Today on Twitter there was a lovely conversation about improvisation. Alas, my twitter timeline doesn’t go back far enough to capture it, but it was something that I think Jeremiah Owyang wrote about the importance of improvisation and achitwood and I chimed in about improvisation being a key skill these days. We noted that often it is seen as something risky and all about disruption, but it is in fact an amazing practice to bolster collaboration and innovation.
achitwood Improv – you gotta know your instrument (whether music, theatre, collab) to make music with others!
jowyang Nate wrote a great blog post on Jazz Improve because of this thread: http://tinyurl.com/23wtxj
As the conversation progressed, Jeremiah brought in the thread of jazz as one branch of improvisation and people started chiming in that they played an instrument or were in a band. That triggered some collective wondering if people who are interested in improvisation might be better suited to or interested in social media. That’s when Jeremiah came up with the idea of a wikis. So I set up a wiki! social media musicians. Come join in the play! In the meantime, here are a few snippets from the Twitter conversation.
jowyang Since there are SO many musicians here, I propose over the next 30 days we record ourselves playing and put it on a public wiki….. jowyang The wiki wouldn’t HOUSE the videos, but just point to them wherever they live (blip, youtube, metacafe, facebook, whatever)
veroniquec wishing I had a musical bone in my body to contribute to @jowyang ‘s music wiki — sounds like fun!
Karoli @jowyang: that was a great post. My kid is a jazz studies major in college…improv is as much a gift as a learned skill. I’m in awe
ourfounder @jowyang – A public Music Wiki sounds fun actually. I wouldn’t mind contributing.
jowyang @all jazz social media folks, see this video of Bobby McFerrin involving crowd http://tinyurl.com/yq8369