I'm Teaching a Kids Improvisation Class

[pamosmusic]

So I'm on day three (sort of) of an improvisation class I'm teaching for a summer enrichment program in the city school. It's rising 8th to rising 12th graders, but definitely skews younger.

One class of about 25 are band instruments, one of about 25 are stringed instruments, and one of about 25 are choral students. Soooooooo ….

It's a rotating class schedules with A B and C days, so it's day three tomorrow, but that will actually be my third pass through lesson number one.

We've been working on setting some expectations for rhythmic warmups we'll be doing, some melodic warmups, and then talked about some fundamentals and got into a blues form.

Stay tuned.

[Bob_Ross]

god bless you!

Every time I have taught young (<18) music students I come away feeling like A) I have no business teaching young music students; and B) we need more adult musicians who have those kids' enthusiasm!

Man, 25 band instruments in an improvisation class?!?! That sounds like a pantload of fun! Personally I'd skip over blues form and have those kids playing John Zorn's "Cobra" or a Butch Morris Conduction piece... but that probably says more about what I want to hear than about what teenagers want to do when stuck in a school band room.

Good luck. Have patience.

[AllanAllen]

Do you feel like group C is getting a better lesson one because you’ve done it twice already?

[pamosmusic]

Do you feel like group C is getting a better lesson one because you’ve done it twice already?

Oh for sure. So it’s probably good that I get the singers last, since that’s the one that will be toughest for me.

[pamosmusic]

Here’s my sequence on blues form:

review definition of form

• listen to C Jam Blues (Oscar Peterson, Night Train) and note repetitions of the main phrase.


• listen to “Bags’ Groove” (Miles Davis, Bags Groove) and note how the form is marked by changes in orchestration.


• listen to “Early Every Morning” (B.B. King, The Blues) and note the AAB form of the phrases — call, repeat, respond.


• listen to “Now’s the Time” (Charlie Parker, The Complete Savoy and Dial Masters) and note the call, repeat, respond (AAB) form is present even without lyrics.


• listen to “Green Onions” (Booker T. & the M.G.s, Green Onions) and note the presence of approximate repetition in the second phrase.

[garybaldy]

Many years ago my daughter, as a child, went to a well respected music college in the UK for a week of jazz and improvisation. She played the clarinette. After a few days it transpired that no one had told her what improvision was!!

[AllanAllen]

Many years ago my daughter, as a child, went to a well respected music college in the UK for a week of jazz and improvisation. She played the clarinette. After a few days it transpired that no one had told her what improvision was!!

That's not surprising, we can't even get a consensus on the forum of what improvisation is.

[Christian Miller]

Many years ago my daughter, as a child, went to a well respected music college in the UK for a week of jazz and improvisation. She played the clarinette. After a few days it transpired that no one had told her what improvision was!!

I’m glad they didn’t waste time doing that or she’d have been there for four years and ended up with a degree in philosophy.

Very dangerous .

The ‘lies to children’ definition I prefer is ‘play something of your own here.’ Then we can get on with it.

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[pamosmusic]

I usually just let them define it and they usually say “making something up.”

I tell them that’s a good answer but we’ll end up complicating it pretty quickly.

One of my lines is that we don’t want to be asked to improvise and say “I don’t know what to play.” We want to be asked to improvise and say “what do I know how to play.”

[garybaldy]

That's not surprising, we can't even get a consensus on the forum of what improvisation is.

Haha! Well at least they could have told the kids what their take on it was!

[pamosmusic]

In general I’m steering away from jazz improvisation specifically. We’re doing a blues form and we’re listening to some jazz and stuff but my goal is to have them be able to build a little arrangement for themselves from a leadsheet.

Next lesson is elements of a drum groove. So we’ll do that with body percussion and then see if we can orchestrate the groove across instruments.

I really have no investment in it being jazz. Just getting them sitting down and making music nobody wrote for them,

[DawgBone]

Well hopefully it works out but I'm of the firm belief that blues can't be taught properly in a school which is why it isn't a music that is prominent at the university level. I would either take all their lunch money in a game of craps or make them cut and haul firewood for the first few days then we can talk about blues.

[pamosmusic]

Well hopefully it works out but I'm of the firm belief that blues can't be taught properly in a school which is why it isn't a music that is prominent at the university level. I would either take all their lunch money in a game of craps or make them cut and haul firewood for the first few days then we can talk about blues.

Well thank goodness it’s not a blues improvisation class, or at a university.

[DawgBone]

Well thank goodness it’s not a blues improvisation class, or at a university.

You are off to a good start then. What time the craps game?

[pamosmusic]

You are off to a good start then. What time the craps game?

Youll be shocked to learn that they scrapped the craps game when I sent in my lesson plan.

Ah well.

[DawgBone]

Youll be shocked to learn that they scrapped the craps game when I sent in my lesson plan.

Ah well.

I guess it's not something that would be as enriching for the kids as it is for the teacher!

LOL

[macuaig]

I usually just let them define it and they usually say “making something up.”

I’m not skilled enough to do this myself, but here’s the most useful perspective I’ve heard. Improvisation is what you’re doing when you’re talking with someone. You didn’t write it down first, you don’t plan it advance, you just start and proceed through a sensible communication. It’s helpful to have a grammar in mind to provide coherent structure, making delivery and comprehension more effective. It’s not just flailing around, any more than babbling produces satisfying conversation.

I’m far from having sufficient grammar to generate coherent musical thoughts on the fly, but I’m confident that’s my goal.

[pamosmusic]

In my plans, my next move is pitch stuff, and rhythm after that, but I think we’re going to rearrange and do rhythm first.

We’re going to kind of break down the elements of a simple drum groove** and then spread them across instruments.

After that we’re going to hit some really common jazz and pop rhythms. Syncopation we’ve got Shiny Stockings and a Taylor Swift tune. The Charleston, we’ve got “C Jam Blues” and “Billie Jean”. The clave, we’ve got OP’s “Corcovado” (which is a son clave) and Amy Winehouse “Valerie” (which is not).

** the Strong Songs podcast (which is incredible and I can’t recommend it highly enough) breaks down the elements of the groove as Thump, Pop, and Sizzle. In their most common forms, that’s obviously kick, snare, cymbal. Lots of grooves use different things for each of those elements, and some grooves are missing one element or whatever, but it’s an insanely simple and useful breakdown and I think I’m going to use that.

[pamosmusic]

I’m not skilled enough to do this myself, but here’s the most useful perspective I’ve heard. Improvisation is what you’re doing when you’re talking with someone. You didn’t write it down first, you don’t plan it advance, you just start and proceed through a sensible communication. It’s helpful to have a grammar in mind to provide coherent structure, making delivery and comprehension more effective. It’s not just flailing around, any more than babbling produces satisfying conversation.

I’m far from having sufficient grammar to generate coherent musical thoughts on the fly, but I’m confident that’s my goal.

Yeah I like to kind of follow their own vibe on it. And that one comes up for sure. Weirdly enough, I had like seven people, and at least one in all three classes, bring up drama when I asked about improvisation. So that was a nice jumping off point. “Okay so what’s the point of working on improv when all your lines are already written out for you in the actual show?”

[Cal45m]

Sounds like a fun (and slightly chaotic) teaching setup, love that you're diving into blues form right away, that's such a great foundation for improv. Rotating schedule sounds like a challenge, but also a cool way to refine your approach each time. Looking forward to hearing how things evolve, especially once the students start getting comfortable and taking creative risks.

[Christian Miller]

I usually just let them define it and they usually say “making something up.”

I tell them that’s a good answer but we’ll end up complicating it pretty quickly.

One of my lines is that we don’t want to be asked to improvise and say “I don’t know what to play.” We want to be asked to improvise and say “what do I know how to play.”

So not actually improvise at all in a sense? ;-)

So yes, that’s my aim. “Something of your own” removes that requirement to have something invented in real time. Some kids like to do that. Others like to play something they already know in the new context (I really like this one unsurprisingly.) Yet others like to work something out and play that.

It’s interesting how their solutions broadly fit in with well known ways to work on soloing. Say free pitch choices (arps, chord scales etc), applying vocabulary/quoting and composing out in jazz terms.

The former receives the lion’s share of attention in books etc and I think for many it becomes synonymous with improvisation. It did for me.

So, I don’t care how the sausage is made in that context. I just set the problem and let the ids sort it out.

Not sure. Many of the issues with teaching process seem to be externally imposed. Kids naturally improvise all the time, but the way they do it varies from child to child. And there’s obviously value in getting them to try a different approach, but that’s a little further down the road for me.

I have come to the conclusion that “improvisation” is a bit of a buzzword. So I don’t see any reason to mention it at all.

We can work on aural and non score based processes for making music through games and so on.

I suspect what happened is that in the early twentieth century score based musicians got hung up about the process of non score based musicians such as jazz and folk players, created a conceptual black box and called it improvisation. This could be dismissed as a god given gift, or whatever. (Later on this became elevated to central importance within jazz education.)

But it’s just a label for a bunch of things that most people worldwide do both in music and outside music from early childhood on. In fact it’s modern Western classical training which is highly abnormal (which is Derek Bailey’s line of course.)

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[pamosmusic]

I just set the problem and let the ids sort it out.

Freudian slip?

[pamosmusic]

So not actually improvise at all in a sense? ;-)

And honestly yeah

Definitely more interested in just having them create music together.

So long as it’s not written in front of them, we’re going to allow it.

[Christian Miller]

Freudian slip?

Oh, very good! 20 points


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[pamosmusic]

Oh, very good! 20 points


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Only 20?