The Song Inside Free Jazz and Improvisation: A Guide

How to catch the song hiding inside of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation
By Gary Gomes, Ed.D., MBA, BA
(October 2025)

Introduction

I have listened to and enjoyed free jazz and free improvisation for over fifty years now, and the hostility it still seems to face seems a bit incomprehensible to me. I thought it might be useful to listeners to give them a "hook" and some examples that they can experiment with in their listening.

What Is Free Jazz?

Free jazz is a term used to describe a musical movement, mostly started in the 1950s (although earlier experiments had occurred in the jazz and even classical worlds) that allowed musicians to create music out of thin air.

This doesn't mean that all free jazz or free improvisation is chaotic noise and screaming horns by players who don't know what they're doing. Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, Muhal Richard Abrams, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Leroy Jenkins and many others had decades of playing experience before they became associated with "free Jazz." Coltrane, Dolphy, Sun Ra had experience in several idioms of jazz; Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman had both played bebop; Cecil Taylor had classical training. So many musicians who chose that broad genre chose rhythmic, harmonic and melodic freedom over readily recognized formulas of music.

This is really the essence of free jazz--the ability of players to choose to follow what they think fits best in a certain context, including freeing up standard rhythm, harmonic progressions, and the improvisational restraints of earlier music. It is not an abandonment of melody, composition, or even structure. A great deal of free jazz can be composed, as we shall see.

Composition and Free Jazz

If one listens to early works by Ornette Coleman ("Lonely Woman," "Forgotten Songs," even the main head of the album Free Jazz), Cecil Taylor (Conquistador), free jazz John Coltrane ("One Down, One Up"; "India"), Albert Ayler ("Ghosts," "Truth is Marching In"), Archie Shepp (the entire Fire Music album), and Sun Ra ("Rocket #9," which was later covered as a catchy rock song by NRBQ), all of these musicians have recognizable, even hummable, melodies.

Cecil Taylor's composition "Conquistador!" starts with a variation on a blues lick, but rhythmically modified; Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" is a beautiful, sad composition; John Coltrane's "India" is a five note theme which is very memorable; Archie Shepp's "Rufus" is a start and stop piece with sudden jerks and a bluesy riff (the piece is supposed to represent a lynching). Later developments, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago's "Reese and the Smooth Ones," starts with a blues riff that eventually morphs into a carnival sound. Albert Ayler has perhaps the most hummable short free jazz pieces on the album Love Cry; Ayler and his brother Donald have dueling melodic passages with dropout notes, but with an absolutely unpredictable rhythm section of Alan Silva, whose bowed bass is all over the place, and Milford Graves unpredictable and sporadic drum intrusions. None of these pieces are hard to listen to, but certain elements of the accompaniment are extremely unusual, and the players' solos go off into ecstatic or abstract states that don't emphasize a repeating patten. But once that journey is over, the players--as in Cecil Taylor's "Conquistador!" recapitulates the theme. These are examples in which you can actually hear variations on themes, but they aren't tethered to a repeating pattern--that's the challenge for listeners, in my opinion. Modern popular music is based on frequent repetition and it takes some patience to not expect an immediate repeating payoff.

Energy Players and Free Improvisers

Energy players are people like Frank Wright, Peter Brötzmann, Burton Greene, AMM, Alan Silva and free improvisers are exemplified by Derek Bailey in the UK, Leo Smith in the U.S. and John Stevens. The former players are extreme performers who explore the greatest ranges of their instruments and do so fully, while the latter players develop specialized instrumental languages and hold conversations in these languages (there was a later development of almost chamber music like free jazz on the part of players, probably best exemplified by pianist Anthony Davis). Energy players work best with other energy players and may appeal to heavy metal fans as the music is totally full on-Peter Brötzmann's "Machine Gun" is a great example, but so are any of Frank Wright's records, Alan Silva's Seasons, or AMM's The Crypt. Individuals who like heavy metal or industrial music will find melodies in these pieces just through assiduous listening. "Machine Gun" can also be thought of as a little bit like Terry Riley's "In C," if one has a liberal interpretation of that piece--but in Brötzmann's world, the melodic kernels are short blasts, the composition guidelines are not established, and the players make the kernels of sound and play off each other, adding melodic fragments that are designed to blast the listener. Free improvisers can interact well with a number of different players, as they are extremely flexible in approach. I think these recording maybe be palatable to individuals who like Webern, Stockhausen, Cage or Messiaen, or maybe Antheil, because they are little constructions of sound. It should be noted that some of Stockhausen's and Cage's later work allow for improvisation within instructional limits-some Cage students would say this is not so, as Cage used tools to break up patterns of ego, whereas Free Jazz is about soloing, but who exactly is soloing on "Machine Gun"? It's a collectivist effort to make a wall of sound! Of the four composers listed here, only one did not allow for improvisation (Antheil), but early reconstructed versions of Ballet Mecanique are very chaotic and not tight at all. And Messiaen himself was a world class organist who improvised on that instrument every Sunday (there is a history of organ improvisation in classical music). Individuals like Derek Bailey had written about improvisation in different settings and cultures and even had a BBC television special on the topic.

The energy players' strategies are not that remote from traditional jazz-blues shouters and gut bucket saxophone players have a lot in common with Peter Brötzmann, Pharoah Sanders (whose Karma album is quite accessible) and Frank Wright are connected to gut bucket saxophonists. The free improvisers are tied to the conversational tradition of jazz (and other forms of music that emphasize improvisation) but follow their own tradition.

Other Links

I haven't yet discussed folks like Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, and Joe Harriott (the latter could be considered the UK's Ornette Coleman, and he worked with John Mayer, who also worked with Keith Emerson) who worked very hard to cross-pollinate music from very different traditions (Cherry, Paul Bley and Sun Ra pioneered the use of synthesizers in free jazz well before folks like Weather Report or Mahavishnu Orchestra appeared). Braxton and Rivers cross-pollinated with modern classical music (Anthony Braxton's album Creative Orchestra Music on Arista is highly recommended, by the way); and Harriott -through works like Indo-Jazz Fusions- established a cross-cultural reference point for jazz comparable to Cherry and Coltrane, who I discuss next. Cherry collaborated with synthesis pioneer Jon Appleton, Indian and Balinese musicians, and many more. Cherry's Eternal Rhythm on MPS/BASF records began with two flutes played in beautiful harmony, morphing into a free for all with a Sonny Sharrock screaming guitar solo, and incorporated Balinese gamelan a decade before King Crimson used it as an inspiration. My accidental introduction to Coltrane was through the Impressions album and "India," an awe inspiring extended improvisation on soprano saxophone. He continued this interest with albums like Om, and even his wilder sessions incorporated a drone, polyrhythmic approach that was at least inspired by Indian music. Sam Rivers and many free jazz players seemed to follow the path set by Coltrane, but the estimable Mr. Rivers had a big band outing called Crystals that appeared to be comparable to mid-twentieth century European free tonality composition, but through Rivers' own perspective, Cherry, Coltrane and Harriott independently tried to work with Indian and other world musics well before most other jazz musicians did. I think it is quite possible that the phenomenon of world music started with free jazz innovators opening the door to exploration, shortly after initial attempts by Dave Brubeck and a few others, like Don Ellis and Emil Richards.

Where to Start/Conclusion

Free jazz becomes more palatable and understandable with repeated exposure. Great places to start are short Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler pieces, with song-like qualities. Ayler is particularly good for his combination childlike melodies and the insane energy of albums like Love Cry and Live in Greenwich Village. A biography by an old friend of Paul McCartney's details his love of Ayler's music to the extend that he used it to soundtrack a few films that he created in the mid-'60s. That sounds like an ironclad accessibility endorsement to me.

Also see a Spotify free jazz playlist of music mentioned above