This article will be in Music Teacher Association Ensemble Magazine Autumn 2025 edition, available to MTA Members:
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Hello all! I hope you have all begun the year well and have already used some improvising techniques with your students!
I offer you some tips and a sample lesson plan to get your students improvising in music and present some tips on assessing and strategies on how you can embed improvisation in your teaching.
But first, a reminder:
Improvisation is often thought of as spontaneous musical creativity, i.e. an “on the spot” exercise, but as I have mentioned in previous editions and articles, it is actually built upon a foundation of learned vocabulary, developed through practice, and carefully scaffolded by the teacher to break down into manageable chunks. It is necessary for you and your students to build a memory bank of ideas, rhythms and patterns to recall them at any moment (think of this as one’s music improv vocabulary), having the confidence and play to manipulate them in the moment. This is why students freeze when asked to improvise; they probably have nothing to draw upon!
Advice for your Students
For keyboard/Xylophone players, the pentatonic notes and major/minor are valuable for accessibility. They represent differentiation by colour and shapes and provide an almost guaranteed fail-safe to not play ‘wrong’ notes. The pentatonic scale is the safest space for initial improvisation, before moving to more challenging scales. I suggest narrowing the key range (e.g., one octave) and having students use triads/dyads for any chordal accompaniment.
But what if they hit the ‘wrong’ note?!
Paraphrasing Miles Davis here, there is no such thing as ‘wrong’ notes in improvisation. If your students were to stumble across a wrong note, tell them they are but one note away from the ‘right’ note. Jazzers call these ‘passing tones’, chromatic links to notes within a scale, e.g. play a C# over a C7 chord? No problem! Move up a semitone to a D to make a lovely C9 sound or down a semitone to play the tonic.
Students may benefit from recording their improvisations by writing or recording them. This helps build their memory bank of ideas and track their progress, satisfying learning progression, demonstrating aural skills and showing understanding of the learning outcomes.
Tips for Teachers
- Start Small: You don’t need to be a jazz expert to teach improvisation. Begin with pentatonic scales/limited major and minor scales. Develop call-and-response activities to include more choices for responses.
- Be Honest: It’s ok to share that you are not the most confident improviser unless you say, ‘I’m rubbish at this kids’ in which case, best to keep it to yourself! Turn the activity into a joint learning venture and choose the model of improvisation that you feel most comfortable with.
- Use Technology or Models: Backing tracks, ostinati loops, or recorded examples help set a framework for improv. DAWs can be an excellent tool for students to experiment without being heard, and you can save progress.
- Seek CPD and Support: My research on secondary school improvisation showed that many teachers have had little to no opportunities to develop as improvisers during their musical and teacher training. Whilst jazz academics like Barry Harris or Ed Sarath offer wisdom on how musicians can develop, it caters to more experienced improvisers. Jazz in Education UK founders Pauline Black and Simon Purcell, both as influential as the former two, help those taking the first steps into teaching improvisation.
- Model Risk‑Taking: Play an imperfect improvisation, play how the ‘wrong’ notes work in an improvisation, take a well-known melody and improvise around it. Show your students that music can be manipulated into anything you want it to sound like!
Sample Lesson Plan for Teaching Improvised Melody (a Focus on Rhythm). 55-60mins
- Warm-Up: Body Call-and-Response
- Teacher uses body percussion for students to echo, turning it into a fun musical register rather than saying their names. Improvise accessible rhythmic ideas first, then move on to a selection of rhythms on the board (no more than four, scaffold the difficulty and include some known ones). Do the C&R again but have students respond with any they wish after learning them.
- Model: Use of Pentatonic Notes on the piano w. Rhythmic Templates
- Demonstrate how to use any rhythmic templates combined with the pentatonic scale. Start with two notes, then three etc. Ensure you show that you are improvising the selection of notes and recycling them at will.
- Lesson Task: Practice Improvisation
- Students go in pairs, select rhythm(s) from the worksheet/from the board, then improvise note choices over the rhythm. Build confidence by starting with two notes, then three etc. More confident students can add C and F to the scale to create modal possibilities.
- Performance
- Play a chord vamp/use a backing track. Get the pairs to play their improvisations one by one.
- Plenary
- Think Pair Share the following questions:
- Which rhythm(s) did you enjoy improvising around?
- Which combination of notes from the pentatonic scale did you enjoy using?
- What happened when you made a ‘mistake’?
- Which improvisations from the group were memorable?
- Think Pair Share the following questions:
Final Thoughts
The benefit of teaching music improvisation is that one can find ways of creating/devising through play. Anything can be improvised! Provided you believe it can. I got one of my ensemble students to improvise the opening of Vivaldi’s Winter on the flute by getting him to reorder the bars. Granted, some passages did not work, but most did, as they added to his improv vocabulary. Improvisation is trial and error, but who is to say that a particular idea won’t work in another context?
By changing our relationship with the ‘notated score’ as Tim Palmer puts it, one can view music not necessarily as a collection of dots and symbols to perform, but as an act of expression, discovery and adventure. Embrace the uncertainty, scaffold wisely, and watch your students (and perhaps yourself!) grow into confident, spontaneous musical voices.
Please do get in touch if you are interested in me running a session/programme to help your students/department develop improvisation.
Make sure to include any examples, successes or ideas using #thatmusicimprovteacher on your social media.
mwrightbass@gmail.com
LinkedIn – mwrightmusic
Mike Wright Music Education 