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“you would play in the secure knowledge that one or more of the other players… would react in a particular way, without necessarily playing the sort of thing that you might have expected. Them to play -in other words a security which enabled unrestricted exploration of the new musical possibilities to take form.

Hugh Davies;Improvisation,Derek Bailey, p94"

"Derek Bailey also highlights the idea that 'free improvisation' approximates formless- Ness, without simply being it: '[for those concerned with composed music] it seems that any overall pattern must be imposed to save music from its endemic formlessness [ . . . ] But generally speaking, improvisers don't avail themselves of the many "frameworks" on offer. They seem to prefer formlessness. More accurately, they prefer the music to dictate its own form ( Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music [New York: Da Capo, 1993],111) Bailey mobilizes the idea of formlessness as critique, transforms it into a statement about all musicality, revalorizes it as genuine musical expression, and then to add that all this formlessness is not really without form. It is about a coming to form. On Bataille's idea of the ‘formless’ and how it differs from formlessness, see Patrick Crowley and Paul Hegarty (eds), formless; Ways In and Out of Form (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2005). (Noise/music a history Paul Hegarty, notes p55)

 

In free improvisation, the instrument is more of an ally, a source for material. “A direct atonement with the mental, spiritual and mechanical situations”

(Improvisation,p99))
Workshop concert series at cafe otto, London,Feb 2011  
As Alike As Trees, at Rag Factory march 2011v Prototypehits
 

“Certainly, such a new music would need to draw upon the widest range of traditions, while not being tied to any one. Rather than quixotically asserting a "new common practice," perhaps such a music would exist, as theorist Jacques Attali put it, "in a multifaceted time in which rhythms, styles, and codes diverge, inter- dependencies become more burdensome, and rules dissolve"—in short, a "new noise." (George lewis, Sync or swarm,David Borgo p192)

 

DIRTY ELECTRONIC WORKSHOP WITH JOHN RICHARDS march 2011

Derek Bailey expresses the view that experimental music and free improvisation are fundamentally different, improvisers might conduct experiments but very few musicians consider their work experimental. He proceeds to say that the goal is not to create something new, in-fact, improvising is the oldest technique in music making. (Improvisation,P83)