Category Archives: Music Education

Improv Game of the Day: Illustrated History

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The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, one o...

2+ players. The Music Teachers’ Association of California has made an outstanding effort to bring improvisation into school curricula. We haven’t purchased them yet ($32 each), but we are very curious about their Improvisation Syllabus and Guide and Improvisation Games and Activities.

One of their ideas is to illustrate local or state history musically. The procedure is to pick a historically or geographically important topic and then decide on possible musical resources needed to invent a piece about it.

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(Big) Improv Quote of the Day: What Does Improvisation Do For a Musician?

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Awareness

(Photo credit: Emilie Ogez)

For one, it gives me a break from tackling my wrong notes, distasteful vibrato, and being torn between interpretations in the practice room. There are no wrong notes, no wrong inflections. I wouldn’t say that a note during improv with “distasteful” vibrato/intonation/whatever was necessarily done on purpose, but was made in the moment and without expectation. There is something very freeing and empowering about this. What happens on accident- a cracked note, or a gasping breath, can turn into inspiration for what is to come.

At the same time, I can tackle my classical music troubles through improv. Lately, I’ve had issues with controlling the style of my double tonguing. I’ll start moving my fingers, with no regard to scales or my piece, and focus solely on my double tonguing. This allows my mind to be entirely focused on the production of my tonguing, because I am not going to be distracted by the fingers in an awkward passage, or by the monotony of scales.

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Creativity in Education Quotes from All Over

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The Creativity symbol as it appeared on the fi...

The Creativity symbol as it appeared on the first edition of Nature's Eternal Religion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although this blog focuses on classical improve, we are also passionately interested in creativity in general and creativity in arts education (or any education, for that matter). We are very interested in spreading the word that what the World (and schools) Needs Now is a very healthy shot of a “whole brain” approach to education. Small minds in governing bodies (chockablock with lawyers and business folks) are interested in cheap (i.e. no-cost), instant fixes in education (notably All Children Left Behind – “Is Our Children Learning”?) rather than long-range and effective curriculum planning. There. I said it (again). I feel better. Sort of, for a little while. Anyway, we try to keep our ears open for trends and sentiments in this direction. We would like to share some recent clippings and videos from all kinds of online sources from all over the globe. Read on.

 

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Start Your Day with a D.A.!

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Imagine that you were not allowed to speak unless you were quoting Socrates, Cicero, Aristotle, Winston Churchill, Lincoln, etc., not even “Please pass the salt” unless you were quoting. Imagine that you were an English major but were not allowed to write any of your own thoughts, no essays, not even an email; you could only copy down quotes from Twain, Dickens, Faulkner, Joyce, Cervantes, Goethe, etc . Imagine that you went to art school but were never trained or encouraged to do anything but reproduce famous paintings, never, never paint or sculpt anything that you thought up, ever. Just copy Picasso, Renoir, Degas, Ingres, Leonardo. Imagine if you went to music school and never played anything but the notes of some distant (and likely deceased) composer, never received encouragement or training to make your own music…

Oh, wait. That is, in fact, how it is in music school. No creating. Just recreating. Nothing wrong with re-creating – unless it’s the only show in town. Any garage band worth its salt composes its own songs. Why is it that your averate terminal-degreed music student can’t write a convincing piece for their own instrument? Isn’t something missing?

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Venezuela’s Music Ed System: El Sistema

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Flag of venezuela

Mark Swed wrote an intriguing article in the L.A. Times recently entitled “What the US could learn from the Venezuela’s music education system.” The state-run music ed program (called El Sistema) is known as “the most extensive, admired, and increasingly imitated in the world. … Foreign visitors who stream into Caracas to observe El Sistema in action invariably leave Venezuela amazed.”

Where many in this country see classical music as moribund, El Sistema is universally supported, admired, and enjoyed. No political party there would even think of opposing music education. For an equivalent in this country, Swed says, “Imagine President Obama demanding a $1.2 billion music education system under the rubric of social welfare, only to be challenged by Ron Paul insisting that Congress allocate an even great sum for socialized music.” (Swed visited Venezuela on the same day the the Los Angeles Board of Education met to consider a proposal that would eliminate arts from the elementary curriculum).

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Improv Quote of the Day: Where is the creativity?

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oil painting Improvisation

In teaching music students to be creative, most schools are derelict. … Music education, so strongly rooted in performance traditions, has resulted in the virtual absence of creative problem solving processes in its teaching and learning practices.

– Lee Willingham, “Creativity and the Problem with Music” in Creativity and Music Education

Improv Quotes of the Day: Fun Speeds Learning

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English: Boston Natural History Society facili...

Too many teachers are locked into being purveyors and transmitters of information, smiling supporters of acceptable behaviors, and, in the end, authorities who grade multiple-choice examinations. It would be better if teachers were mapmakers, distributors of tools, sowers of ideas, stimulators of creativity, guides to the puzzled, and models to growing children.

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Improv Quote of the Day: The Core of the Curriculum

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Deutsch: Handzeichen nach Curwen. Beschreibung...

Improvisation should be at the core of the music curriculum.
 It should come first 
and should remain at the core of music education
 throughout the later years of increasing expertise. 
Musicians educated with improvisation at the center 
will have a better-developed ability to think musically
—to deeply understand music 
as well as be better prepared to interpret written scores.

–R. Keith Sawyer