{"id":1686,"date":"2009-05-24T19:08:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-25T02:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2009-05-24T19:08:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-25T02:08:32","slug":"free-play-improvisation-in-life-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2009\/05\/24\/free-play-improvisation-in-life-and-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content_div-1686\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Title:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Free-Play-Improvisation-Life-Art\/dp\/0874776317\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1243215306&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Author: <\/strong><span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/search-handle-url\/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&amp;search-type=ss&amp;index=books&amp;field-author=Stephen%20Nachmanovitch\">Stephen Nachmanovitch<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Paperback:<\/strong> 224 pages<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Tarcher (May 1, 1991)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Language:<\/strong> English<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN-10:<\/strong> 0874776317<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-0874776317<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a dense book for such a small volume.\u00c2\u00a0 The subject is important to me &#8211; I used to improvise a lot in bands, and I think that comfort and practice allow me to improvise at work and home.<\/p>\n<p>The author makes numerous important points in the book.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, when improvising you have to give up some control. A great quote from William Blake: &#8220;Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 Play is an important part of improvisation, and play is not game.\u00c2\u00a0 Another important element to successful improvisation is practice, because you need to be skilled enough to let go of convention and expectations when improvising.\u00c2\u00a0 But the best practice for improvisation is fun practice, experimental practice.\u00c2\u00a0 The author spends part of two chapters on entrainment, the synchronization of two or more rhythmic systems into one.\u00c2\u00a0 Creative despair is a necessary part of the creative process.<\/p>\n<p>I liked the book but its not a fast read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"translate_block\" style=\"display: none;\">\n<hr class=\"translate_hr\" \/>\n<a class=\"translate_translate\" id=\"translate_button_post-1686\" lang=\"en\" xml:lang=\"en\" href=\"javascript:show_translate_popup('en', 'post', 1686);\"><span>Translate<\/span><\/a><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/google-ajax-translation\/transparent.gif?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" id=\"translate_loading_post-1686\" class=\"translate_loading colorbox-1686\" style=\"display: none;\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art Author: Stephen Nachmanovitch Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Tarcher (May 1, 1991) Language: English ISBN-10: 0874776317 ISBN-13: 978-0874776317 This is a dense book for such a small volume.\u00c2\u00a0 The subject is important to me &#8211; I used to improvise a lot in bands, and I think that comfort [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[548],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-stephen-nachmanovitch"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-rc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}