Improvisation is the best musical representation of emotion...

Improvisation is the best musical representation of emotion. Improvisation allows for in-the-moment expression of current emotions.

The performance of precomposed music can only ever be a re-enactment of a past emotion.

yeah I guess

Funny then that a board that almost universally claims to value emotion above all else in music also almost universally ignores improvised music.

Agreed, however the improvisor has to have a certain level of musical freedom on their instrument where they can play whatever they are feeling at that exact moment, as opposed to playing licks and running up and down scales and arpeggios (which is probably more emotionless than precomposed music)

>re-enactment of a past emotion

The unexplained assumption that this is "better" (in what way?) than a current emotion ruins your post.

>a board that almost universally claims to value emotion above all else in music
[citation needed]

what difference does it make on a listener? whether something is made up on the spot or precomposed is almost never obvious to a listener, so how can one be better than the other?

>Agreed, however the improvisor has to have a certain level of musical freedom on their instrument where they can play whatever they are feeling at that exact moment
true

>as opposed to playing licks and running up and down scales and arpeggios (which is probably more emotionless than precomposed music)
I thought about this for a minute but even running up and down scales and arpeggios would seem to be more of an honest emotional representation than playing precomposed music. After all, even sticking strictly to scales and arpeggios would still require more in-the-moment decision and choice-making, just in choosing WHICH scale or arpeggio, which direction to play it, how quickly to play it, etc, than playing a pre-composed piece.

>The unexplained assumption that this is "better" (in what way?) than a current emotion ruins your post.
The only way in which I'm implying it's "better" is as a "better" interpretation of in-the-moment emotion. Which the rest of that post goes on to prove.

Find any thread about jazz, metal, or any technical music and you are guaranteed to find people saying "muh chord progressions", "muh technicality", "music theory takes away from emotion"

>what difference does it make on a listener?
indeed. now we're getting to something interesting. can a listener even judge the level or even types of emotion that a musician puts into his music?

>whether something is made up on the spot or precomposed is almost never obvious to a listener, so how can one be better than the other?
I beg to differ, I can almost always tell the difference, especially when seeing music performed live

>Improvisation is the best musical representation of emotion. Improvisation allows for in-the-moment expression of current emotions.

This is completely just conjecture though.

I suppose so but I guess I figured it was conjecture that not many people would take issue with. Do you take issue with it or were you just being pedantic?

If the improvispr chooses to play the scale or arpeggio, it has to serve a melodic purpose greater than "I know it will sound good on this chord because it is the corresponding scale/arpeggio". All of the greatest impovisors (check out Keith Jarret or Chick Corea) are always playing melodies that they are coming up with on the spot, that happen to use notes in a particular scale, but they are thinking of melody and phrasing instead of which specific scale to play, if that makes sense

I was more referring to a recording
do you really think you can listen to a melody (regardless of how simple or complex it is) and determine for certain whether or not it's improvised? what if you make an assumption and it's wrong?

>If the improvispr chooses to play the scale or arpeggio, it has to serve a melodic purpose greater than...
It doesn't have to... but good improvisation should, I agree. Other than that I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or what. I play jazz so I know all of that already.

I un-ironically agree with all of these.

>do you really think you can listen to a melody (regardless of how simple or complex it is) and determine for certain whether or not it's improvised?
It would be much more difficult to judge that with ONLY a melody, but when was the last time you listened to a recording or saw a live performance that was JUST melody?
what if you make an assumption and it's wrong?
then I'd probably perceive the music differently if I found out I was wrong about it being improvised or not

For what it's worth I think some of the most interesting music I know about is difficult to tell what is improvised and what is composed.

It's dumb, and it's such a broad statement that there's no way you could prove it. It's completely immeasurable. You're not even pretentious in the way an adult would be pretentious. You're like Facebook-level pretentious. You had this thought with no real structure beneath. It just sounded good to say it.

Ya, we're on the same page! Good to see a fellow jazz musician on here once in a while

there are a lot of things that are immeasurable and impossible to prove but that doesn't mean they're not worth ever discussing.

Once again, if you disagree with the statement, feel free to post an argument against it, but if all you can do is call names and make pedantic remarks then I'm going to ignore you.

Completely wrong.
See classical music just for one example, to this day people play music composed hundreds of years ago, and do that using their own interpretations of emotions, nuances, how the music should sound or what they want to convey with a piece.

>See classical music just for one example, to this day people play music composed hundreds of years ago, and do that using their own interpretations of emotions, nuances, how the music should sound or what they want to convey with a piece.
I'm very familiar with classical music. The differences between various interpretations of a given classical piece are almost always minuscule compared to the differences between improvised jazz solos.

To be clear- I'm not saying there is no emotional input into performing pre-composed music. Just that it is insignificant compared to the emotional input of composed music.