I’ve been thinking about how people who love spontaneous moments still manage to create something coherent. How do you keep a midnight jam from just becoming noise, and do you ever feel the need to set up a structure before you start?

It sounds like the grid gives you a safe harbor before you let the chaos spread. I usually notice that when I keep a simple recurring phrase in mind, I can swing back to it whenever the improvisation starts to drift. But I also find myself worrying about losing that freedom if the anchor gets too strong. So it’s a balance between structure and looseness, much like the beat you described.