Where does guitar improvisation come from?

[Robert****]

I am not sure what the topic is any more...

But I believe that the harder the instrument is to play, the harder it is to master, which leads to it becoming harder to improvise on. It's easy to make up a melody on the fly with your voice. That's improvising. Try doing that on the bassoon.

Some instrument like the guitar has been around a long time. Way back, it was not used for improvising so much. I think that's because improvisation wasn't something musicians strived for. Mozart and Bach weren't known for their long jam sessions! Before the 1900s, wasn't music mostly composed all the way? Compared to the world of blues & jazz that later came.

[R_of_G]

I am not sure what the topic is any more...

The topic has become as amorphous as good improv music.

Some of you that know my strongest influences by now had to expect I'd have perhaps far too much fun with this thread.

Turn an Albert Ayler obsessive loose in a thread about improv and watch the tangents fly.

Of course, if it doesn't all come back around again in the end, I'd do that particular hero of mine an injustice.

Before the 1900s, wasn't music mostly composed all the way? Compared to the world of blues & jazz that later came.

Western classical music perhaps. Indian classical music (at least the Hindustani strain) is not through-composed and features a reliance on both structure and improvisation.

That's what I was getting at earlier when I suggested the sitar may be the exception to your "simpler instrument leads to more improv" theory. Like I said, few people would claim it's easy to play a sitar, yet improvisation has been a key element of its play further back than Western classical music or the countries in which it originated.

Also, there are thousands more traditional African styles I don't know than ones I do, but the ones I am familiar with also place some emphasis on improvisation. Unless I'm mistaken, this is where "call and response" originates, a technique still prevalent among improvisers on all instruments, and the most tangible example of Spud's "improv is a conversation" line of thinking (which, by the way, I agree with entirely).

How this entered into American music takes us right to the Delta and New Orleans. The rest you should know.

[rcwilk]

I am not sure what the topic is any more...

But I believe that the harder the instrument is to play, the harder it is to master, which leads to it becoming harder to improvise on. It's easy to make up a melody on the fly with your voice. That's improvising. Try doing that on the bassoon.

Some instrument like the guitar has been around a long time. Way back, it was not used for improvising so much. I think that's because improvisation wasn't something musicians strived for. Mozart and Bach weren't known for their long jam sessions! Before the 1900s, wasn't music mostly composed all the way? Compared to the world of blues & jazz that later came.

I heard a story about Chopin, (and my stories don't seem to be very accurate, so, grain of salt) that he would improv away, and then every once in awhile stop and try to write those notes down, typically frustrating himself to pieces.

Beethoven, I heard was challenged once during a party to a contest, and he kept putting the guy off, and putting the guy off, but he was persistent to compete. The challenger played his masterpiece, but Beethoven kept talking with his friends, though he sat down and with one hand did variations on the challengers masterpiece without breaking his conversation, and winning the contest.