Editing Improvisation (section)

==Skills and techniques==
{{unreferenced section|date=September 2023}}
The skills of improvisation can apply to many different abilities or forms of communication and expression across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines. For example, improvisation can make a significant contribution in music, dance, cooking, presenting a speech, sales, personal or romantic relationships, sports, flower arranging, martial arts, psychotherapy, and much more.

Techniques of improvisation are widely used in training for performing arts or entertainment; for example, music, theatre and dance. To "''[[Extemporization (music)|extemporize]]''" or "ad lib" is basically the same as improvising. Colloquial terms such as "playing by ear", "take it as it comes", and "making it up as [one] goes along" are all used to describe improvisation.

The simple act of speaking requires a good deal of improvisation because the mind is addressing its own thought and creating its unrehearsed delivery in words, sounds and gestures, forming unpredictable statements that further feed the thought process (the performer as the listener), creating an enriched process that is not unlike instantaneous composition with a given set or repertoire of elements.<ref>''The Speech Chain: The Physics and Biology of Spoken Language'' (paperback), Peter B. Denes and Elliot N. Pinson. 1966. Worth Publishers; Second Edition (15 February 1993).</ref>

Where the improvisation is intended to solve a problem on a temporary basis, the "proper" solution being unavailable at the time, it may be known as a "[[Stopgap|stop-gap]]". This applies to the field of engineering. Another improvisational, group problem-solving technique being used in organizations of all kinds is ''[[brainstorming]]'', in which any and all ideas that a group member may have are permitted and encouraged to be expressed, regardless of actual practicality. As in all improvisation, the process of brainstorming opens up the minds of the people involved to new, unexpected and possibly useful ideas. The colloquial term for this is "[[thinking outside the box]]."