Most of my compositions began as an improv and the strands continue to feed one another. Feed music actually. Took a long time to believe that my efforts where worthy but that is another subject.

I always teach my students that improvisation is just spontaneous composing. I do want to guide them in the right directions, so they do not spend a lot of time re-discovering common knowledge. But, I like to have them use their ears to decide if what is coming out of their fingers is really what they are “wanting to hear.” Once they trust their ears, then the fingers just have to follow.

This sort of thinking can be traced back to craft guilds where you had to be accepted by a master. Pop music has had it’s own share of self-nominated masters such as record companies etc.

The thing of course is that by composing your own the forms of music are learned and felt much more rapidly than by any other means. “Learning by doing” – is THE statement here. John Dewey had this one correct back in the 1930′s. Composing, producing your own material and critical comparison is essential for rapid music learning. There is also the notion that composition/improvising develops ear fastly provided that honest feedback is given to the person about time-feel and note-selection. There is no right or wrong in those situations – only “functionality of playing” which of course is in many ways a subjective opinion and should be seen as such by the people giving feedback and those who receive it.

I wonder if the way so many of us started in the 60s and early 70s, playing music when we were supposed to be studying Fine Art, etc., rather than in academies, led to so many Good Beginnings in those days?