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.