Last night I was improvising a melody based on a chord progression I had just come up with. I heard the chord progression in my head without thinking about what the chords were. But then when I thought about it, I knew what they were, tested on my instrument, and wrote them down.
Beginning to melodically improvise on the progression (with no backing) I was initially looking at my chart the whole time and thinking in theoretical terms. But, before long, I was having moments of losing track of where I was in the chart, but my mind's ear and my fingers still knew what to do to keep going within the harmony.
I.e., you reach a point where you have internalised the sound of the chord changes, and you can just hear the lines you want to play, and your fingers just know how to play the notes that you hear.
But to get to the point of being able to do that in a reasonably sophisticated way, one is mightily helped by thinking about things and practising things in a theory-informed way.
An experienced musician with improvisation skills doesn't have to write down chords to be able to improvise. If you have a look at the non-academic music culture as you can still find it e.g. on the country side or in other popular music pieces are passed on by playing them and having the other musicians play along with them and repeat them. Music theory can be helpful, but it's not a "conditio sine qua non".
Oh, absolutely. In fact, I can recall improvising over a song purely by ear, and then coming up with some worse lines once I'd worked what the chords were and written them out.
Last night I was improvising a melody based on a chord progression I had just come up with. I heard the chord progression in my head without thinking about what the chords were. But then when I thought about it, I knew what they were, tested on my instrument, and wrote them down.
Beginning to melodically improvise on the progression (with no backing) I was initially looking at my chart the whole time and thinking in theoretical terms. But, before long, I was having moments of losing track of where I was in the chart, but my mind's ear and my fingers still knew what to do to keep going within the harmony.
I.e., you reach a point where you have internalised the sound of the chord changes, and you can just hear the lines you want to play, and your fingers just know how to play the notes that you hear.
But to get to the point of being able to do that in a reasonably sophisticated way, one is mightily helped by thinking about things and practising things in a theory-informed way.