Embracing Uncertainty - Improvisation

 

Embracing Uncertainty in Improvisation

If you are like me, a note reader who relies so much on the guidance music sheet provides to play songs, the thought of improvisation is super scary. Why? Because improvisation involves a change - a moving away from a safe place, our comfort zone. 

Let's face it change is hard. It is scary. And if we are new to playing instruments, the insecurity of not knowing enough adds  even more lanxiety and stress. There is so much we don't understand yet. How can we be expected to possibly play on the fly? But in this question alone, already tells us the answer that we have long forgotten as we have moved so far in adulthood.

How can we play on the fly? How can we play? We simply play...

Think back to your childhood when you were so involved in play. How much fun it was! How little we had to know! How free we felt! How deliberately we gave it our all! How much we embraced the moment and those that were with us!

We were playing and having fun! We were enjoying ourselves. We are not performing. We are playing! 

And guess what? It is through play that we learned so much about life. It's where we gained valuable skills and experiences that lasts. It's where we discovered the things we like and love. Best of all it is where we gave rise to our dreams and allowed them to grow in our minds, imaginations and hearts. All these things through play gave us confidence without even knowing. This makes playing a wonderful thing to hold onto,  take advantage of, make time for and never look down on.

Improvisation just like anything new, involves uncertainties. In playing our harps, lyres or any other instruments. The way we get over these unknowns is to let our inner child have a voice. Children are very curious, courageous, fun seekers by nature. They try, they do, they play and they learn. They trust their instincts and go by intuition without even knowing it nor being overly worried or too careful about it. They keep going, enjoying and correcting as they go along. 

Embracing uncertainties in improvisation is a lot less scarier when we really put it in this perspective. We are playing. What could go wrong? What if we hit a wrong note? What if we move in the wrong direction in our music? What if we didn't like that sound? Think for a moment, what harm would all these wrong things do? 

The answer is nothing. Because we can always resolve from a dissonant note and play another note, and then another that makes us happy and sounds better to us. If we go in the wrong direction, then we turn around and play a motif that we enjoy and go another direction. All of these adds to our learnings and experiences of the things that we love, the things that work and the things that don't. 

There is nothing lost in learnings because it provides us much needed knowledge, and knowledge, as they say, is power. The more we learn, the more we have. The more we know, the more we do. The more we do, the more confidence we gain.

Uncertainties in music, in improvisation can be scary, but it can also be seen as exciting. And as many have discovered before, fear and excitement shows up the same way. When we embrace the fear and turn it to excitement, we realize the fun in playing. We forget these as adults. And yet we  see these in children and recognize them as the best form for learning and growing. We expose children to some levels of fear in introducing them constantly to new things and help them face these by our encouragements. 

Speaking for myself, I tend to get stuck in the many serious aspects and responsibilities that adult life holds and forget the simple benefits of playful times. This is why I started the series of improvisations on lyre harps. It is my wish that everyone who is playing an instrument discovers the playfulness, joy and healing nature of our instruments and encourage us to keep playing.

Thank you for reading and I wish you all the joys your music has in store for you.

xx Sharon

@learningthelyreharp