How musicians develop the ability to improvise: a cross-cultural comparison of skill development in the Egyptian, Hindustani classical, and jazz traditions

Abstract

This thesis demonstrates what musicians in three distinct traditions do in order to develop the ability to improvise. Rather than retrospectively examining what musicians have improvised, or investigating what occurs cognitively during a performance, this thesis has at its crux a unique cross-cultural comparison that details the specific methodologies that musicians practise when developing improvisational ability. Concurrently, this study identifies the principal modes of transmission and learning environments that facilitate and nurture this development. Detailed findings provided by fieldwork that the author conducted in Egypt are compared to existing research on the jazz and Hindustani classical music traditions. Research presented in this thesis shows that improvisational ability emerges through a multi-layered process founded within multiple learning environments. By interacting in these enriching milieus, musicians benefit from direct instruction and are inspired to engage in autodidactic modes of learning. The extent to which they participate in either learning model is emphasised differently in each tradition, and more specifically from musician to musician. In documenting this multipartite developmental process, this thesis establishes that musicians undertake various activities that allow them to internalise the style and content that is embodied within composed and improvised prototypes. These prototypes are drawn from the canon of each tradition and are defined in part by the constraints that uniquely characterise each musical culture. The entire process is effective because musicians are in aural contact with the prototypes, which can be emulated in both unabridged and truncated forms, and are imitated repetitively until internalised. This lengthy and arduous imitative process enables musicians to improvise: that is, to intuitively generate novel musical statements in real time that adhere to genre-specific parameters. The manner and means through which musicians become expert improvisers, as explicated by this cross-cultural study, is shown to adhere predominantly to a pre-existing framework of expertise acquisition. This thesis concludes by demonstrating that the imitative process through which musicians acquire improvisational ability has a developmental origin in early childhood, a conclusion that is derived by contextualising the findings of this study within recent research into neonatal psychobiological development.