On Reflection
Throughout my own practice, as well as in interactions with other musicians and workshops with students, it became increasingly evident that some of the most compelling aspects of improvisational knowledge resist easy articulation. They remain embedded in a personalized mode of knowing, closely tied to the explicit instructions and situated experiences that accompany the progression from novice to expert (Dreyfus 1987). As these initial guidelines become internalized, they begin to fuse with the particularities of each practitioner's evolving sensibility, giving rise to what Polanyi has termed the “tacit dimension” of knowing—deeply personal, embodied, and resistant to straightforward transmission (Polanyi 2009).
One way to address the tacitness of artistic knowing is through experience, or learning-by-doing. A common approach comes either in the form of an apprenticeship or from transcribing (Berliner 1994, Chapter 4), exposing oneself to a mentor who has achieved mastery in the domain and learning through a process of imitation.
As I already mentioned in the previous sections (On Practicing, On Workshops), one extra-musical aspect which has established itself as a critical element for the development of the practice is the act of critical reflection. Reflecting before and after action allows us to extract topics of interest, engage with musical and personal issues, and add a crucial element to our experiential way of acquiring knowledge (see also Sudnow 2001).
The act of doing involves a dialogue with the situation at hand, an “explorative, interactive and dialogical form of action in which decision and action are not separated” (Neuweg 2020, p. 21, my translation). This process is not purely reflective, as reflection in this case does not involve stepping out of the situation. It is part of the action—“reflection-in-action” (Schön 1983). In this intermingling of action and reflection, we display the ability to develop ways of devising plans, adapting our actions, and finding solutions to problems that spontaneously come into being all in the course of the act itself.
This capacity for reflection-in-action is used to “cope with the unique, uncertain, and conflicted situations of practice” (Schön 1983, pp. viii-ix). In this way, we can observe it as a key element of the reflective triad: before, during, and after. Through the combination of experiential development in the context of the practice itself and thinking about practice through all three forms of reflection, we can keep developing in our domain and “transcend routine or habitualized actions” (Thompson & Pascal 2012, p. 319).
Importantly, this tacit knowledge is not isolated from processes of reflection. On the contrary, reflection—and particularly reflection-in-action—forms a crucial mode of inquiry within improvisatory practice. This can be observed not only in theoretical accounts but also in the historical and pedagogical development of improvisation itself. For instance, John Stevens’ exercises developed in his work as the artistic director of Community Music were collected under the title Search and Reflect (Stevens 1985). The eponymous exercise, in which participants are invited to reflect sonically on the sounds of their neighbors—a kind of sonic game of telephone—demonstrates how reflection can be enacted musically in real time. More broadly, the structure and intent of many exercises in Search and Reflect foreground a critically reflective attitude toward sound and music-making as central to the practice itself, closely tied to Stevens’ egalitarian conception of freedom and group interaction.
A similar sensibility can be found in the writings of Eddie Prévost, particularly in his accounts of work with AMM. His notion of meta-musical narratives offers a conceptual frame for thinking about reflection not as a post-facto commentary but as a dimension embedded in the very unfolding of improvisation (Prévost 1995). These practitioner accounts highlight that reflection in improvisation is often enacted, felt, and shared rather than abstractly theorized—a kind of improvised reflection that accompanies the sonic process.
Recent pedagogical frameworks continue this trajectory. The improvisation team at the Hochschule Luzern has developed a comprehensive approach that places reflection at the core of artistic development. In their compendium Vermittlung Freier Improvisation, a collection of perspectives developed through their long-term work at the university, a full section titled Reflexionsaspekte (Mäder 2019, pp. 112-120) is devoted to exploring various dimensions of reflection, emphasizing its role in enhancing perception, musicality, and interactive capacity. This emphasis resonates with broader European initiatives such as RAPP Lab, a three-year EU-funded research project supported by the ERASMUS+ programme "Strategic Partnerships." RAPP, which stands for "Reflection based Artistic Professional Practice," advanced a series of multi-national encounters ("Labs") to explore how reflective methodologies within artistic research can empower musicians to respond creatively to the cultural and economic contexts they inhabit.
Together, these accounts show that reflection—far from being a purely theoretical concern—is an intrinsic, historically grounded, and pragmatically developed dimension of improvisational practice. Whether through exercises, narratives, or pedagogical frameworks, it emerges as a dynamic tool for cultivating awareness, responsiveness, and transformation in sound.