Sometimes I'll be working on a group of pieces and realize that I'd like to experiment with abstracting some of the musical ideas (rhythms, harmonies, etc) into a musical vocabulary that I could use for my own improvisations or compositions. Has anyone here ever tried this? How could I methodically break down these classical piece(s) into a musical vocabulary?
FYI, I'm a fairly advanced, amateur classical guitarist/pianist with experience playing music spanning periods from Gaspar Sanz to J.S Bach to Villa-Lobos. For the purpose of this question, if you'd like to use Erik Satie's Gymnopodie's as an example, that would be a bonus for me as these are an example of the kinds of pieces that I'm talking about.