Improvisation is composition in real time.

I notice a consistent response when I perform: audiences are fascinated with improvisation. There is something magical about it. How can you be making all that up on the spot?

Being a musician is also being a magician in certain cases. The allure of the magic trick, the awe a musician inspires by sharing something beautiful—something whose construction leaves people asking "how did you do that?"—entrances people. Part of the art of entertaining involves creating a sense of awe, bringing people into something they enjoy but don’t understand.

On the other hand, there’s no magic to it at all. Improvisation is often like a conversation. When you and I speak, how do we come up with the words to say? How is it that we can spin off so many varieties of questions—how are you? what’s up? what’s new? what’s good? How do we make a joke that makes us both laugh?

We know the language. We do not need to rehearse it. We exercise it often and put ourselves in situations where we need to improvise. And those situations become very familiar—you may say more or less the same thing every time you check out at the grocery store or ask the barista how their day is going. Familiarity and knowledge of the environment and the rules of engagement allow us to spin off variations on the fly.

New environments and settings can allow us to train our improvisation skills. Improv comedy games—such as ones where you are allowed to only ask questions to each other while carrying a conversation, ones where you pretend you’re aliens visiting from another planet, or ones where you’re making up lyrics to a song on the fly—challenge our improvisational acumen and wit.

The spoken medium is similar to the musical medium in this sense. We can write plays, scripts, or presentations and follow these precisely. This is like executing a composition faithfully. We can also say whatever we need to on the fly, much like an improvisational musician may make up their song on the spot.

Both are forms of composition in real time.