Six years ago, I was sitting and
waiting in the doctor’s office with my 13 year old daughter. My daughter started to tap her feet on the
stool that was next to the patient’s table. Most parents would have asked their
child to stop tapping or playing with the foot stool; however I tapped out a
rhythmic patter with my foot on the floor.
My daughter responded back again, but this time adding snapping and
clapping. This rhythmic dialog when on for at least thirty minutes, until the
physician returned back with my daughter’s strep test results. Even though my
daughter was not feeling her best, she and I were enjoying our rhythmic
conversation while we were waiting.
In Chapter 3 of Music Learning
Today, Bauer (2014) discusses Creativity.
Bauer quotes Weber’s (2012) definition of creativity as “the engagement
of the mind in the active, structured process of thinking in sound for the
purpose of producing some product that is new for the creator. Creative
thinking is a dynamic process of alternation between convergent and divergent
thinking , moving in stages over time, enabled by certain skills, and by
certain conditions, all resulting in a final product” (p. 49). Looking back on
my daughter’s and mine rhythmic conversation, our conversation was the result
of our past musical experiences. Rhythmic
skills and the ability to audiate rhythmic patterns gave us both the ability to
create our own rhythmic conversation. Bauer discusses that musical
improvisation is like having a conversation with a person. Since people don’t
stop and plan what they are going to say, they react to the other person’s
narrative and spontaneously begin to speak (p.52).
Having a musical
conversation with my daughter was delightful. However, I want to have musical
conversations with my students. As a
music educator implementing improvisation techniques would benefit all my
students learning, by applying the knowledge of the musical concepts that I have
taught them. This would provide the
opportunity for my students and I to have a musical conversation like the one
my daughter and I had shared, and promote in depth learning for all.
How does one teach improvisation to
general music students? Improvisation can be taught in variety of forms, from
experimenting with pitch, rhythm, and timber that occurs naturally with
children during play; however, where does one begin (p. 51)? Kratus (1996)
describes a seven-level sequential model for developing improvisation abilities
(p. 52).
Level 1: Exploration-This
requires audiation skills to be developed with the students and to provide them
the time and necessary instruments to facilitate exploratory improvisation.
Level 2: Process-oriented improvisations-This
level is when true improvisation begin. This allows students to have some
ownership over the process. Students view improvisation as a process of doing
instead of creating musical patterns. The teacher isolates the students’
improvisational patters to show the students how their musical patterns relates
to other musical patterns. The teacher continues to help develop the students’
ability to audiate and provide opportunities for students to improvise and
absorb other students’ improvisational patterns.
Level 3: Product-orientate improvisation.
Students become more aware of musical structures that are melodic, rhythmic,
harmonic, tempo and phrasing. Students begin to use these musical structures in
their improvisations, in which listeners understand its greater meaning. The
teacher helps expand her students’ understanding of the structural elements of
music, and helps develop her students’ aural skills and sensitivity to the
differences in harmony, tempo, and meter.
Level 4: Fluid
improvisation-The student is able to perform without consciously thinking
about performance. The performance would be more fluid in keys, meter and
tempos. The teacher’s emphasis is on proper performance technique and provide
exercises for technical development for the students. The technical exercises
are grounded in authentic musical contexts that focuses on improvisation
opportunities to use an assortment of tempos, meters, tonalities, and harmonic
chord progressions.
Level 5: Structural
improvisation-The students applies larger musical structures when
improvising and developing melodic ideas, tensions and release, and the
connection with musical ideas within their improvisations. The students’ improvisations demonstrates a
beginning, middle, and end for the listener. The teacher can recommend
strategies that students can uses when developing an improvisation, and the
students will benefit by analyzing the techniques of other performers.
Level 6: Stylistic
improvisation-Students are fluently improvising within a specific style,
applying appropriate melodic, harmonic and rhythmic strategies. The teacher
helps her students to acquire a repertoire that includes melodies, rhythms,
harmonies, and timbers characteristic of a specific style. Learning standard
melodies, continue to analyze expert performances, and having opportunities to
perform with expert improvisers in all styles is beneficial to the students.
Level 7: Personal Improvisation-“The ultimate
achievement is for a musician to develop a unique, recognizable style of
improvisation” (Bauer, 2014p. 53). The teacher encourages her students to
become fluent in a wide rages of styles that over time blend into an innovative
stylistic approach (pp.52-53).
After reviewing these seven steps the ability to audiate,
aural skills, time to explore and having the necessary tools/instruments to
help students be successful with improvisation was highly emphasized. I would
like to have tools in place to help my students to be successful. My students
have the ability to audiate and identify rhythmic and melodic patters when I
perform them. However when they perform their rhythmic and melodic patters for
me most of my students are not fluent. My students do write down their rhythmic and melodic
compositions, but have difficulties preforming their compositions back
correctly. Having access to technology would be a helpful device for them to
hear the fluency in how their compositions to be performed. Utilizing
Musecore and Noteflight notation software, my students would be successful with
having these tools for their compositions, and would help them reach their creativity through improvisation.
Bauer, W. I. (2014). Creativity. In Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing
responding to music. New York: Oxford Press, Inc.
Hi Melanie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your story about your rhythmic conversation with your daughter. If students can understand improvisation in the way they understand communication through speech, they can find success by building on what they know. This can happen in so many ways - body percussion, rhythmic speech, non-pitched percussion, pitched instruments, etc. One of my favorite lessons with my fourth graders last year was doing question and answer in "alien language." At first, they looked at me like I was crazy (I get that from my students a lot!) and then they got into it. Then they could transfer those skills to something like drums.
Thank you also for outlining the sequential model for developing improvisation. Although exploration can create quite a cacophony of sound, it is a necessary step in improvisation. When students can practice improvisation in groups, they are more likely to feel comfortable improvising later as a soloist.
I think another important point Bauer made was that true and free improvisation happens when the performer can stop thinking about what they are going to do and just let it happen. It's like learning any language. When you don't have to stop to translate or conjugate anymore, that's when true fluency occurs.
Thanks for your post!