ABSTRACT
Musicians create a sonic environment by coming together (or working solo) to create music. It is therefore arguable that creating a sonic environment assumes that musicians understand that there is an implicit conceptual model that allows them to collaborate, that a conceptual model of music underlies improvised and experimental jazz. Indeterminacy along with choice and agency are key performance elements that facilitate improvisation in the sonic environment. Free will is a philosophical argument that argues that sentient beings have the capacity to make decisions according to their own reasoning. This chapter investigates through cognitive studies the relation to the mechanics of agency in the sonic environment. We consider, in a free jazz context, musicians that seek to express new ideas within a learned framework and depend on that framework being shared by collaborators. We discuss indeterminacy as a state of possibility in sequencing while its opposite, determinacy, refers to a fixed sequence. What then of indeterminacy in improvisation? If it demands decisions to steer the music being made along a coherent and cohesive pathway, who or what influences the choices made? We point to expertise, experience, aesthetics and creative agency, but what drives the motivation to engage with the processes? We propose that identity formation and ego play an important role. A personal musical identity is an imperfect, volatile and dynamic negotiation with others in an environment, bearing in mind that the environment itself is a multidimensional, multi-personal negotiated state.
