Week 2 Reflection
One of this week's required readings discussed the pedagogy of musical creativity. Specifically, Bauer (2014) discussed improvisation and composition.
I can speak personally to this particular topic. As a public school string student, neither improvisation nor composition were ever a really big part of our lessons. I was never given the assignment to compose until I took AP Music Theory as a junior - to be fair, I had never had and ultimately never would have an interest in it. Improvisation was slightly more prominent; my orchestra teacher gave us a piece of music with room to improvise on a blues scale, but this would be the extent of my exposure to improvisation. Certainly, our music classes were very much focused on the mastery of technique and refining our ability to interpret written notation and composer intent. A creative environment to a degree, but not an environment that actively fostered creativity.
Bauer describes the need for educators to provide creative opportunities, the necessary resources, appropriate stimulation, and sufficient time in order to facilitate musical creativity. What we ultimately lacked were opportunities and resources in my high school days, and this is likely because my teachers were the same kind of teacher I am as are many others. Our musical training did not involve building those skills, and thus we are uncomfortable teaching those skills. We don't know where to find those resources, or how to provide those opportunities. Some may not realize how slowly these skills develop, others provide inappropriate stimulation in the form of over-programming or giving no consideration to maturity. I know I still very much struggle with the pedagogy behind improvisation and conducting.
To begin to tackle this lack of understanding, I'm going to focus on my weakest point: improvisation. Kratus (1996) provides a sequence for teaching improvisation:
I can speak personally to this particular topic. As a public school string student, neither improvisation nor composition were ever a really big part of our lessons. I was never given the assignment to compose until I took AP Music Theory as a junior - to be fair, I had never had and ultimately never would have an interest in it. Improvisation was slightly more prominent; my orchestra teacher gave us a piece of music with room to improvise on a blues scale, but this would be the extent of my exposure to improvisation. Certainly, our music classes were very much focused on the mastery of technique and refining our ability to interpret written notation and composer intent. A creative environment to a degree, but not an environment that actively fostered creativity.
Bauer describes the need for educators to provide creative opportunities, the necessary resources, appropriate stimulation, and sufficient time in order to facilitate musical creativity. What we ultimately lacked were opportunities and resources in my high school days, and this is likely because my teachers were the same kind of teacher I am as are many others. Our musical training did not involve building those skills, and thus we are uncomfortable teaching those skills. We don't know where to find those resources, or how to provide those opportunities. Some may not realize how slowly these skills develop, others provide inappropriate stimulation in the form of over-programming or giving no consideration to maturity. I know I still very much struggle with the pedagogy behind improvisation and conducting.
To begin to tackle this lack of understanding, I'm going to focus on my weakest point: improvisation. Kratus (1996) provides a sequence for teaching improvisation:
- Exploration: exploring sound possibilities while developing audiation.
- Process-oriented improvisation: Improvisation involving the intentional coordination of sound patterns and motor skills. Not musical yet, audiation continuing to develop.
- Product-oriented improvisation: students begin to incorporate musical structure into their improvisation. Audiation development continues.
- Fluid improvisation: student have to think less consciously about their improvisation. Proper performance technique should be emphasized, and opportunities to improvise with a variety of tempos, meters, tonalities, and harmonic chord progressions should be provided.
- Structural improvisation: Students are using large musical structures and clearly relating musical sections/material to each other. Suggest strategies to develop improvisation.
- Stylistic improvisation: Student is fluently improvising within a particular style. Continued listening, analysis of expert performances, and performance opportunities will be beneficial.
- Personal improvisation: Students develop their style of improvisation. Encourage students to become fluent in a wide range of styles.
For me, I feel this is a logical sequence for the development of the skill of improvisation, but I am still left the question, "How do I incorporate this into my orchestras?" I find myself looking at the word audiation and thinking of the number of times students have told me "This is orchestra, not chorus. I'm not singing!" The solution to this problem lies in technology! Programs such as SmartMusic, Practica Musica, and Teoria allow students to practice sightsinging and ear training from the safety of their own home, and SmartMusic will even record and grade student recordings for you. Computer labs or individual workstations in music classrooms can facilitate student use of this software, and even a screen and projector can allow for full class activities utilizing resources like musictheory.net! I've even done that myself.
Ultimately, despite mine and my colleagues moaning, there are accessible ways to learn the pedagogy of musical creativity, even if in small chunks. I may never be a master of improvisation or composition, and I will certainly never be a master teacher of either, but perhaps I can learn enough to expose my students to it. And that may be all it takes.
References
Bauer, W. (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital Pedagogy for Creating Performing, and Responding to Music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Kratus, J. Growing with improvisation. Music Educators Journal, 78(4), 35-40.
Will,
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent post. As a band director in a 6-12 setting and having a Jazz Ensemble I am exposed to improvisation daily. I struggle to get kids to improvise because it is a very daunting task. Our students are "afraid" to make mistakes. I agree Kratus has a great sequential learning process for improvisation but I like how you used smart music, practica music and teoria as a means of ear training. I have had exposure to some of those programs but not all and the key to good improvisation is ear training. We must listen and study the "masters" of improvisation. I feel in the last four years as an educator my skill sets have grown as a I do a lot of transcriptions of solos with students to help heighten their ear and we have done some pretty complex transcriptions.
I also agree that as undergraduates we never really had the change to foster creativity unless you were in the jazz program. I strongly feel we should have a non jazz-major undergraduate course on the jazz ensemble or improvisation because we might have to teach it someday. I also struggle with pedagogy in teaching improvisation and finding methods and ways to teach it besides transcribing, using the blues and pentatonic scales.
For your orchestra: You could potentially arrange a blues progression for the students. For example: If you have a Christmas/holiday concert you could start with your bass section laying down a killer blues bass line, have the cellos join in and performing the melody to jingle bells over top with the violins or violas, something along that line and leave room for improvisation and invite percussionists from the band to come in and play for the concert to keep beat for you. Works well - I have an arrangement I would be happy to share with you - I can even embed it into my blog one week if you would like. Reach out and let me know, I don't know if it be appropriate for your setting however, you can always edit to suit the needs of your students!
Best of Luck!