Jazz+Improvisation

Subject/Grade: Jazz Band Concepts/Skills/Values: Improvisation National Standards: Sing, Play, Listen, Improvise, Read/Notate Behavioral Learning Objectives: With and without the aide of music, students will improve melodies with other students and with themselves. Materials: Blues scale sheets

If you're having trouble getting students to solo, have some fun with an improv activity.

1. For the jazz band who is timid to solo. 2. Teach the 12-bar blues. Use a blues scale page, or have students play the blues scale in arpeggiated chords as background. This may need to be written out before-hand. 3. Have a certain number of students play the 12-bar blues as an accompaniment (i.e. a trombone, tenor sax, and alto sax, for example). Choose two other students to improv. 4. First, confine the improv students to a certain number of notes from the blues scale. This can help them feel less nervous about the possibility of soloing. 5. Have the two students play alone first. Explain that improvising is a lot like singing (and have them sing if they are so inclined) or talking. You're having a conversation with the other person. With that in mind, have students alternate playing two bars at a time, as if they're talking to each other. Play off of that concept. 6. So as to keep other students occupied, have the background people play the 12-bar blues scale pattern that you've introduced. This will provide a background for the improv students to "talk" to each other over. Experiment with this with the first two students, then have other students do the same. Make sure everyone gets a chance. 7. Eventually, expand the confine of notes to the whole scale. Have the original students have a "conversation" first, then expand it to the rest of the group.

Basically, exercises like this can help students understand what improvisation is about. If they are given some parameters (i.e. a closed set of notes) and are introduced to something as simple as the 12-bar blues scale, they can view improvisation as something less daunting. This lesson can be expanded to great lengths, but this is the basis.