Corey Mwamba

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8th Oct 2018, 8:17am

this is just a quick reminder for myself

One of the things I ended up saying in my talk over the weekend was that I am not a fan of the noun form of the verb to improvise. The premise behind the noun form is that when one improvises, there is this thing that is fixed — a product made from the process. But (when we improvise music), the result is not the noun form of improvise, but more and differing music: improvising generates one thing, which is more of the thing being used, at that time. Composing can involve improvising; but the act of composing also involves transcribing musical thoughts and ideas onto different media). I want to suggest that composing generates tools through which music is mediated, such as a series of instructions (whether spoken, written/typed, woven, drawn, or memorised). These tools are sometimes called compositions. What is called a composition and what is not is dependent on the social and cultural framing of the person describing the tool.