In the cognitive perspective, improvisation is understood as a complex cognitive activity shaped from severe constraints on human information-processing and action. The main research question postulated by cognitivism and improvisation is: How is improvisation carried out? Therefore, the core notion in a cognitive discussion is constraint, “the scarcity of resources in real time that humans can utilize for making music when they are not following a predetermined plan of action.”16
A pioneer of this research who has become a reference for the clarity, discipline and refinement of his theories is Jeff Pressing. Parallel to his activities as pianist, composer and performer, he pursued a career as a research scientist in cognitive psychology. In his study on music improvisation, he analyzes and deconstructs step-by-step the complex chain of cognitive operations observed during the ac- tivity of improvisation.
The improviser must effect real-time sensory and perceptual coding, op- timal attention allocation, event interpretation, decision-making, predic- tion (of the actions of the others), memory storage and recall, error correc- tion, and movement control, and further, must integrate these processes into an optimally seamless set of musical statements that reflect both a personal perspective on musical organization and a capacity to affect the listener. Both speed and capacity constraints apply.17
This conception is very close to the information theory paradigm, in which the process of information can be decomposed into three levels: input, central process-
15Nettl, Bruno, Rob C. Wegman, Imogene Horsley, Michael Collins, Stewart A. Carter,
Greer Garden, Robert E. Seletsky, et al. Improvisation. Oxford University Press, 2001.
16Ashley, Richard. “Musical Improvisation.” The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychol-
ogy, 2009, 413–420.
17Pressing, Jeff. “Psychological Constraints on Improvisational Expertise and Commu-
nication.” In Collected Work: In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation. Series: Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology, Published by: Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 47-67.
2.2 The cognitive perspective and structural listening 23
ing and response.18In musical terms, these correspond to an acoustic stimulus, a
cognitive musical representation of the sounds, including their eventually develop- mental possibilities and a physical response, incorporating a physical movement, timing of muscular actions, proprioception, touch, spatial perception, and cen- tral monitoring of efference.19Pressing’s model also considers a cognitive loop of
operations of feedback and feed-forward to monitor the acoustic input and the movement response. To optimally achieve the operations of sensing, data process- ing, action, reaction and control, the improviser should develop a set of cognitive tools.
In Pressing’s analysis these tools include the referent, the knowledge base and a specialist memory. The referent in this context is “a set of cognitive, perceptual, or emotional structures (constraints) that guide and aid in the production of musical materials”.20
The concept of referent is very stimulating for research as well as an excellent pedagogical and creative tool because designing, performing and studying the referent or the implied constraints, frameworks and cognitive structures liberates the musician from the need to generate the rules on-the-go and facilitates the starting point for an improvisation. The referent concept allows the performer to isolate research questions such as developmental techniques or problem-based improvisations. The referent is also a key concept in understanding and clarifying the discussions about the differences between free or total improvisation and improvisation with constraints; however, many argue that an improviser cannot create ex-nihilo or without the setting of any referent or frame of references.21
In Pressing’s understanding, when there is no referent or when it is devised in real-time, it is common to speak of free or absolute improvisation, though “this is much rarer than referent-guided or relative improvisation”.22
Developing an expertise requires motivation to assume an intensive and disci- plined practice. This motivation is influenced by personal and environmental factors and allows the musician to work with the referents and develop a special memory (procedural and declarative) that will enrich and maintain what Pressing calls the “knowledge base”.
18Pierce, John R. An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise.
Courier Corporation, 2012.
19Pressing, Jeff. “Improvisation: Methods and Models.” In Collected Work: Generative
Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation and Composition. Published by: Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1988. 129-178.
20Pressing, “Psychological Constraints on Improvisational Expertise and Communica-
tion.” 47-67.
21Alperson, “On Musical Improvisation.” 17.
22Pressing, Jeff. “Cognitive Processes in Improvisation.” In Collected Work: Cognitive
Processes in the Perception of Art. Series: Advances in Psychology, No. 19 Published by: Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland, 1984.; Published by: New York, NY: North-Holland, 1984. 345-363.
The distinguished expert has materials that are known in intimate detail, and from differing perspectives, and the various materials or modules are cross-linked by connections at various levels of the hierarchical knowledge structure. Part of the effect of improvisational practice is to make motori- cally transparent by overlearning what has been conceptually mastered.23
The knowledge base is also informed by other musical activities such as com- posing, reading, selective listening and analysis. The construction of the knowl- edge base is then strongly determined by personal choices and predilections. The knowledge base should be accessible to the performer at any time. This process of integration and reaction is facilitated by the development of specialist memory. In Pressing’s view, this memory can be of two sorts: either the performers memorize musical gestures, producing an object memory or they memorize process of com- positional problem-solving, developing a process memory. For example, variation techniques, developments, interpolations and juxtapositions.24
This conception of memory has evolved in Pressing’s later works through the ideas of declarative and procedural memory, sometimes referred to as knowing that and knowing how. In an endeavor to clarify the picture and the understanding of memory, he goes on to analyze the degree of consciousness applied to memory by introducing the concepts of implicit and explicit memory, in other words, memory that depends (or not) on a conscious process of recollection.
By analyzing the different aspects of the knowledge base, the activity of impro- visation can be carefully and progressively studied in an increasing progression in an academic context. Pedagogically speaking, sonic improvisation is a tool to learn and investigate music by handling and being exposed to music concepts and sound properties in a performative situation. Sonic improvisation is a method to build a knowledge base about music, acoustics and musical performance by in- teriorizing complex cognitive operations in our process of sensing, collecting and manipulating acoustic data to formulate sonic and temporal structures.
But what are the philosophical assumptions behind this understanding of music improvisation? It can be argued that it is the assumption of learning something about the world, that there is a musical intelligence that can be developed, and that this process of learning gives us insights about ourselves, about our per- ceptual and cognitive processes, about the way we use our memories and the mechanisms we use to learn. This perspective could be criticized for relying too strongly on the knowledge gained by intense rehearsals and repetitions of a col- lection of formulas, gestures, tricks, trades and models by which the musician is brought to rely on a repertoire of clichés and prefabricated traits ready to be combined in all directions, somehow betraying the spontaneity and invention
23Pressing, “Psychological Constraints on Improvisational Expertise and Communica-
tion.” 47-67.