The Improviser's Workbook

Clearly, I am not an authority on this, and this project in particular is founded on a solid base of skepticism towards any and all authorities.

But I have been thinking about the process of improvisation, and in my effort to become better at it, I have developed a collection of rules, statements, aphorisms, formulas and folk wisdoms. They are not truths but working heuristics for practice. The first principle is that heuristics are good enough for anything, except maybe rocket science. Here are the rest.


A melody exists in all its dimensions.
Improvisation is the rupture of skill.
I don't know if it matters if you know the theory.
But you gotta deal with what you DO know.
Concern with the importance of technique can impede listening.
Discard the illusion of self-contained moments.
All is process. Improvisation does not begin when you start playing and does not end when you finish.
It happens whether you want it to or not.
Discard the notion that it should feel good.
Improvisation is PROCESS. It is not feeling.
It may feel good.
You may dissolve. But if you don't, that is okay.
As long as consciousness does not fill up your senses.
Improvisation is a cyborg mode of being.

What purpose does practice serve?
Learning physical habits?
How have I achieved what I have achieved?
I have not learned to DO.
I have learned not to do.
That is the substance of practice.
Part of it.
Part of it is also learning to DO.
What is that? How does it work? What is learned? (it is peripheral;
we celebrate the peripheral,)

We watched the world torn apart by heroic sentiments, so we invented a music that is incapable of them.

It is small music for small people. There is no place here for greatness.

There is no place for greatness in the future.