Rabbit-holeathon: a focused time to explore any topic that sparks curiosity, with space to share and connect around what you find — a hackathon but for exploring ideas.
I attended a rabbit-holeathon and picked the topic of music improvisation! Here are the slides I ended up presenting, with revised speaker notes.
Slides
The history of music has deep roots in improvisation. After all, before structure and form existed, exploration was necessary to determine what rules to establish.
On the left is Gregorian chant (one of the earliest forms of Western music) and on the right are the Hurrian Hymns (the oldest surviving music in the world). Both forms are much less structured than modern piece notation. Rhythm, form, structure, and ornamentation are all open to the interpreter's discretion.
Even in classical music, improvisation was deep within the art.
Cadenzas were typically improvised solos. Preludes were often exploratory and improvised intro pieces. Performers in the Baroque and Classical era typically wrote in their own improvised trills, turns, and runs. Ornamentation was expected and appreciated.
Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach were all famous improvisers. Beethoven would win musical duels with rival pianists, improvising variations of their own themes on the spot.
Over time, classical music underwent a fundamental shift away from its improvisational roots, becoming increasingly focused on disciplined adherence to written scores.
By 1850, the score had become like scripture, with people treating composers as geniuses and performers as a vessel for the performance of their art.
The rise of conservatories in the 19th and 20th centuries institutionalized this approach. These institutions, emerging alongside the Industrial Revolution, emphasized standardized technique and interpretation. Just as factories required workers to follow precise procedures for optimal output, the musical establishment began valuing conformity and precision over individual expression and spontaneity.
Interestingly, while classical music became more structured and rigid, jazz experienced the opposite effect, where musicians challenged the genre constantly.
Avantgarde and freeform jazz removed more constraints.
in 1949, Lennie Tristano recorded Intuition with his quintet, which had no melody, key, or tempo, which was the first documented recording of free group improv.
Miles Davis, in Kind of Blue, gave each performer scales and parameters but left them creative freedom with melodies. This ended up being called “modal jazz.”
Here’s a clip of Jahari Stampley on the topic of “freeform jazz”:
And here’s Jacob Collier talking about composition.
This video is titled: “That’s not a wrong note, you just lack confidence”
Like many people in SF, I’ve been thinking about the idea of agency.
One model of agency can be thought of through a lens of decision-making.
Agency involves realizing that there are more choices possible than the ones immediately in front of you, assessing their risk and reward in accordance with your goals, and then executing on those choices.
The more “agentic” one is, the more they’re able to recognize & assess choices and execute on them.
One might say music improvisation is an exercise in expressive agency.
The best improvisers are fluent in noticing options, assessing fit, and justifying those options with follow through. Great improvisers experiment with ideas that seem impossible and then make them work through skillful execution. Each moment of improvisation is an act of creative agency: choosing to express something unique in real-time.
The connection runs deeper than individual performance. Neurologically, jazz improvisation involves deactivating brain regions associated with self-censorship and rule-following while activating areas linked to self-expression and divergent thinking. And the emergence of free jazz coincided with the civil rights movement—both represented assertions of creative and personal agency against restrictive systems.
In essence, musical improvisation serves as a microcosm for agency itself: the capacity to see beyond conventional options, make bold choices, and execute them with confidence.
Anyways, that’s all from my rabbit hole today! If you ever have kids and subject them to music classes, I hope that you’ll encourage them to play around and explore the world of improv 🙂. Thanks for reading.
Notes
I mostly used o3 deep research to research this topic! I didn’t check deeply for accuracy, so some details may need deeper digging and citation.
Unused content
In the 20th century, classical culture shifted away from improvisation. Fear of deviating from “the score” increased, performance practice became more rigid.
In the Romantic era, composers like Beethoven, Wagner, and Mahler were seen as visionary geniuses. Their scores were viewed as sacred texts — complete artistic statements not to be altered. This led to a shift in the performer’s role: from co-creator → to interpreter. The performer’s job became to faithfully realize the composer’s intentions, not express their own. 19th & 20th century conservatory model focused on technique, interpretation, standard repertoire, and musical spontaneity and variation were lost. By the 20th century, most classical performers no longer learned improvisation by example.
There are a few modern classic improvisers, like Gabriela Montero.
“I don’t think, I don’t plan, there is nothing at all that exists until I do it in the moment.”
“Well, I don’t know! I don’t plan them, I don’t think when I’m improvising, there is no map- no musical GPS. It just happens and it’s different every time. I can’t repeat them. It’s a magical moment, no tricks, no gimmicks- just spontaneous composition which is born and dies in that moment. Very much like life itself.”
Before rules and scores existed, everything was improvisation, created on the spot. Then, rules, modes, scales existed to help guide music to sound more cohesive. Memorization helped performances be more structured and meet people’s expectations.
Music exists in a constant cycle of contraction and expansion. Genres oscillate between periods of rigid tradition and experimentation. Eventually, these explorations solidify into new sub-genres, continuing the evolutionary process.
In Derek Bailey's words, improv is "playing without memory." …In Britain, in the mid-60s, free improvisation (often just called "improv") developed out of free jazz, eventually becoming a separate and distinct music. Free jazz gradually removed conventional structure -chords, melodic themes, regular rhythm—but free improvisation took their absence as its starting point. Essentially, free improvisation has no rules; in Derek Bailey's words, it is "playing without memory."Recorded in 1949, "Intuition" and "Digression" are the first recorded examples of free improvisation. Tristano instructed Warne Marsh, Lee Konitz & Co. to just play, with no pre-set chords or melody. The results are remarkable and historic. Believe in telepathy.
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Cecil Taylor: Solo Piano
