Just as chamber practice and performance provides "safety in numbers," improvising in groups cultivates a more fun, collaborative and inspired experience – particularly if you allow groups to compose a song over the course of a quarter, semester or year. Shy students or students who strive constantly for "perfection" find it difficult to step out on a limb on their own. Not only are these exercises fun and playful, they also help children to feel musical expression from the inside first, rather than working from the outside-in, as is often the case with sheet music. As they mature, you may request them to listen to the sounds outside and play what they hear - be it the maintenance crew's lawn mower or the leaves in the tree, raindrops on a roof or the laughing children in the hallway. Perhaps younger children recreate the sounds of a duck or a cow or the difference between a happy mother's voice and an angry one. In the world of improvisation, ear training moves off-the-page – asking students to recreate sounds they hear on a daily basis. Imitate what you hearĮar training is essential to musicianship, but we often take a microscopic view of what ear training really means - emphasizing solfege and pitch matching. If time is really tight, you might open up Improv Fridays, or some tradition like that, where a larger chunk of practice time is devoted to creative musical experimenting. Or, maybe you prefer to get to business first, and allow room for improvisation afterwards. However, ideas might include letting students have 5 or 10-minutes to improvise after their warm-ups and before beginning rehearsal.Ĭertain students may even enjoy "performing" their improvisational themes for one another as a class or in small groups. Make improvisation a part of each rehearsalĭifferent instructors do this in different ways, so find what feels most comfortable for you.
Thus the sooner you have them begin improvising, allowing them to play with music - learn what works and what doesn't, what notes blend and which don't - the more confident they become with improvisation as a whole. Music has already become a rigid landscape in which stepping outside defined boundaries results in "landing in the lava pit," so to speak. If students have formed a shameful history with "making mistakes," they have a more difficult time learning to relax and improvise. And, of course, any musician who can improvise is undeniably more prepared to bridge the gap between lapsed measures in the middle of a performance when an inevitable "mental blank" occurs. The following tips and ideas will help you gently peel back existing layers of anxiety or fear in your students as they learn just how creative they can be - and how fun it is - to play with music. 7 Ideas for Inspiring Improvisational Techniques in Music Students The sooner you allow students to uncover their improvisational selves, the more invested they will be in their musical ability - emanating directly from a deeper awareness of music fundamentals as a whole. Their safety net is the structured, black-and-white notes on a page, and any variations or requests to improvise is met with an anxious, fearful face. While there are students itching to write and perform they're own music, often complaining about why they have to play all this "old stuff," many music students unwittingly become slaves to the written composition.
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