This week’s lesson is radically different! Instead of the typical dynamic where the student repeats after me, this week the student gets to decide what to play!
I remember the first time a teacher told me to improvise on a marimba. I was in a class with my peers, and I remember my body freezing. After years of playing exactly what a teacher told me to play, I thought I had no idea how to make up music on my own. I remember looking at the teacher thinking, “tell me what to do!” I wish the teacher told me that I had a HUGE toolbox to choose from! All those years of playing different styles of music on the piano in all the different key signatures had given me a wealth of vocabulary to improvise, but I had no idea I had it.
As an educator, I wonder what would happen if we started improvisation and composition much earlier than I did. What if we started it a few weeks into learning an instrument? I thought it would be interesting to teach improvisation and composition at an early stage in our learning because of the absence of choices; only four pitches and just a few note lengths to choose from. Maybe if we are given less choices, it isn’t as difficult to make one. If I went to an ice cream shop with fifty flavors of ice cream, it will be much more difficult than if they had five!
As a side note to my fellow music teachers, this week’s lesson was formatted for teachers either to use as a guide in teaching improvisation and composition, or to even use as sub plans if you would like an alternative to showing the educational music DVDs ;-). I have a PowerPoint presentation available for download here if you would like to save yourself a little time with lesson planning as well!
Don’t forget to post any questions or comments, and enjoy the lesson!
Miss Mari's Music 