Eli5: What is Freeform jazz?
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Jazz is a style of music characterized by improvisation – meaning, the musicians don’t perform the piece the same way every time, they make up new notes to play on the spot.
However, in the vast majority of jazz music, it’s *structured* improvisation. In most jazz pieces, the performers will all play the melody together, then they’ll take turns improvising a new melody that fits the same pattern, then they’ll go back and play the melody again.
Oversimplifying a bit, it’s like all of the rest of the musicians keep playing the same part, and just one at a time makes up a new melody, and they try to make it fit what everyone else is playing.
There are other styles of jazz that work a bit differently, but the idea is still the same – the improvisation stays within certain limits, so that the result is creative but still coherent, and not chaos.
So that’s jazz.
Freeform jazz (it’s usually just called “free jazz”) is a style of jazz where they use much less structure, or even no structure. The musicians make up much more of the performance, or all of it, on the spot. When all of the musicians are extremely talented, this can lead to some pretty amazing and creative things. However, it’s often pretty wild and “out there” due to the lack of structure.
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