Characteristics
Although performers may choose to play in a certain style or key, or at a certain tempo, conventional songs are highly uncommon in free improvisation; more emphasis is generally placed on mood, texture or more simply, on performative gesture than on preset forms of melody, harmony or rhythm. These elements are improvised at will, as the music progresses.
Guitarist Derek Bailey proposed "non-idiomatic improvisation" as a more accurately descriptive term, claiming the form offers musicians more possibilities "per cubic second" than any genre; while guitarist Elliott Sharp (himself occasionally active in free improvisation) has argued—partly tongue in cheek—that no improvisation is ever truly free, excepting the unlikelihood of amnesiac improvising musicians. Interestingly, John Eyles notes that Bailey has been quoted as saying that free improvisation is “playing without memory”.
In his landmark book Improvisation, Bailey writes, "The lack of precision over its naming is, if anything, increased when we come to the thing itself. Diversity is its most consistent characteristic. It has no stylistic or idiomatic commitment. It has no prescribed idiomatic sound. The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it."
Free music performers, coming from a disparate variety of backgrounds, often engage musically with other genres. For example, acclaimed soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Anthony Braxton has written opera, and John Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.
As it has influenced and been influenced by other areas of exploration, aspects of modern classical music (extended techniques), noise rock (aggressive confrontation and dissonance), IDM (computer manipulation and digital synthesis), minimalism and electroacoustic music can now be heard in free improvisation.
Read more about this topic: Free Improvisation