A Pedagogy of Improvisation

About this website

I would like to share with you some of what I’ve experienced and learned during 50 years of performing and university teaching. This is the kind of sharing that characterized my engagement with young musicians in studio classes, private lessons and a variety of workshop settings; however, this website is not offered as an organized, curricular-driven music course.

The structure of the website

The many exercises presented here (with many more on the way) are not sequenced in order to provide you with a music education from the ground up. It is more like a library, where you can pick things off the shelf that interest you at the moment. You may find that some materials simplify or at least explain some of problems that musicians inevitably face at some stage, but there are other materials which extend ideas into areas of greater subtlety or complexity than you might have previously encountered. So the website has no predetermined target audience. It’s simply partner for an exploration, like the one you may be on at the moment. Glad to be with you.

A ‘library” rather than a workbook

Since the site is not structured on the model of a university curriculum and more like a bookshelf full of interesting and useful books, the “Contents” link is meant to function more like an Index than a Table of Contents. The expectation is that the use of the search function as well as the links (to both tags and categories) can help you continue the thread of your exploration. There’s a lot of explanatory writing throughout the entries in the Contents and, while many exercises present their own sequences of graded difficulties, the Contents page as a whole is not organized with any pedagogical design. So, the paradigm for organization of the website is more like a public library, where you go to the shelf containing what most interests you and what you need in the moment. 

The who might profit most from working with this website?

While this website comprises many practical ideas in music theory or improvisational playing, and while there is quite a bit of piano-related material, the site is not intended to give instruction on piano or any other instrument. And despite the fact that there are many exercises and explanations here that do address very basic, even rudimentary issues, the website assumes (hopes) that you have a reasonable background regarding the basic elements of aural perception, literacy and performance, as well as understanding, memory, notation, and so on. 

There’s a search function by which you can find additional materials on the site which might be relevant and helpful. This site is certainly not intended to replace live teaching (it could not) nor is it intended to provide complete information typically needed by most musicians. It is just a set of exercises and writings to stimulate your own thinking and learning. Some items, such as the approach to rhythm notation, keyboard topography, harmony, etc., may be new for you or may provide some ideas that challenge those you already have. Over time the site will include additional materials that address practicing, rehearsing, performing, listening, composing, improvising, musical memory, development of one’s musicianship, and also teaching all the above. It is also about what actually takes place in the teaching studio—externally and inwardly.

There will soon be a broader range of materials on this website intended to address the many things I think are important to share. You will no doubt notice the bias in these initial pages toward the more rational, skills-and-discipline-oriented side of being a creative musician. The other side—experimental, exploratory, free, expressive, spontaneous, crazy side—will be slowly merging into this website but, as with most creative work, is very useful to have acquired at the outset a secure foundation of rudimentary skills, familiarity with essential ideas, basic materials and universal processes. Technical and theoretical areas seem to be the easiest to articulate and transmit, particularly in a print/image/video format. Extended, live contact is almost always preferable for introducing new ideas and performative applications, as well as for assistance with the the kind of gentle ‘meltdown’ of long-standing fears, self-doubts, and other obstacles that so many of us experience. But I will try to convey what I can about how those things can be addressed, even within the formal teaching environment in which many of you work. So this website is intended for both personal learning as well to give ideas and materials to those of you who teach others.

There are many ideas here which you can think about and exercises which you can try. But throughout, it’s also about learning to develop musical attention, distinguishing among the different sources and qualities of attention, and practical ways to further develop our capacity for attention. I try to explore the questions: what do we mean by attention; what is musical attention?

A good transmission of the material on this site also requires live demo videos, text and graphics, and I plan to gradually link many videos to the site. Describing music and musical exercises in words can be really laborious to write out (and even more laborious to read), but many of the nuanced suggestions still be most accurately transmitted by means of words and graphics. The written texts will describe the exercises and offer suggestions and advice on practice, but one of the most important reasons for the writing which accompanies the exercises is to clarify the rationale, that is, the pedagogical basic and benefits of each exercise as well as suggestions for its presentation and practice.

With few exceptions, the great teachers have emphasized conscious practice over mere mechanical repetition. For pianists this includes awareness of the structure and characteristic strengths of the individual fingers and the body in general, the structure and emotional requirements of the music and of the prevailing style, the organization of the keyboard itself, and many other things. So in general, this site is mostly about learning to play and practice with awareness, attention and intention.

Therefore, I suggest that attentive practice should replace brute repetition. Most musicians agree with this, but many years of observation confirm that it is not so often that we put it into practice. Practice should ideally be attentive and engaged with love of the activity rather than being a mandatory preparation for the ability to play as you hope to play. Practice should not be approached like a bad tasting medicine, which you take only to get better. The word practice has become ossified and now implies something rather rigid, boring and time-consuming. Unless you are a pre-professional musician, one or two hours a day of really attentive work should be more than enough time to achieve really satisfying results, as long as that time is divided into a series of sessions which are short enough to allow time for stretching and relaxing, that is, for the dissipation of the physical stresses and mental fatigue accumulated during intensive practice. But, on the other hand, each practice session should be long enough to experience a kind of useful exhaustion, as when we are trying to increase our muscular strength in the gym. Depending on your personality and personal history, the duration of your practice session should take into account your physical and mental capacity on the given day and it should be long enough to feel that you either learned something new, or brought some aspect of your playing to a new level, or increased your capacity of memorization, or achieved something else genuinely worthwhile—something that you really do need. Unless you are preparing for a special rehearsal or program, daily practice need not occupy more than one or two hours (if it is done with deep attention to mind and body).

It’s important to have a clear understanding of what, how and why you’re practicing. There are some really great websites that give valuable insights for studying and teaching. And for teaching, this site also includes some workshop activities which you can introduce into your own lessons and classes. I hope it’s useful to you.

In summary, I’d characterize my teaching efforts (perhaps including this website) as guided by the advice given to me by a senior colleague as I began my university teaching career at age 23. When I asked him what were his intentions on beginning any new course, he responded in his usual pithy manner, “I just try to make myself obsolete as quickly as possible.”

So have a good read, try out the materials, and you’re welcome to send me any questions or advice you have.

Good luck! Smile as you work.