of improvisation.

If you’re interested, check out the California Jazz Conservatory or San Francisco Jazz for local performances, or the Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective to see our very own Berkeley students perform improvisational music. Or better yet, take the class!

Written by Sanjana Sanghani