I think a lot of people start with copying others, in any medium--in visual arts, in poetry, if you write a poem, right? If you read a lot of poems by other poets, you fall in love with them, and you create something similar. So with improvisation it’s kind of the same: you try to copy the style of your favorite composers. And a lot of people try to imitate Bach, which is probably one of the last texts we should do, because he is so advanced! It’s better to imitate some of his students, right--or masters before Bach, if you want to imitate anyone at all. And I think this stage is good, because it allows us to learn the basics of compositional technique, or improvisation. I don’t feel there is much difference between improvisation and composition. Composition is just written down, on paper or with the computer, and improvisation is the same composition but performed at the same time as it is being created.

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