Abstract
This paper develops an interdisciplinary perspective that connects free improvisation with cultural psychology. Free improvisation is positioned as a central element of the creative process, defined by spontaneity and generative potential. To improvise is to create the new in real time, generating alternative interpretations and opening pathways to novel possibilities. Observing an improviser reveals how new ideas emerge through embodied, expressive action. This practice engages meaning-making processes in the present moment, fosters interpersonal connection, and suggests directions for future action. By integrating musical practices with cultural theories of human development and creativity, the paper seeks to offer a renewed understanding of improvisation as both an artistic and psychological phenomenon. The discussion contributes to a growing field of research that conceptualizes creativity as a social, situated, and embodied process, shaped by cultural tools and social interaction. Furthermore, it encourages a conceptual shift away from static, individualistic models of creativity toward a more dynamic, relational, and process-oriented perspective. Musical improvisation is presented as a vivid expression of human creativity, reflecting the complexities of everyday social interactions and artistic expression.
Introduction
Building on prior research (Monzo, 2022), this article examines creative processes in free improvisation from a cultural-psychological perspective, expanding current understandings in both music studies and the cultural psychology of creativity. To support this aim, the study draws on a framework grounded in dialogical and cultural approaches to creativity and human development (Glăveanu, 2014, 2015a; Valsiner, 2014, 2021; Vygotsky, 2007, 2008, 2014), which conceive creativity as co-constructed through social interaction and semiotic mediation, and embedded in embodied, dialogical processes.
A brief review of the literature in the field indicates a few studies that explore the relationships between musical improvisation and the processes of human development and creativity. Examining the cultural and psychological aspects of improvisational musicians helps us understand how their creative processes originate and develop. This investigation has allowed us to capture the developmental trajectories of individuals in relation to themselves and their creative processes. This connection opens avenues for meaningful dialogue between these fields of knowledge, inspiring research that can expand our understanding in both areas.
Musical Improvisation
In traditional contexts, musical improvisation is understood as a process that simultaneously encompasses the acts of composition and real-time performance (Nettl, 2001). In line with this perspective, musicians and scholars have developed conceptual frameworks and theoretical models to analyze the dynamic interplay between spontaneous creativity and the structural components of musical language (Bjerstedt, 2014; Canonne, 2016; Sloboda, 2008).
Far from being a recent phenomenon, improvisation constitutes a longstanding practice observed across a wide range of cultures, historical periods, genres, and musical styles (Guido, 2017; Nunn, 1998; Sawyer, 2000). In contemporary scholarship, researchers from various disciplines have commonly classified this phenomenon into at least two principal categories: idiomatic improvisation and free improvisation (Bailey, 1992).
Idiomatic Improvisation
Costa (2003, p. 42) characterizes idiomatic improvisation as a “game with rules.” Falleiros (2012) posits that these rules promote the flow and continuity of performance by anticipating actions within their established frameworks. To effectively improvise in specific musical idioms and styles, it is essential to understand their musical components, processes, and forms. With practice and commitment, the improviser becomes aware of the structures, principles, patterns, gestures, clichés, and formulas integral to these traditions.
Within this framework, each musician functions as a creative agent, enjoying the freedom to make creative choices while still being impacted by the stylistic conventions and actions of the other musicians. Every musical decision modifies the system’s condition and affects subsequent choices.
Free Improvisation
Free improvisation is often defined in negative terms, marked by its resistance to idiomatic classification and conventional stylistic identities (Canonne, 2016; Neeman, 2014). Drawing on Deleuze’s (2015) notion of the “ideal game,” Costa (2003) conceptualizes free improvisation as a practice without predetermined rules, in which structures emerge immanently through playing. Adherence to or deviation from emergent patterns occurs simultaneously, enabling the game’s continuous evolution. For Costa, this open-endedness characterizes free improvisation as a performance driven not by fixed norms but by the dynamic negotiation of problems and lived experiential inquiries.
As these dynamics unfold in performance, maintaining continuity depends on how musicians relate to one another in real time. Within the context of free improvisation, continuity arises through the relational actions of the participating musicians, who collectively shape the pathways that sustain the ongoing flow and viability of the game (Falleiros, 2012). This environment is upheld through a foundation of desire, attentive listening, and reciprocal interaction, respecting the creative autonomy of each performer involved in the process (Costa, 2018).
While these relational processes sustain the improvisational flow, they remain embedded in broader historical and cultural conditions that also shape the practice. Free improvisation historically emerged in the 1950s as a reaction against the structural and normative constraints of jazz–free jazz–and avant-garde classical music (Menezes, 2010; Sansom, 2001). Although it rejects predetermined forms, compositional authority, and fixed musical patterns (Callingham, 2007; Ng, 2018; Nunn, 1998), the practice remains shaped by musicians’ prior habits, embodied histories, instruments, and cultural traditions (Monzo, 2022).
Furlanete (2019) argues that musical interaction is never devoid of power relations, since free improvisation also reflects social and relational asymmetries (Ciacchi, 2019; Mazula & Furlanete, 2020). Consequently, so-called “free” improvisation cannot be understood as a context of absolute creative freedom but rather as a situated practice negotiated within cultural, material, and interpersonal constraints.
These constraints, however, do not diminish the creative intensity of the practice but rather shape how musicians navigate the emergent process. Musicians immersed in this practice navigate a creative process characterized by constant transformation and heightened unpredictability. This involves managing the interplay between tension and relaxation to sustain the vitality of the improvisational flow (Monzo, 2025). Within the broader context of culturally embedded social interaction, marked by dialogical relations among Self, Other, and World, the act of creation in free improvisation unfolds through diverse and evolving modalities.
Creativity, Culture and Human Development
This article is based on sociogenetic psychological models, particularly Valsiner’s (2014, 2021, 2024) semiotic-cultural psychology and Glăveanu’s (2014, 2015a, 2015b) sociocultural perspective on creativity, both of which are heirs to Vygotsky’s ideas (2007, 2008, 2014). Valsiner and Glăveanu’s theoretical proposals assume that sociogenesis structures the processes of human development and creativity, in which human psychological functions develop through social interaction and semiotic mediation, as individuals internalize and externalize culturally shared signs across diverse sociocultural contexts.
According to these theoretical perspectives, people and culture form a mutually co-constitutive system, in which culture is experienced by the subject as a dynamic process, and human agency orchestrates continuous movements of signification that cocreate the individual’s singularity. Dialogical and semiotic dynamics, in contexts of otherness, operate on multiple cultural messages that are continuously negotiated and transformed by developing individuals. These bidirectional processes constitute the systemic basis of human development and psychological functioning (Lopes de Oliveira, 2023).
Creativity, understood as a social, material, and temporal phenomenon, also assumes sociogenesis as a co-constitutive process of the act of creating (Glăveanu, 2014). Creative processes emerge from culturally mediated social interactions that connect past, present, and future, revealing creative action as a fundamentally social phenomenon rather than a purely individual achievement.
Even when grounded in personal agency, creativity depends on co-participation in rich sociocultural environments, symbolic tools, practices, and shared meanings. Through their creative actions, individuals simultaneously re-signify cultural contexts, demonstrating that creativity, human development, and culture form an integrated, interdependent system characterized by complexity, interactivity, and continuous transformation (Glăveanu, 2015b).
Cultural Approach to Creativity
Cultural approaches to creativity represent a significant theoretical movement in understanding the phenomenon as intrinsically social and cultural. This perspective emphasizes that creativity, in its genesis and development, only exists because it is distributed across three dimensions, namely: (a) sociability, (b) materiality, and (c) temporality (Glăveanu, 2010a, 2010b, 2014). Unlike traditional psychology, this model highlights sociocultural interactions as co-constitutive of creativity, moving away from individualistic views of the creative act and adopting more democratic, social, inclusive, and cooperative approaches to creation.
The Distributed Creativity Model highlights the importance of investigating everyday creativity, which is crucial to human life and enables us to address existential challenges. This dimension of creativity attracts the attention of psychological science, which seeks to understand how it emerges and unfolds over time. When we consider creativity as a human, social, distributed, situated process guided by different perspectives, we recognize the importance of interactions between the Self and Other acting in the world. It is from these interactive contexts that creativity emerges, considering social engagement, semiotic, and dialogical spaces that co-construct our subjectivities.
Glăveanu (2010a, 2010b) developed his ideas within a paradigm-shift model of creativity, highlighting the relevance of understanding this movement of change in the vision of the creative act. Starting from a shared conception of creation as an individualized and inspired phenomenon (often by divine instances), here characterized as Paradigm He, the author moves towards a perspective of creativity as a human phenomenon, Paradigm I, in which creating becomes an attribute of geniuses or talented individuals, where sociocultural contexts have little influence. Completing these schemes, the last paradigm emerges, called We, which posits creation as a result of people’s human agency in interaction, inaugurating a more social and democratic perspective on creativity.
The Distributed Creativity Model seeks to redefine the fundamental language of psychology for the study of creativity, going beyond an individualistic view and emphasizing the social, systemic, ecological, and cultural dimensions. Glăveanu (2013, 2014, 2015a) proposes the five (5) A’s model–actor, action, artifact, audience, and affordances–which configure elements that act interdependently in the collaborative construction of creative acts. This structure highlights creativity as a relational and distributed process, requiring a change in how it is theorized and examined. As Glăveanu (2013, p. 70) states, “defending this new ‘model’ of creativity involves not only renewing existing typologies but also radically changing the lenses through which we theorize and study creative acts.”
The structure of the 5 A’s is shown in Figure 1, where a line representing the creative process interconnects the A’s in a co-constitutive dance of the new. The model emphasizes how creative action emerges from the dynamic relationship between diverse audiences and the material environment. It highlights three dimensions that organize this process: (1) temporality, (2) sociability, and (3) materiality. Creative expression unfolds over time and is rooted in the subject’s developmental trajectory within broader cultural and historical contexts. It carries inherited meanings, cultural values, and future-oriented orientations, rather than responding solely to the present. Through the interactions between creator, audience, and artifact, creativity emerges in a dialogical space filled with multiple voices and cultural layers. In this interaction between the Self and the Other, individuals shape their creative practice by engaging with and appropriating available cultural tools and resources. The 5 A’s Model (Glăveanu, 2015a, p. 9)
Distributed creativity operates through sociogenetic processes and emphasizes the Self as an active agent in acts of creation. This Self does not create in isolation; even when an individual takes the initiative to create, their efforts rely on interaction and dialogue with others. The act of creation cannot be sustained without understanding that all participants are “enculturated” within complex social systems that affect every stage of the creative process (Glăveanu, 2010a; Neves-Pereira, 2018). These interactions highlight the collaborative aspect of creativity and support the idea that creative acts are fundamentally social, emerging from sociocultural exchanges.
The investigation of creative phenomena highlights the emergence of new actions by subjects that transform and redefine our world’s ideas, values, desires, and needs. We create for many reasons, but fundamentally, we create because it shapes how we relate to life, others, and ourselves. In a pluralistic and diverse world, our existential demands are numerous, and creativity is essential for addressing them. To ensure that this area of knowledge produces valuable insights for humanity and our environments, we must understand how processes that generate new ideas can rejuvenate sociocultural contexts and pave the way for innovation.
Method
The present study investigated how musicians’ social interactions during musical performances are mediated in free improvisation, constructing contexts that facilitate the emergence of the new. The aim was to understand creativity through musical material and as a social phenomenon shaped through Self-Other interactions through dialogical and semiotic dynamics. Three objectives guided this research: (1) How do creative processes unfold in free improvisation when this phenomenon is analyzed from the perspective of the musicians creating it, rather than through the selection and filtering of musical material? (2) How do the musicians’ meaning-making processes affect their creative acts during free improvisation performances? and (3) What are the musicians’ conceptions, beliefs, and values regarding their creative processes during free improvisation performances?
Musical Record (Monzo, 2022, p. 128)
The musical record was designed to collect biographical and musical data of the participants. The term was inspired by the medical record. The data constructed via the musical record presents biographical information on the participants, highlighting their theoretical and practical background and musical experience. The musical record consisted of two sessions. The first included questions that needed short and direct answers, namely: (1) email; (2) name; (3) age; (4) schooling; (5) your main field of study; (6) instruments you play; (7) among these, which is the main instrument; (8) musical styles you listen to; (9) musical styles you work with professionally; (10) types of musical languages that are part of your practice; (11) participation in a group, or orchestra, etc.; (12) which group or orchestra you participate in; (13) which repertoire you are currently studying. The second aimed to obtain more complex answers, with a greater volume of information, namely: (1) how you see music; (2) how do you define yourself as a musician; (3) a summary of their musical biography.
Participant 1: Understands music as a calling, a necessity, a profession, and a gamble. He believes he was led to think his future lay in law, where the potential for a more stable career was believed to be greater. Nonetheless, while studying law, he decided to switch to a degree in Brazilian popular music. His late decision to fully dedicate himself to music was due to a lack of support from much of his family. Since then, he has been fully committed to music, studying, participating in projects, and working freelance. He has no experience in free improvisation practices, but his idiomatic improvisations often involve freer styles.
Participant 2: Started music at an early age, beginning piano lessons at age seven. At eighteen, he started learning the accordion, which became his main instrument, and he now works with both accordion and flute. He sees music as a constant learning process in which he still has much to grow. He has no experience in free improvisation, but he plays in his mother’s contemporary dance classes, using a freer improvisational approach.
Participant 3: Views music as both work and a hobby. A former Escola Portátil de Música student, he studied double bass, guitar, and piano with renowned musicians and participated in music workshops at festivals. He has been conducting research in Afro-Latin and Gypsy jazz genres and has experience in popular, classical, and electroacoustic music. He has worked for ten years as a double bassist in concerts, shows, and theater productions. He does have experience in free improvisation practices.
This instrument supported the data analysis by offering information that made it possible to visualize elements of each participant’s musical background. It provided insights into their individual journeys as musicians, including their training progression, current level of development, past and present musical experiences, the formation of their auditory memory, and their professional engagement. In essence, it helped outline a comprehensive profile of each participant’s musical identity.
Continuing with the study’s methodological design, we highlight the free improvisation performances, which were divided into Type 1 Performance and Type 2 Performance.
The Type 1 Performance was the first data-collection and production event in the study. The session occurred without prior instruction, planning, or guidance from the researchers. The musicians were brought together and asked to improvise. Each participant approached the task based on their own understanding of free improvisation, and the improvised performance emerged from the social dynamics that developed during the encounter.
The Type 2 Performance differed substantially from the Performance of Type 1. For this session, the musicians received prior preparation: they participated in two two-hour classes in which the historical context of free improvisation was introduced, and various sonic references related to the practice were explored. This preparatory stage provided participants with new sonic references, sound-manipulation techniques, and expanded modes of listening that were not available to them during the Type 1 Performance and that they subsequently applied in the Type 2 Performance. Unlike the Type 1 Performance, which brought participants together to play, the Type 2 Performance was designed to expose them to diverse historical approaches used by influential groups in the field of free improvisation.
The improvised performances were structured as follows: (a) Type 1 Performance: Participant 1 (P1) and Participant 2 (P2) – P1 played Acoustic Piano and P2 played Accordion; (b) Type 2 Performance: Participant 1 (P1) and Participant 3 (P3) – P1 played Digital Piano and P3 played Double Bass.
The verbal report was a moment in which each pair met with the researcher to discuss their experiences with the free improvisation performance. These reports were conducted immediately after each performance. Since two performances were conducted, the verbal reports were divided into two types: Type 1 Verbal Report, conducted after the Type 1 Performance, and Type 2 Verbal Report, conducted after the Type 2 Performance.
Research Stages
Discussion
This study employed qualitative analyses to examine the creative scene by considering musicians as subjects engaged in creative acts, their social practices in performance, their semiotic processes, and their interactions with peers. Because the project bridges Music and Psychology, it required an integrative conceptual structure capable of articulating theoretical and methodological contributions from both fields. Built upon the understanding that music is a human construction inseparable from meaning-making processes involving the Self, the Other, and creative expression, the study advances discussions and new perspectives on free improvisation and creativity. From this perspective, free improvisation is understood less as the manipulation of musical materials and more as a relational dynamic in which creative action emerges through the interplay between Self and Other in the world.
A Sociocultural Affective-Semiotic Perspective on Real-Time Musical Creation
Understanding free improvisation (hereafter FI) merely as a spontaneous display of technical skill narrows the analytical scope of a phenomenon that is relational, processual, and embedded within sociocultural–affective, material, temporal, and symbolic conditions. In contrast, FI can be theorized as a form of distributed action that emerges from the interdependence among subjects, artifacts, cultural repertoires, and affordances, in accordance with Glăveanu’s (2014, 2015a) sociocultural conception of creativity. Extending this theoretical horizon and drawing on Valsiner’s cultural-psychological framework (2014, 2021, 2024), Monzo (2022, 2025) emphasizes the affective–semiotic dynamics through which musicians regulate their relations with themselves, others, and the material world throughout creative activity. Taken together, these perspectives conceptualize improvisation as a semiotically regulated, socially constituted, materially mediated, and temporally extended action, thereby offering a comprehensive foundation for understanding FI as an unfolding sociocultural–affective phenomenon.
Reflexive and Perspectival Dynamics in the Creative Act of Free Improvisation
A key challenge in understanding creativity as a sociocultural act, as Glăveanu (2014) suggests, is recognizing creative action and its evaluation as inherently intertwined rather than separated between actors and audiences. In his work, Glăveanu shows that creativity gains depth when action and interpretive feedback circulate across people, artifacts, and sociomaterial contexts, linking individual activity to broader social discourses. Building on this, Glăveanu (2013) strengthens the Self-Other relation by emphasizing the role of the audience, foregrounding the plurality of actual and imagined perspectives involved in creation. This multiplicity reflects the social nature of mind (Vygotsky, 2007), as creators move across shifting positional perspectives shaped by others. The process of perspective-shifting resonates with Bakhtin’s (1999, 2008) conception of polyphony, understood as the coexistence of multiple autonomous voices that interact without being absorbed into a single authoritative voice.
Glăveanu builds his notion of perspective on Mead’s view of the reciprocal relation between individual and world, conceiving it as intrinsically relational and emerging from the subject’s engagement with others, the sociomaterial environment, and distant temporal or contextual horizons (Glăveanu, 2015a; Mead, 1938). Human experience thus involves continually distinguishing and coordinating perspectives in the flow of action. Neves-Pereira and Pinheiro (2023) argue that perspectivization constitutes a dynamic arena in which the potential for novelty arises, as meanings are negotiated in response to sociocultural demands. By shifting between acting and observing oneself, individuals reconfigure interpretations and possibilities for action, creating developmental conditions from which new insights and forms of agency may emerge.
When applied to the context of FI, Glăveanu’s framework indicates that improvisation is not merely the production of sound but the embodied negotiation of multiple human and nonhuman forces within a shared field of action. Musicians engaged in an improvised performance frequently move between the roles of actor and audience, participating in a reflexive process of perspective-shifting that facilitates the emergence of creative possibilities (Glăveanu, 2021; Monzo, 2022).
These perspectival dynamics become evident in the participants’ reflections during the improvisational episodes: What I heard and what you heard was completely different… and the PE too [referring to the researcher’s presence as observer], probably different from both of us (P1, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 3, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 91). P2 confirmed this asymmetry of perception, responding “definitely” (P2, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 3, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 91). Expanding on this relational process, P1 added: I heard myself reacting to you… I heard you reacting to me too (P1, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 3, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 92). In his interview, P1 further described his interactional strategy: I interacted in a similar way to my daily professional musical practices… when I listen to someone holding a long note in the treble, I put that note on the end and reharmonize it… I reacted to gestures, responding and imitating (P1, Interview, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 92).
This reflexivity, which involves becoming an audience to one’s own creative output, is essential to decentering from one’s initial perspective and re-engaging with the work-in-progress from a renewed positionality. This form of internal dialogue is not purely mental; it is embodied and situated, unfolding through gestures, corporeal adjustments, and interactions with musical instruments, fellow performers, and evolving sound textures. Such embodied engagement creates the conditions for improvisers to detect subtle shifts within the unfolding performance, allowing reflexive awareness to emerge through the continuity of action. Reflexivity thus becomes an experiential process grounded in the body’s ongoing negotiation with the sonic and social environment.
Musical Instruments, Technologies, and Affordances: The Mediating Role of Materiality in Free Improvisation Performance
The creative action is inseparable from the material world, unfolding through developmental processes that rely on physical, cultural, and symbolic resources (Glăveanu, 2014). In the context of free improvisation, musical instruments, technological interfaces, and performance environments act as constitutive elements of the creative system rather than as neutral tools. Their affordances, defined by their possibilities for action and their constraints, shape how improvisers organize gestures, explore sonic textures, and engage with one another. Materiality mediates both the emergence of musical ideas and the forms of interaction available to performers.
The significance of materiality becomes particularly evident in technologically mediated improvisation. In the musical performances examined by Monzo (2022), FI unfolded in virtual environments where musicians relied on digital interfaces to collaborate. Internet latency introduced temporal discrepancies into the performance environment, requiring participants to adjust their listening strategies and recalibrate their responsiveness in real time, as shown in the following dialogue. As it is... I’m listening to myself here with zero delay and listening to P3 with some delay. P3 is listening to himself with zero delay and listening to me with some delay. And you (directly referring to Monzo, the researcher) are listening to both of us with some delay. So, the music was certainly different in the three places. (P1, Type 2 Verbal Report, Ep. 5, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 134). P3 stated: This also gives you a high during the improvisation. Because this delay sometimes gives an idea of something being off, like off the ground (P3, Type 2 Verbal Report, Ep. 1, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 134).
These microtemporal divergences placed each performer in a distinct temporal vantage, demanding continuous attunement to asynchronous sonic cues. Rather than functioning solely as obstacles, such disruptions became affordances that enabled alternative forms of interaction and creative exploration, opening possibilities for new ways of listening to sounds and engaging with musical instruments (Monzo, 2025).
Visual affordances also played a significant mediating role, as evidenced in the verbal data collected during the study. So, when it comes to finishing, I think it is needed. The... the eye contact. It doesn’t exist, and it’s over (P1, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 3, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 135). P3 acknowledged this effect: At times, it does affect (P3, Type 2 Verbal Report, Ep. 10, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 135). I don’t think there was a specific visual signal, like (P1 made a gesture exemplifying what a visual signal would be). P3 agreed. P1 added: It could have happened, but it didn’t. Regarding this, P1 argued that: I think it does affect it to some extent (P1, Type 2 Verbal Report, Ep.10, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 135). P3 agreed: At times, it does affect (P3, Type 2 Verbal Report, Ep.10, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 135).
During the Type 1 Performance, eye contact was limited because P1, positioned to the side of the acoustic piano to remain visible to the camera, had difficulty establishing visual communication with his partner, which ultimately affected the improvisation’s closure. In contrast, in the Type 2 Performance, the use of a digital piano allowed P1 to face the camera directly, expanding his visual access to P3 and enabling moments of mutual observation that supported interactive coordination. Although the performers reported that eye contact did not decisively shape the improvisation, the external observer (researcher) noted that visual engagement in the Type 2 Performance appeared to facilitate a shared sense of closure, a dynamic not present in the first performance.
These conditions illustrate how perceptual, spatial, and temporal disruptions inherent to virtual performance–such as latency, reduced visual fields, and fragmented bodily cues–reconfigure the affordances available to musicians. Technologies such as webcams, microphones, and real-time audio software thus become operative components of the creative system, contributing to the distribution of agency across human and non-human elements.
Musicians dynamically engage with the material artifacts involved in free improvisation in ways that are historically constituted and continuously negotiated. Each instrument carries meanings sedimented in the musician’s musical trajectory and in the cultural traditions that define its typical uses, shaping how they approach and appropriate the material during the performance. Moreover, musicians operate within a field of tension generated by the possibilities and limitations of the material support, whose physical and functional properties both open up avenues for action and delimit them, requiring constant negotiation throughout the creative process.
During improvisation, musicians’ actions are conditioned by the affordances and limitations of the material environment, comprising musical instruments and the technological interfaces through which the performance unfolds. These conditions do not hinder creativity; instead, they participate in the dialogical dynamics through which meaning is constructed in improvised performance. Through this ongoing negotiation, musicians, instruments, and technologies may be mobilized in ways that sometimes expand creative possibilities and at other times constrain them, contributing to the situated, emergent, and relational nature of improvisational action. Creativity in FI does not originate in the individual alone but arises from the relational interplay between Self, Other, and the material environment, becoming actualized through the unfolding dynamics of improvised performance.
Sonic Dialogic Exchanges in Free Improvisation
Creative dialogues constitute a space of tension in which multiple consciousnesses and social voices converge and co-construct meaning, shaped by heterogeneous forces acting throughout interaction (Bakhtin, 1986, 1999). The process of constructing meaning is therefore inherently dialogical, constituted through reciprocal engagement among diverse voices rather than individual cognition. Matusov (2009) extends this view by proposing a pro-dialogical orientation in which dialogue functions as an ontological condition of human life, unfolding as an open-ended exchange of questioning, listening, responding, agreeing, and disagreeing. Within this approach, creativity in free improvisation emerges as a dialogical phenomenon rooted in relations between self, others, and the world, where listening, responsiveness, and mutual transformation provide the conditions for novelty to arise (Glăveanu, 2017; Ness & Dysthe, 2020).
FI transcends predetermined structures or predefined goals. It unfolds as an open-ended process in which musicians engage in real-time negotiation, responding to sound propositions as they are introduced in the shared improvisational flow. The absence of a predefined structure enables greater receptivity to the unknown, allowing performers to operate within a flow of ambiguity and potential, where creative directions are continuously negotiated and reconfigured in the moment of their articulation.
Listening constitutes the primary mechanism mediating interaction in FI. Through attentive listening, improvisers interpret and recontextualize the sonic and expressive gestures of their interlocutors (Martins, 2020; Monzo, 2022). This interpretative engagement is not limited to reproducing or accepting the other’s contribution, but encompasses processes of transformation, contrast, and elaboration. FI’s creative development emerges from this intersubjective responsiveness, in which each contribution is evaluated in relation to the evolving collective soundscape (Costa, 2003; Falleiros, 2012). The centrality of listening becomes particularly evident in the musicians’ own accounts, which highlight how relational engagement structures their improvisational approach. I think this is the place for active listening that we were talking about [...] Yeah, yeah... About, about... about putting yourself in a relationship, right? With what is happening around us, we can give ourselves musically. And do it more with your ears than your fingers (P3, Interview, 152–156, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 95). Every time we played together, it was not like my performance; it was the performance of both of us. That’s it; we’re at each other’s disposal... we both care about... we both have the concern of building something together. And not just playing. (P2, Interview, 105–112, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 96).
In the improvisational setting, each performer contributes a distinct musical voice shaped by their background, intentions, and stylistic orientation. At the same time, rather than operating in isolation, these voices actively engage in mutual responsiveness through shared sound dialogues that unfold dynamically over the course of the performance. This polyphonic dynamic illustrates how FI is inherently relational and deeply embedded in the act of listening, not only to others but also to oneself, to the environment, and to the material artifacts involved in performance.
At certain moments, musicians may adopt mirroring or approximation strategies in response to another’s musical gesture (Monzo, 2025; Valsiner, 2014). Such imitation is not mechanical but interpretive, an exploratory process that enables re-signification and variation. These acts of reflective echoing serve as mechanisms for producing novelty, in which repetition becomes a site of transformation. Rather than replicating content, performers reconfigure it through their own stylistic lenses and developmental repertoires. The dialogical nature of this process becomes evident in the musicians’ reports, as illustrated below. I was trying to play with the ideas that P3 was proposing (P1, Verbal Report Type 2, Ep. 3, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 46 e 47). In P3’s view, it was an effort to: Trying to understand what the other side is trying to say during the whole process” (P3, Interview, 57, 58, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 47). Yes, exactly. That is also good, like you bring something new. Like I’m in his field and he’s in my field. Really learning, right? (P2, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 7, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 100).
This intersubjective orientation enabled each musician to shape their creative trajectory by incorporating and developing peers’ improvised actions. This exchange also implicates musicians’ personal expressive fields, their individualized zones of comfort, technique, and aesthetic preference. As these fields intersect during performance, they create new zones of intersubjective experimentation, often pushing musicians beyond familiar parameters. These encounters can provoke adaptive processes, foster artistic learning, and generate hybrid configurations that transcend individual styles. The intersection of these expressive territories constitutes a developmental space where both personal and collective transformation can emerge.
Improvisation becomes an ongoing negotiation of meanings, in which each gesture serves both as an expression and a provocation. Every sound articulated during the performance operates as a semiotic event, shaping and reshaping the interpretive landscape shared by the musicians. As suggested in Boesch’s (1991) view of symbolic action, such gestures are embedded in culturally constituted fields of meaning, subtly orienting how performers interpret one another’s expressions and anticipate subsequent possibilities. Each sonic gesture in FI both activates and transforms these symbolic horizons, sustaining a dialogic exchange in which new meanings continuously emerge, and responsiveness becomes co-constructed in real time.
FI exemplifies a dialogically organized form of real-time creativity, marked by interaction, responsiveness, and shared authorship. Its unfolding depends on listening as action, dialogue as structure, and co-construction as method. Creativity is not understood as a possession or an internal capacity, but as a relational phenomenon distributed across subjects, artifacts, and contexts. Novelty emerges not from isolated invention, but from the tension, convergence, and resonance among multiple voices, human and material, individual and collective. Improvisation thus becomes a site for both aesthetic innovation and cultural development, wherein music-making becomes a process of co-creating meaning, self, and world.
Affective-Semiotic Dynamics of Self-Regulation in Free Improvisation
Semiotic Cultural Psychology conceives human semiosis as a system of verbal and non-verbal signs that regulate ongoing experience and guide action through time (Valsiner, 2014, 2021, 2024). These signs emerge in interaction with the sociomaterial environment and operate through a co-genetic logic in which phenomenon and context mutually shape one another. Oriented toward the future, signs reorganize the next moment into a new present while enabling recognitions of analogous situations across indeterminate temporal horizons, generating affective tensions that drive developmental change. Sign construction and use unfold simultaneously in intra- and inter-psychological domains, as mediated relations between Self, Other, and the world acquire affective significance throughout the life course.
Building on this foundation, Valsiner (2014) argues that human semiosis develops through interconnected sign systems that progressively generalize and may become hypergeneralized. The human psyche functions as an open yet dynamically organized system structured by hierarchical layers of signs and Affective-Semiotic Fields (Branco, 2021; Valsiner, 2014). Hypergeneralized fields exert strong regulatory influence by acting as affectively charged interpretive filters (values and/or prejudices) that shape how individuals relate to themselves, others, and the world (Branco, 2016). These fields emerge throughout development, vary in strength, regulate psychological functioning, and may consolidate into hypergeneralized forms as they gain affective force, configuring themselves as affective-semiotic structures over time (Branco, 2023).
In the context of FI, these principles indicate that musicians engage in continuous affective-semiotic self-regulation that shapes how they perceive, interpret, and respond to unfolding musical events. As they interact with one another and with the material-symbolic conditions of the setting, their actions are guided by Hypergeneralized Affective-Semiotic Fields that orient attention, expectations, and expressive possibilities in real time (Monzo, 2025). These fields act as developmental organizers, helping musicians manage tension and uncertainty as they navigate emergent sonic trajectories and co-construct meaning as the performance evolves.
This understanding aligns with Boesch’s cultural-psychological perspective, which emphasizes that self-regulation unfolds within culturally constituted symbolic fields that orient individuals’ perceptions, interpretations, and responses to situations (Boesch, 2007). From this view, musicians’ movements during FI are not only internal affective-semiotic processes but also culturally mediated actions shaped by values, memories, imaginaries, and symbolic horizons that structure expressive possibilities. The following report illustrates how such semiotic dynamics become observable in practice. Man, with the accordion, there was... at first, I felt stuck on what to do on the basses [...] I felt less freedom on what to do on the basses [...] then after a moment or two I didn’t play the bass (P2, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 1, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 72). Now I remembered something interesting... I kind of looked out the window, and I was like... I zoned out. So, I think that was the moment that I felt the freest on the accordion basses (P2, Type 1 Verbal Report, Ep. 5, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 73). I remember a time when I was so integrated with... we were so sunk into it, into the proposal, then I started like this, just here... my studio is a little bit [...] you can see that here there’s a light beam coming through the window. So, I just stood here looking over there and stuff. Seriously, I really let myself go. I looked at the view here and I enjoyed it. This feeling is something that... that the great sound mass of the piano provides for you [...] Yeah... it was more, I don’t know what the right word is for it... I was levitating. (P2, Interview, 184–198, as cited in Monzo, 2025, p. 73).
The accordion (the instrument P2 was playing), composed of bellows, free reeds, and wooden sound boxes, is performed with the right hand on the keyboard and the left on the bass buttons, a technique similar to the piano technique used by P1. Both musicians, therefore, performed on harmonic instruments. While P2’s semiotic-affective musical background is rooted in Northeastern Brazilian tradition, P1 draws on influences from jazz, MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), and European classical music, leading to an interaction between their distinct musical languages during the Type 1 Performance. This interaction generated moments of disorientation for P2, particularly regarding the convergence of bass lines, since the approach to accordion bass playing in P2’s musical development is connected to a tradition with its own vocabulary and techniques.
P2 oscillated between insecurity and tranquility, initially struggling with the accordion as his actions were regulated by Affective-Semiotic Fields shaped by his musical history in the northeastern Brazilian tradition. These fields, formed through his lifelong experience and mediated by culturally shaped idioms, norms, and the material properties of instruments, guided how he interpreted and responded to P1’s expressive gestures. The divergence between their distinct musical trajectories generated additional tensions, especially in the way they used the bass register (low pitches) of their instruments. This incompatibility in expectations and goal orientations (Branco & Valsiner, 1997) restricted P2’s ability to make sense of P1’s proposals, revealing divergent semiotic regulations at work.
However, at a moment when the performance seemed close to disintegrating, P2 experienced a transformative aesthetic 1 event triggered by a beam of light entering his studio, which shifted his affective-semiotic organization. This shift enabled a transition from fields marked by fear and insecurity to ones associated with peace and serenity, stabilizing his participation. The episode illustrates how contrasting Affective-Semiotic Fields can alternate within an improviser’s psyche during free improvisation and reorganize creative engagement in real time (Monzo, 2025).
The musical environment in free improvisation (FI) comprises not only acoustic events but also symbolic, affective, and cultural layers, as each sound gesture activates interpretive repertoires shaped by performers’ prior experiences and culturally situated knowledge. Thus, creativity in FI is not purely spontaneous but mediated by affective-semiotic resources accumulated over time. Temporality is equally central: the present moment of improvisation is never isolated, as real-time gestures are informed by memories, training, embodied habits, and cultural histories while oriented toward anticipated futures. Improvised actions, as a result, reflect a continuous negotiation between past influences and projected possibilities.
Conclusion
The findings highlighted innovative insights into creative processes at the intersection of music and psychology, showing that participants’ meaning-making played a central role in co-regulating and collaboratively managing creative activity. This process was evidenced through several key indicators: (1) the role of sound as a mediator of musical memory, symbolic references, and experiential diversity; (2) the function of material artifacts, which operated either as facilitators or constraints in shaping participants’ actions and musical outcomes; (3) dialogic exchanges and interpersonal interactions that enabled the negotiation and circulation of meanings among musicians; (4) the influence of participants’ affective-semiotic repertoires (Hypergeneralized Affective-Semiotic Fields), which enriched the improvisational act with novel interpretations; and (5) the convergence of distinct fields of action–each marked by its own internal logic and specificities–whose tensions fostered emergent, transformative outcomes within the creative process.
The discussions presented here resonate with Glăveanu’s Distributed Creativity Model, while further foregrounding affective-semiotic self-regulation as a central process in human development and, consequently, in creativity. Whereas Glăveanu’s five A’s do not account for the self-regulatory role of affectivity, this article offers methodological tools for conceptually extending the model by integrating affective-semiotic processes into its architecture. In doing so, it provides a foundation for theoretical and methodological advances that deepen distributed accounts of creativity.
Such a perspective also clarifies how musical improvisation can be understood within Cultural Psychology, illuminating the systemic, social, and semiotic dynamics that underpin creative action. It challenges individualistic and cognitivist accounts by showing that creativity is socially constituted, materially mediated, affectively regulated, and embodied. Examining how improvisers develop self-perceptions, negotiate identities, and construct meaning situates creativity within broader processes of human development and cultural participation. FI becomes a locus of expressive agency and subjective experience, functioning as both a developmental practice and a culturally grounded form of meaning-making.
Within this broader view, FI emerges as a dialogically affective, self-regulated system shaped by real-time micro-interactions that function as semiotic cues for collective organization. In digitally mediated settings, creativity unfolds across distributed fields of action, requiring musicians to recalibrate temporal, sensory, and interpretive strategies. Creative acts remain inseparable from performers’ developmental histories, cultural affiliations, and affective-semiotic structures, which mediate responsiveness and transformation. Ultimately, FI becomes a space of mutual emergence and relational development, revealing creativity as an affectively and semiotically regulated, socially embedded, materially mediated, and dynamically evolving process.
Footnotes
Ethical Considerations
The research Distributed Free Improvisation: A Study of Interactive Dynamics in the Creative Process in Light of Cultural Approaches to Creativity, which serves as the database for this work, was conducted in accordance with the principles of the National Health Council Resolutions 466/2012 and 510/2016. These resolutions are based on various international documents, such as the Declaration of Helsinki; the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the 1997 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights; the 2003 International Declaration on Human Genetic Data; and the 2004 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, authorized and monitored by Plataforma Brasil (Date September 27, 2021. CAAE: 50652821.2.0000.5285. Opinion Number: 4,999,813).
Consent to Participate
Research participants signed the Free and Informed Consent Form (TCLE) as required by Plataforma Brasil.
Consent for Publication
Research participants signed the Free and Informed Consent Form (TCLE) as required by Plataforma Brasil, along with the Authorization Term for the use of image, sound, and musical performance for research purposes.
Author Contributions
Through their expertise, the authors contributed significantly to each of the article’s topics.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.