Zyrada

Improvising self-referentially and/or with some discernible form takes a massive amount of skill. Improvising without is what a lot of people call noodling, because the best improvisers are able to do so without sounding like they're improvising.

With free jazz, calling it noodling is redundant, I guess, since that's pretty much the whole point of the style. If you enjoy it, you know what you're in for, and if you don't, you probably would characterize all free jazz as mindless noodling and simply avoid it as such. (Which is maybe premature to say, since there's often some level of broad coordination.)

__________________