The typical training for students studying orchestral instruments tends not to include musical improvisation. Improvisation is to be encouraged!
Improvisation is good for so many reasons:
- It can lead to musical composition.
- It frees up your body
- It helps you play as an ensemble
- It's a fun way to learn about harmony
- It makes you begin to understand how to be a composer
Here's a very simple and fun way to introduce improvisation to your students. Ask everyone to pluck a steady ostinato of AAGG and demonstrate first by improvising rhythms on open A. The students are learning, one by one, to fit an improvised rhythm into a pulse. You can then expand this to adding more pitch choices. At about 2:00 the student Kevin, launches right in using 3 pitches to improvise on. (A,C and D)
Improvisation doesn't have to be jazz or even jazzy. You can start out by just playing one pitch and make up rhythms to fit a particular tempo.But it's fun to use an ostinato when you are first learning to improvise. If you have another person or an ensemble, someone (or the group) can pizzicato a repeated rhythm or a repeated series of notes while you try to fit some phrases in. Use a limited range of pitches at first.
You can't make mistakes when you are improvising! Some of the phrases you come up with will sound better than others but if you use a "let's see what happens" attitude, little by little, you'll get more adept at it.
It's good to improvise with people who you like. You have to feel totally comfortable with them and not inhibited in any way. Here are two of my kids improvising with me.
This exceptionally gifted child, Alma Deutscher, improvises in the style of Mozart/Haydn. Here she is interviewed (and speaks in Hebrew and English) and is given 3 notes out of a hat to improvise on. Check out her youtube channel. She is lovely!
