Today we’re going to speak a little bit about improvisation, and I’m going try to
help us understand how central it is to music learning and music making, and many times
in the formal instruction of music it’s a step that’s skipped, where students use
notation as a point of departure for learning their music, and there’s not an opportunity
for creativity.
In fact, much of what’s taught actually impedes someone’s natural inclination to
be creative and improvise.
So if we can get a better understanding of what improvisation is, it might help us to
make it more central to music learning and music making.
How many of you all think of yourselves as improvisers?
Ah, got some good hands going up there.
Really, we’re all born improvisers, and the idea is to keep that spirit alive as we
learn and grow as musicians and as people living our lives, and primarily in music,
the best thing to think about maybe would be that improvisation is the spontaneous expression
of musical ideas.
Improvisers interact in the moment.
They’re able to group things into meaningful chunks, and anticipate and predict what might
come next.
So, for example, if you’re paying attention to me right now in language, you are improvising
with me, because you can probably tell me the next…
word I was going to… say before I… so why should I talk?
Thank you very much.
No.
The idea of learning to improvise really happens when we learn by ear, and it’s really fundamental
that we remember that learning by ear is central to music making.
We should be inspired by the repertoire we’re learning by ear, and then use that as a context
for improvising, and then improvisation can inspire our composition, and that provides
context for when we read.
So when you say learn by ear, people immediately think, maybe, in today’s world, that somebody
who’s an improviser might be a jazz musician, say would expect some kind of music like that.
This kind of jazz expression came out of dance and also out of the spontaneous interactions
of folks who had some interactions together around this music.
But if we think about it, Beethoven, and Bach, and Mozart, and all of the heroes of what
people call classical music were also great improvisers, and you might think of, if I
say that a way to be inspired to improvise is through really understanding the stories
that are told through the songs and the repertoire we know, we can think of a Beethoven symphony
in the same way.
If you think about the seventh symphony, realizing that Beethoven is an exuberant improviser,
this is one of my favorite pieces.
Really if we pay attention to that, really what makes that tick is ba ba-ba ba ba.
Everybody say that.
Ready, go.
Keep it going, for 9 minutes?
Right?
And that continues, if you keep going and ba ba, he layers another layer on there.
He goes … ba-ba.
So, the idea of improvisation isn’t exclusive to jazz.
It’s actually something that we do as a part of active music making and actual understanding
for music.
If you think about a song from Trinidad, like the song, “Mary Ann”.
Do you know that song?
“All day, all night Miss Mary Ann.”
Have you ever heard that song?
“Down by the sea shore, sifting sand.
All the little children love Mary Ann.
Down by the seashore sifting sand.”
It’s not far from that to think about how a lot of music from all over the globe actually
has this idea of grouping this idea and comparing it to this idea this, this vocabulary.
This happens in Mozart.
This idea is something that we can learn by ear and be inspired to generate our own thoughts
and our own stories this way.
So if you, for example, think about the crux of the matter, we really want to be really
good at understanding what we’re listening to so that we can make a choice.
If we have this idea of, “do do do do do do do do do do do do do” as one choice.
Another choice might be to sing this “do, do do do do do do do”.
Sing that for me.
“do do do do do do do”.
There’s more of you then me “do do do do do do do do do”.
And the bassline is “do do do do or you could choose this line “do do do do do do
do do”.
Think about those three options for making some music, and then choose one, and then
sing it, ready?
“ Do do do do do do do”.
So in that choice that you made, you’re beginning to improvise, and we could go more
and more into detail about that, but that provides a context for learning names of notes
and learning time values of things that are symbolic for the thing that we’re doing
that’s oral.
Now one of the important things that I want to not forget to mention is that this is true
about music throughout history.
So when I play that Mozart example it uses the same harmony and he’s making choices
about the harmony as well.
Or if I do something that’s a jazz piece, what happens is a question of style and style
is really impossible to write down the style.
You can write down jazz, but unless you understand it, it’s going to be difficult for you to
really sound convincing.
So the last thing I’d like to point out is that this is something that we’re all
borne doing, and I’ve got examples of young children doing it because they show us some
of these features of what it means to improvise.
They’re in the moment, they’re making choices, and they’re personalizing the music
they’re learning.
The first example is of a child who’s two years old who’s very enthusiastic about
all the songs she knows “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all
the way, oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.
Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse
open sleigh.”
“Okay” “Oh My Darling”, Oh My Darling”, Oh
My Darling Clementine.
You were lost and won’t you ever read the story Clementine.
Okay, what next song?”
“Twinkle, twinkle” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
How I wonder where you are.
Up above the world so high.
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle Little Star, how I wonder where you are.
Another song” So that goes on for 8 minutes, right.
And if you think about twinkle, twinkle, that’s a piece that Mozart was attracted to, it’s
a French folk song.
Mozart wrote variations on it.
I have a feeling it’s because that “ba ba ba ba ba ba ba” is the only rhythm idea
in the whole melody.
The whole song, “ba ba ba ba ba ba ba”, and to have some vocabulary like that and
to vary it and play with it is what it means to improvise.
Now there’s another video I’m going to show you of a two year old who takes the vocabulary
of a song.
I’ve asked her to sing “This old man”.
You know that one?
“This old man, he played one, he played knick knack..”
You know?
The good thing about it is you get to sing “Knick knack patty-whack”.
That’s a good thing, and the other thing about it is you get to hear it 10 times.
A two year olds favorite words are “again” and “no”, right?
“Again” because they realize that they want to learn how to do this by ear, and “no”
because they want to be somewhat independent.
And so instead of singing the song she says “nooo”.
I said well at least sing “doo” and she says “mi” and then she sings “so do”
and starts to improvise with, again, the vocabulary of the song.
“Go ahead sing, sing it.
Bum-bum-bum”.
Go ahead.
“No Nooo” “do do do” Bump butadaum butadum bumpdum” Dut dut dut dut dut dut
dut dut dut dut dut dut duta da do Do Stop it Mi..Mi..So Do..Right “Mi so do”, Mi
so do “Okay, now please sing this old man”
“You just did it in tune in E-flat” “No”
“This ba ba bum” “no no no”
“no no no” Mum, mum, mum, mum mum mum mum mum mum mum
mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum bup bup bup bup buppa buppa bup
Dup Dup Dup da Dup Dup Dup da
Dat ta dat ta dat ta dat da Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta
Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bubum Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum it it it it it
it it it it it itt Lum lum lum I’m ready…La la la do
Thank you!
There you go.
So yeah, you can show here some love.
That’s nice.
So the idea here is that artists are trying to remember what they already knew in early
childhood and that the idea is if we can be spontaneous and in the moment and act and
interact as improvisers, we have a way to connect with each other that’s very meaningful
and very powerful, and that we need to understand that as we begin to teach more of the formal
ideas of how you read and make symbols out of the music that is embodied, and the spirit
of embodiment should really be context for it all.
So thank you very much, I appreciate your time.