The biggest challenge when I improvise is how to create structure without creating limits. How do you choose guidelines that will help you without creating blockades for other ideas?

And when you have decided on a set of structures or “rules,” when do you discard them to serve the music you’re making? In improvisation, the answer is different every time.

This challenges me. Elsewhere in my life, I’m an expediter. In my ideal world, I would make decisions once and move on. I discard unusable options quickly (and, yes I’ll admit, even some usable ones).

Sometimes this helps in improvising, a lot of the time it doesn’t. Blocks happen for me with improv — times when I find I have to apply structures, make my focus smaller and (a lot of the time) simplify in order to create. And then mere moments later, I have to throw all those structures, guidelines or “rules” out the window and go where the music takes me.