Download or read book Improvisation and Music Education written by Ajay Heble and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers compelling new perspectives on the revolutionary potential of improvisation pedagogy. Bringing together contributions from leading musicians, scholars, and teachers from around the world, the volume articulates how improvisation can breathe new life into old curricula; how it can help teachers and students to communicate more effectively; how it can break down damaging ideological boundaries between classrooms and communities; and how it can help students become more thoughtful, engaged, and activist global citizens. In the last two decades, a growing number of music educators, music education researchers, musicologists, cultural theorists, creative practitioners, and ethnomusicologists have suggested that a greater emphasis on improvisation in music performance, history, and theory classes offers enormous potential for pedagogical enrichment. This book will help educators realize that potential by exploring improvisation along a variety of trajectories. Essays offer readers both theoretical explorations of improvisation and music education from a wide array of vantage points, and practical explanations of how the theory can be implemented in real situations in communities and classrooms. It will therefore be of interest to teachers and students in numerous modes of pedagogy and fields of study, as well as students and faculty in the academic fields of music education, jazz studies, ethnomusicology, musicology, cultural studies, and popular culture studies.
Download or read book Improvisation Creativity and Consciousness written by Edward W. Sarath and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz, America's original art form, can be a catalyst for creative and spiritual development. With its unique emphasis on improvisation, jazz offers new paradigms for educational and societal change. In this provocative book, musician and educator Edward W. Sarath illuminates how jazz offers a continuum for transformation. Inspired by the long legacy of jazz innovators who have used meditation and related practices to bring the transcendent into their lives and work, Sarath sees a coming shift in consciousness, one essential to positive change. Both theoretical and practical, the book uses the emergent worldview known as Integral Theory to discuss the consciousness at the heart of jazz and the new models and perspectives it offers. On a more personal level, the author provides examples of his own involvement in educational reform. His design of the first curriculum at a mainstream educational institution to incorporate a significant meditation and consciousness studies component grounds a radical new vision.
Download or read book Musical Improvisation written by Gabriel Solis and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A musical practice used for centuries the world over, improvisation too often has been neglected by scholars who dismiss it as either technically undissectible or inexplicably mysterious. At different times and in different cultures, performing music that is not "precomposed" has constituted an artful expression of the performer's individuality (the Baroque); a wild, unthinking form of expression (jazz antagonists); and the best method to train inexperienced musicians to use their instruments (the Middle East). This wide-ranging collection of essays considers musical improvisation from a variety of approaches, including ethnomusicology, education, performance, historical musicology, and music theory. Laying the groundwork for even further research into improvisation, the contributors of this volume delve into topics as diverse as the creative minds of Mozart and Beethoven, the place of improvised musics in Western and non-Western societies, and the development of jazz as a musical and cultural phenomenon.
Download or read book Improvise for Real written by David Reed and published by . This book was released on 2013-02-27 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improvise for Real is a step-by-step method that teaches you to improvise your own music through progressive exercises that anyone can do. You'll learn to understand the sounds in the music all around you. And you'll learn to express your own musical ideas exactly as you hear them in your mind. The method starts with very simple creative exercises that you can begin right away. As you progress, the method leads you on a guided tour through the entire world of modern harmony. You will be improvising your own original melodies from the very first day, and your knowledge will expand with each practice session as you explore and discover our musical system for yourself. Improvise for Real brings together creativity, ear training, music theory and physical technique into a single creative daily practice that will show you the entire path to improvisation mastery. You will learn to understand the sounds in the music all around you and to improvise with confidence over jazz standards, blues songs, pop music or any other style you would like to play. And you'll be jamming, enjoying yourself and creating your own music every step of the way. The method is open to all instruments and ability levels. The exercises are easy to understand and fun to practice. There is no sight reading required, and you don't need to know anything about music theory to begin. Already being used by both students and teachers in more than 20 countries, Improvise for Real is now considered by many people to be the definitive system for learning to improvise. If you have always dreamed of truly understanding music and being able to improvise with complete freedom on your instrument, this is the book for you
Download or read book Instrumental Music Education written by Evan Feldman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-21 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instrumental Music Education: Teaching with the Musical and Practical in Harmony, 2nd Edition is intended for college instrumental music education majors studying to be band and orchestra directors at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. This textbook presents a research-based look at the topics vital to running a successful instrumental music program, while balancing musical, theoretical, and practical approaches. A central theme is the compelling parallel between language and music, including "sound-to-symbol" pedagogies. Understanding this connection improves the teaching of melody, rhythm, composition, and improvisation. The companion website contains over 120 pedagogy videos for wind, string, and percussion instruments, performed by professional players and teachers, over 50 rehearsal videos, rhythm flashcards, and two additional chapters, "The Rehearsal Toolkit," and "Job Search and Interview." It also includes over 50 tracks of acoustically pure drones and demonstration exercises for use in rehearsals, sectionals and lessons. New to this edition: • Alternative, non-traditional ensembles: How to offer culturally relevant opportunities for more students, including mariachi, African drumming, and steel pans. • More learning and assessment strategies • The science of learning and practicing: How the brain acquires information • The philosophies of Orff and El Sistema, along with the existing ones on Kodály, Suzuki, and Gordon. • The Double Pyramid of Balance: Francis McBeth’s classic system for using good balance to influence tone and pitch. • Updated information about copyright for the digital age Evan Feldman is Conductor of the Wind Ensemble and Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Ari Contzius is the Wind Ensemble Conductor at Washingtonville High School, Washingtonville, NY Mitchell Lutch is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Bands at Central College in Pella, Iowa
Download or read book Expanding the Space for Improvisation Pedagogy in Music written by Taylor & Francis Group and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding the Space for Improvisation Pedagogy in Music is a critical, research-based anthology exploring improvisation in music pedagogy. The book broadens the understanding of the potentials and possibilities for improvisation in a variety of music education contexts and stimulates the development of knowledge and reflection on improvisation. The book critically examines the challenges, cultural values, aims and methods involved in improvisation pedagogy. Written by international contributors representing a variety of musical genres and research methodologies, it takes a transdisciplinary approach and outlines a way ahead for improvisation pedagogy and research, by providing a space for the exchange of knowledge and critique. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of arts education, music education, improvisation, music psychology, musicology, ethnomusicology, artistic research and community music. It will also appeal to music educators on all levels in the field of music education and music psychology.
Download or read book Free to Be Musical written by Lee Higgins and published by R&L Education. This book was released on 2010-10-16 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free to Be Musical: Group Improvisation in Music is for those who lead musical experiences in the lives of children, youth, and adults. Offering a set of experiences to inspire creative musical expression, this book will prove useful for music education majors, practicing music teachers, community musicians, and music therapists alike. The experiences (or 'events') are designed to reduce the musical barriers that Western societies pass on to children by the time they reach the 'age of reason,' when the natural childhood penchant to sing, dance, and play musically gives way to perfect performances of standard repertoire preserved in Western staff notation. The authors present ways to encourage music that is expressive and inventive, spontaneous yet thoughtful, communal and collaborative, and unlimited in its potential to bring fulfillment to those who make it. You'll find opportunities to release the musical imagination in ways that are free and expansive, playful and instructive, personal and interpersonal. Higgins and Campbell have created a context that validates the experiments and explorations of all people who are potential makers of all styles of music. Their musical events embrace the belief that music-making is 'a trail of no mistakes,' a celebration of the many and varied musical pathways that both teacher and student can take.
Download or read book The Art of Becoming written by Raymond A. R. MacDonald and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time of unprecedented interest in improvisation across the arts, The Art of Becoming boldly asserts that everyone can and should improvise. Drawing on emerging psychological literature as well as their own research with musicians, authors Raymond MacDonald and Graeme Wilson - both music psychologists and renowned performers in their own right - propose new ideas on what defines improvisation in music. MacDonald and Wilson explore the cognitive processes involved, the role of specialist skills or knowledge in improvised interaction, and the nature of understanding between improvisers. Their investigation lays out how we develop as improvisers, alongside health benefits derived from music participation. The Art of Becoming is a vital resource for courses on improvisation in contemporary practice, and for those applying musical improvisation in community and therapeutic contexts, setting out a framework based on psychological findings for understanding improvisation as a universal capability and an essentially social behavior. With suggestions for approaching this practice in new ways at any level, it demonstrates how improvisation transcends musical genres and facilitates collaboration between practitioners from disciplines across the artistic spectrum. Putting forward important implications for contemporary artistic practices, pedagogy, music therapy and the psychology of social behavior, The Art of Becoming provides fresh and provocative insights for anyone interested in playing, studying, teaching, or listening to improvised music.
Download or read book Studies in Historical Improvisation written by Massimiliano Guido and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour—a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player—that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory, and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself. Alongside a word-centred theoretical tradition, in which rules are described in verbiage and enriched by musical examples, we are rediscovering the importance of a music-centred tradition, especially in Spain and Italy, where the music stands alone and the learner must distil the rules by learning and playing the music. Throughout its various sections, the volume explores the path of improvisation from theory to practice and back again.
Download or read book Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians written by Jeffrey Agrell and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why don't classical musicians improvise? Why do jazz players get to have all the fun? And how do they develop such fabulous technique and aural skills? With these words, Jeffrey Agrell opens the door to improvisation for all non-jazz musicians who thought it was beyond their ability to play extemporaneously. Step-by-step, Agrell leads through a series of games, rather than exercises. The game format takes the pressure off of classically trained musicians, steering them away from their fixation on mistake-free performance and introducing the basic concepts of playing with music itself instead of obsessing over a perfect rendition of a written score. Agrell draws an analogy with sports that illustrates the absurdity of the traditional approach to classically-oriented music performance.
Download or read book Vocal Improvisation Games written by Jeffrey Agrell and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Teaching Improv in Your Jazz Ensemble written by Zachary B. Poulter and published by R & L Education. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Download or read book Musical Creativity Insights from Music Education Research written by Dr Oscar Odena and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a communicative tool in music therapy? This comprehensive volume offers new research on these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studio, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research.
Download or read book Thinking in Jazz written by Paul F. Berliner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 904 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark in jazz studies, Thinking in Jazz reveals as never before how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea. The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker. Thinking in Jazz overflows with musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including original transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Davis's and John Coltrane's groups. These transcriptions provide additional insight into the structure and creativity of jazz improvisation and represent a remarkable resource for jazz musicians as well as students and educators. Berliner explores the alternative ways—aural, visual, kinetic, verbal, emotional, theoretical, associative—in which these performers conceptualize their music and describes the delicate interplay of soloist and ensemble in collective improvisation. Berliner's skillful integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside of performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic, and a tradition. This unprecedented journey to the heart of the jazz tradition will fascinate and enlighten musicians, musicologists, and jazz fans alike.
Download or read book Being Music written by Mark Miller and published by University Professors Press. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improvisation is a practice of musical exploration and discovery. What we explore is our lived experience and what we discover we share with our audience. As improvisers, our creative resources include sense perception, imagination, somatic presence, and the vitality of emotional expression. In collaboration we develop relationships that serve the music and balance the priorities of self and others in the ensemble. Being Music describes the craft of improvisation as “spontaneous composition” including an awareness of form, compositional focus, theme and development, stillness and creative flow. Miller and Lande address the problem of perfectionism and offer strategies for overcoming judgmental thinking and other obstacles to creative spontaneity. Abundant written musical examples and exercises offer the reader ample opportunity to practice the principles outlined in the text. With over forty-five years of experience performing together, Miller and Lande's dialogical reflections on creativity and community offer a clear and practical guide to the creative process of improvisation for musicians of any style or genre, and at all levels of experience.
Download or read book Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching written by R. Keith Sawyer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an increasing emphasis on creativity and innovation in the twenty-first century, teachers need to be creative professionals just as students must learn to be creative. And yet, schools are institutions with many important structures and guidelines that teachers must follow. Effective creative teaching strikes a delicate balance between structure and improvisation. The authors draw on studies of jazz, theater improvisation and dance improvisation to demonstrate that the most creative performers work within similar structures and guidelines. By looking to these creative genres, the book provides practical advice for teachers who wish to become more creative professionals.
Download or read book Music Education in Your Hands written by Michael L. Mark and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music Education in Your Hands is a textbook for the introductory course in Music Education. Written for future classroom music teachers, the book provides an overview of the music education system , illuminating the many topics that music educators need to know, including technology, teaching methods, curricular evolution, legislation, and a range of societal needs from cultural diversity to evolving tastes in music. It encompasses a broad picture of the profession, and how the future of music education rests in the hands of today’s student teachers as they learn how to become advocates for music in our schools. FEATURES A balance of sound historical foundations with recent research and thinking; Coursework that is appropriate in level and length for a one semester introductory course; Actual dialogue between undergraduate music education majors and teachers, illustrating pertinent issues teachers must face; An emphasis on opportunities in the greater community beyond the walls of the school that music teachers should be familiar with; Suggested topics for activities and critical thinking for every chapter; A companion web site including student and instructor resources
