A MUSICIAN'S CAPACITY FOR IMPROVISATION AND WHAT IT TELLS US

[♔Chello]

A MUSICIAN'S CAPACITY FOR IMPROVISATION AND WHAT IT TELLS US

This is not a theoretical explanation - I have no theoretical schooling in music, and am 100% self-taught.
For the same reason, my ability to play "by the book" is very limited, also because my fingering is my own.
From the time I was about 6 years old, I have had a fondness for advanced chords and intuitively understood that improvisation is based on the chord's choice of tone; read: the quarter and fifth circle.

One of the most rewarding things I know about playing music is playing a style I've never heard - hitting the intro and immediately creating something based on it.
I do this every day.

In earlier years when I played accordion and bass, I often played with random musicians playing unfamiliar music - it was crazy fun to be able to "guess" the right chord - "guess", because this is not guessing, but musical ability, and to a certain degree of learned knowledge.

Something I also often do today is to play midi files on the keyboard/synth, where I mute the solo voice and play on intuition.
This is very developing for one's musicality and ability to improvise, and often results in new discoveries about how chords can be combined and interpreted.

Even the most famous musicians tend to play quite similar to each other - only a few have a unique way of improvising, and I've studied several of these to find out what they actually do differently.
These have what I often call their own musical fingerprint, which we all have to a certain extent - for me it's an eternal search to find mine, without getting stuck in a pattern, as most people do.

A musician who has his own musical fingerprint is easy to distinguish from others, and it should be every musician's goal to find his own.

Your ability to improvise says a lot about who you are as a musician.