Structure vs. Freedom

Funny. With all of the free improvisation I’ve done one over the past six or seven years (to the exclusion of about all other forms of music making), I’ve recently had the hankering for some structure. I don’t know where this is coming from - maybe I’m experiencing a sort of “burn out” on the totally free thing. I’m not thinking totally composed music (though I will be playing an entirely composed – and conventional – guitar part in a local symphony performance next Sunday), but working with structures that have clearly defined melodic and harmonic parameters and still allow for improvisation. I guess the definition of this is “jazz” but man, I’m no jazz musician. I like the idea of jazz (and my record and CD collection is 90% “jazz” of one sort or another) but I just haven’t paid the jazz dues like all the other cats. I haven’t spent fifteen or twenty years working on my bebop chops. I don’t own the Charlie Parker Omnibook. I like the concept of jazz and some of the jazz vocabulary (harmonic and melodic), but I haven’t what it takes to be a straight-ahead “jazz” musician. I guess I see myself moving toward a music that allows for improvisation on composed melodic and harmonic structures and I don’t know why. Maybe there’s a sort of security in structure (am I insecure?) or possibly I’m feeling underwhelmed by my own abstract noodling. Maybe my own free improvisations were getting formulaic; that is, moving toward structures and repeated motifs (licks).

Let’s see what happens.