Hi. My name is Patrice Maduraa Ward Steinman and I'm a professor
of music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
I teach choral methods, vocal jazz and research methods. My title for the
mooc today is unraveling the mystery of improvisation, and particularly
scat singing. My early musical training was very traditional
with classical piano, choral singing, and church organ playing.
It wasn't till I was a senior in college that I thought maybe that I had an interesting
jazz. I went to a jazz band rehearsal, and the director gave me
a chord chart and counted the band off! "One, two, a one two, one two
three four," and the band took off, and I could barely play a note. I played the first
chord cause I recognized it said F, I thought I'm a music major, I know what a F chord is.
But I had never read a chord chart, I didn't know jazz voicings,
and so I realized at that point that even though I was almost finished with
a music degree, I knew nothing about how to play jazz.
About a year later someone gave me a new recording called
Ella and Oscar, featuring Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Perterson.
playing the most exhilarating, virtuosic, thrilling
improvisations that I ever heard, and I thought why don't I know how
to do this, I have a degree in music. This question set me
on a path for decades to try to answer it through my own research and study.
In my early research I identified three statistical predictors of the
ability to be an affective scat singer or improviser. These three
ability to be an affective scat singer or improviser. These three and not
in any particular order: our imitative ability, which is the ability to sing back
or play back accurately what you hear; jazz theory knowledge,
an understanding of jazz chord progressions, scale, and chord relationships;
and jazz experience, being studying in instruments,
studying jazz voice lessons, singing in ensembles, listening, attending live performances,
and so forth. I took those three predictors
and developed strategies for teaching the elements of jazz to my vocal jazz
classes. What are the elements of jazz?
As you can see on this slide there are several that I've come up with and of course there are more.
What I'd like to address briefly today are a couple strategies for teaching some
of these elements of jazz. Lets start with swing and scat syllables.
Which are really both rhythmic concepts in jazz. These could be
taught using strategies that emphasize imitation.
So I will do some call and response and I want you imitate what I clap to you,
and what I scat to you.
They're four beat patterns
:*clapping*
*scatting*
Good and with practice
you'd be able to come in right on time. Lets move on to
the element of jazz tonal language, and this can be
taught through knowledge of jazz theory.
I like to start with the twelve bar blues because we're all familiar whether we know it or not
with the basic twelve bar blues progression, and I jokingly tell my students
at Indiana University that I won't let them graduate if they don't know the twelve bar blues progression.
So you'll on the slide the twelve bar blues progression, and
what i'd like you to do is sing the roots.
So it's in four four time and you will sing whole notes, and singing on
the roman numerals. Like this.
*singing* and so fourth.
Ok, one time through the twelve bar blues, here we go
:*singing*
You can practice that in the shower, and the car, and memorize
that basic twelve bar blues progression. Of course it can be much more sophisticated
with chord substitutions, but that is the most basic twelve bar blues progression.
How can you improvise over the twelve bar blues? Well certainty you can outline the
chords, you can sing the scale, and as you see
each chord has a flatted seventh, so you would sing a mixolydian scale, which
is the same as a major scale with a flatted seventy, or you can use
the blues scale. The blues scale is what's called a horizontal
scale, meaning that you sing the C blue scale
over the entire chord progression, even when the chord changes to the
four chord or the five chord, you can still sing the C blue scale
in the key of C. I've listed
in the key of C. I've listed the scale
degrees: 1, flat 3, 4, flat 5, 5,
flat 7, and 1. If you have manuscript paper you can notate that scale right now.
I've also noted the pitches: C, E flat,
G flat, G, B flat, and C on the slide. Lets sing it!
*playing piano*
We'll also sing down the blues scale, and I'd like you to sing on dooba, dooba.
*singing*
Then we could do it in double time if we had time to practice, which would sound something like this
:*plays piano*
But you can practice that on your own. What do you think would happen if you asked your students to improvise
using the C blue scale? Now that you have to information
could you do it? It's scary. There are a lot of chromatic notes
in the C blue scale, and no one will be able to just cognitively
know what that scale is without a lot of practice, and that's the jazz experience part that comes into it.
I've had students cry when I've asked them to improvise using the blue
scale, so I learned early on that you need to set really
strict parameters for what can be used successfully. So I've
told singers you can't use anything but doe, the first note of the scale, but you sure better
make sure it swings.
So I'll do just a little of call and response and you sing back to me.
Use any scat syllable that seems comfortable, doo, anything like that. I'll call,
you respond, and I'm going to keep it very simple but using only notes from the blue scale.
*singing*
Good!
So you can create all kinds of little licks and fragments to practice with the blue
scale. Lastly, no improvisation
is going to be very interesting if you just follow the rules of the right notes.
You have to do something expressive, and on the list of jazz characteristics
you saw voices imitating instruments, you saw unusual vocal timbres,
Individually we make those choices about how to use
our vocal range, vocal dynamics to be expressive, to be unusual.,
to be unpredictable, to be creative. So we're going to
do the twelve bar blues one more time, and you may all sing as a class if you wish to just
explore unpredictability and variety in your class
or just one of you might be chosen to do it at this time.
*singing*
So I hope I've
given you some ideas to explore about improvisation.
Please take the time to practice and study, but most of all have fun.
Thanks for listening.
There are other
things that influence ones ability to improvise jazz. I've talked about thee
often: jazz experience, jazz theory knowledge, and imitative ability,
but those account for about 50% of the ability to improvise jazz.
As you see on this slide there are numerous other predictors of
the ability to improvise and we'll just have to talk about those another time, or you can look up my research where I discuss
them. Have fun improvising, and thanks for listening.