Improvisation+Activities

**IMPROVISATION ACTIVITIES** Improv Encyclopedia - improv games

This Invention was done with a combination of Junior and Senior Band members from Grades 6, 7, and 8. Some of the students are strong players, some are not. Many started to learn an instrument in September.
 * Spartan Band Two Bar Invention **

We were trying to have the players create two bars of music. At first almost everyone could only create one bar. We managed to play a couple of one bar pieces. It was a challenge to get everyone to play in the right beat at the right time until we put our drummer in the picture. At that point everyone started to count.

Eventually we managed to convince everyone to extend their four beats into two bars. We still had trouble placing the beats as players scrambled to think quickly enough of what sounds they wanted to make.

The fun came in when the players began to discuss what they were thinking about and try out various sounds and musical ideas for each other. By the end of the clip you can hear them starting to become very experimental. They were excited and chattering as they left the music room. As a result of our attempts during band practice, there was a lineup at the door when I asked for players to take part in a secret project which appears below.

Part of the challenge for me was to learn to use the recording equipment. As you will hear, I forgot to turn off the metronome. It clicks away throughout. The last part of the recording has individual students each taking two bars (or what they perceive to be two bars) and then passing to the next person. They played whatever came to their minds as we passed the torch, so to speak, from one person to another. I got better at recording as we went and the students were buzzing with ideas all week long, many of them stopping me in the hall to run something by me.

media type="file" key="two bar invention.m4a" align="left" width="300" height="50"


 * 8-1 Two bar improvisation - series of tasks **

This class was excited about the idea of contributing to research. They are a French Immersion class and are accustomed to having time to discuss ideas and experiment with new tasks. Most of them do not play in the band. We started with four beats. Each person picked one of four beats to play with. We had the mechanical man syndrome. Eventually after some trial and error, the class split up into groups of instruments and rather than each person taking four or eight beats, they had their group members play something. I did notice that this group, unlike the band who just wanted to make sounds experimentally, wanted to talk first and play after. They seemed to like to reach an agreement about when to play and when not to and which sounds would be made and which were eliminated. Eventually they were able to record their sounds in order by taking turns and pointing to each other to tell each player when to go. It was a fascinating process and very, very different from the band's process. They did comment that they were having fun and enjoying the process of creating their own music.

We reached a nice pinnacle, and then the group began to devolve and we needed to move on to something else.

media type="file" key="8-1 two bar experiment.m4a" width="300" height="50" align="left"


 * Secret Music Record - Secret Music Players**

These students began working on impulse after I picked up on a suggestion by Tina G. in my group. She described a recording process she had taken part in with professional friends of hers. Her description had me thinking how much fun it would be if the players recorded each of their contributions in secret without the other people hearing them. We would then combine the individual efforts and hear the results.

Our first attempt failed utterly. We had only fifteen minute time slots to work in to begin with. Not having used Garage Band much I had trouble remembering to turn off the metronome. Finally conquering that problem, I had each student record with the track our drummer had laid down for us, forgetting that each time the drum track played with a player it would also be recorded. By the end of the fifteen minutes we had recorded some really neat stuff, but the drum track became so heavy it wiped out everything else!

So we tried again the next day. More problems arose with recording. The next day we were more careful with the sound. I had figured out Garage Band ( Should have let the kids do it!) At last we had something that worked and that everyone liked. The kids left the room buzzing with ideas about what they would do with their secret recording on the next round.

media type="file" key="Secret music record.m4a" width="269" height="37"

At the beginning of the improvisation project, we were asked to brainstorm questions we have in our practice. One nagging question that kept coming up in our discussions was a perceived disconnect between our students' ability to play an instrument and their ability to read music. I started working on that question in a number of ways. In my Grade 7 classes we wrote down two bars using 4/4 time and the first few notes on our instruments. Then we moved from writing to playing our own pieces. The students moved from not being able to write down any music to being able to compose eight bars using a Mozart technique of flipping the bars backwards. The students discovered patterning in music and how notation works. Their understanding seems to have improved. I will know next year how lasting the learning was when I work with the students again in Grade 8.
 * Other Ideas for Improvisation**

In a Grade 6 class I stumbled on an improvisation idea when my students saw me working on a project of my own on finale. They wanted to know what I was doing so I showed them how finale works and they demanded a chance to compose on it. I didn't have access to the computer lab because it is so heavily used by the Language, Math, Science and other subject teachers. I decided to use a projector to show the students the finale software. The project we worked on is described below. Students wrote together. Though each child took his or her turn, the others took part by discussing what was happening on the screen, pointing out problems and suggesting things to each other. Very few students were bored, and as the results were played back they were more and more excited about creating their own piece together. They certainly learned a lot about writing music down, note values, and the conventions of music. I hope it will help them next year when we start to play instruments. Each Grade 6 class tried to outdo the others. At the end of the project, each class was sure their own composition was the best, but they agreed that they liked all the projects.


 * People Come Around by 6-1**

This file was created by projecting a finale file on the smart board at the front of the room. We had trouble making the smart board work so I manipulated the computer and projected the results. The students simply took one bar each, telling me which instrument they would like to sound and which notes and values they would like to put into their particular bar. I did the input as they asked. Very few of them were stuck for an idea. Each person wanted to top the last one. Everyone took part in the discussion and we played back after each person's contribution. Some of the students were very confident. Others liked to change what they wrote after they heard it. It was a long process and students were surprisingly engaged. They all contributed and were very clear in what they were asking for in terms of notes. They loved being creative and having a say in how our piece evolved. We are putting this piece and two others from two other classes (below) together in an MP4 file which our animation club will use as a film score. The result will be presented at our upcoming Spartan Showcase. You will notice that the pieces are shorter than the length of the audio play.

media type="file" key="6-1 People come around.aiff" width="300" height="50"

This one was a similar project. This group of students was very particular about their piece. They worked it over several times before allowing me to go on to something else.
 * 6-2 Amazingness**

media type="file" key="6-2 Amazingness.mp3" width="240" height="20"

This project is longer than the previous two because there were many more students in the class. I was amazed at the detail and depth this group reached in both their discussions and their music.
 * 6-3 Dreams**

media type="file" key="6-3 Dreams copy copy.aiff" width="300" height="50" 6-4 Vocal Experement One of my most enthusiastic classes wanted to try some experimental music. I had some trouble communicating with the vocal students because of their lack of experience with traditional musical forms, so I tried some of the techniques I learned with Doug Friesen. They worked like a charm and here is the result.

media type="file" key="6-4 experimental vocal.m4a" width="300" height="50"

8-1 Vocal Experiment Its a curious thing but this class was never enthusiastic about their music study at all and the relationship between myself and the class was fine with individual students, but not with the class as a whole. That relationship has changed for the better lately, due, in part, to the chances I gave the class to experiment with both vocal and instrumental forms of improvisation. This group was totally into watching their recording develop on screen. They had quite an interesting view of the visual recordings of the vibrations. They noticed that the biggest waves were for the loudest noises and they were quite taken with the idea of watching the recording develop and modifying the sounds according to what they saw as much as according to what sounded good to them. The process here was very different than when they tried it with instruments. They were far more experimental and did not want to work with beats or structures of any kind. They wanted to just make noise and decide which to keep and where to place the sounds and when each person should go. Their collaboration was mostly friendly and everyone was well-engaged, even the students who normally do not like to play instruments. One or two students preferred vocal experimentation to instrumental.

media type="file" key="8-1 vocal experiment.m4a" width="300" height="50" Note: A number of questions occurred to me as I worked with the students. These would make great questions for future research. How does knowledge transfer from one person to another? How does knowledge transfer from the teacher to the student or from student to student? How do ideas change as they are released into a group? How do students acquire knowledge that is not presented directly to them through teacher instruction or through written/audio/visual materials? How do the various modes of learning influence what is produced by improvising students. What process do the students go through to be able to perceive and decide upon their next action during improvisation? What role does intuition play in the idea making improvisation process? How do students' relationships to music and to each other change during the acquisition of improvisation skills? Does knowing how to improvise affect the acquisition of other music skills? Does the relationship between the students and the teacher change because of the process of sharing knowledge about improvisation? Is there a benefit to class dynamics due to having to colaborate to create improvised music? Once knowledge of improvisation is mobilized does that knowledge carry students forward in other areas of musical study and exploration? There are many issues associated with Knowledge Transfer. Such issues could be an important part of leaning to teach improvisation to students. Tracy Fewster