Improvisation – how social media is like jazz
Thursday, March 8th, 2012What does jazz have anything to do with social media, digital marketing, and helping stories get told, you ask?
Improvisation.
Consider these quotations I borrowed from Lukasz Langa‘s DailyImprov.net:
In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: “In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.” His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds. – Frederic Rzewski
Even if you’re improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure. — John Cale
Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that’s what we face when we’re dealing with improvisation. — Jan Garbarek
Story
A couple weeks’ ago I’m on a project helping with sound and media for a church function. I’d heard that there was a video the team would want played. Not a problem, I’m thinking. What typically happens is that we get the video burned onto a DVD or some other media. It’s easy to bring it right into the MediaSHOUT software we use. (more…)



