What a better topic to start with than improvisation?
Improv is quite the art. I've written about it at length, as you'll find if you've read my posts. To be good at improv, you have to first be good at the thing you're improvising in. For taiko, this means musicality and technique, but also often movement and energy/expression, as well. Some people are better at it than others; most of us will need to practice it to get good with it, let alone comfortable with it.
Want to be good at improv? Work on risk management just as much as your musical ability. Improv means not playing what you've always played and sometimes not playing what's the most comfortable for you. This means you might not play something great. Which means you might not play something good. Which means you might fail. But that's a risk you have to take, in order to improve the skills that can make your improv better. Eventually, your skills grow, your comfort increases, and the risk diminishes. What's more, even when you do encounter a "fail" moment, you're better able to handle it and move on, IF you've been practicing!
Another thing that you'll need to be a good improviser is being able to adapt to the situation. Maybe you don't want to overshadow/out-do someone, maybe you need to match a mood, maybe you need to kick the energy up three notches, whatever. Or maybe you're not the only person improvising, so you need to balance what you're doing with other people. Sometimes these observations are easy to take in, happening over an entire song or set, but other times you need to react within a few measures before reacting yet again.
And the last component is having a large repertoire to pull from, in terms of patterns and movements. If you're totally comfortable improvising but only have five patterns you can play, that's pretty limiting. If you can only improvise to a slow dongo, you're pretty limited to what songs that'll be useful in. If you can only improvise using large movements, what about songs that don't call for them or when in smaller venues? The more things you can pull from your "kit", the more pieces and situations you'll be able to fit into when you improvise. Where do you get more patterns? Listen to more music. I can't (and won't) stress this enough!
Good improv takes mental acuity and active practice. While a set/scriped solo delivered spot-on can be super-rewarding, for me it's never matched the feeling of being "in the zone" and having things come out of my hands and really really nailing it. I hope it's something you already practice, but if not, it's never too late!
Image credit: http://www.musicgraphicsgalore.net
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