In this series, I will present parts of my dissertation, ‘What strategies, activities and methods would help develop the teaching of music improvisation in UK secondary school education?’. I aim to give you insight into my improvisation research by informally presenting my findings, opinions and thoughts. It may start a discussion of the justifications, merits, and advocations for music improvisation or completely put you off and double down on why improvisation should be left out of music education. Either way, I believe it’s a meaningful conversation.

Results from Interviews

Background

For the second part of the results, I interviewed four participants. All interviews were conducted face-to-face and provided opportunities for participants to express their thoughts and opinions verbally, through instruments (mainly piano, though one brought a saxophone), or through demonstrating strategies, activities, and methods with me.

Each participant’s role in current music improvisation development and advocacy is divergent and offers different perspectives.

ID ‘A’ is appointed as the International Chair in Improvisation, former Head of Jazz at a London Conservatoire, and member of the Association of European Conservatories.

ID ‘B’ is a prominent jazz bandleader, educator, and performer with over 30 years of experience, having performed with many influential musicians. They also wrote a show to introduce jazz music and improvisation to primary school children called ‘Molly and the Owl’.

ID ‘C’ is an educator, broadcaster, and host of a podcast about music education that has been shortlisted for many awards. They also use improvisation as part of their teaching practice.

ID ‘D’ is an animateur of music, a broadcaster, TV presenter, bandleader and restauranteur. Throughout their career, they promoted improvisation through keynote speeches, TV shows and as an artist.

All interviewees cited a lack of opportunities to learn music improvisation in their curriculum secondary music lessons, with ‘B’ having curriculum music lessons up until uppper school (following a three schools system, popular in the 1980’s). An ‘O Level’ music was not an option for him.

ID A was trained as a Western classical French Horn player and learned to improvise before their further education. ID C’s music education came from the Anglican church, cathedral choirs and brass bands. ‘D’ comes from a similar background, orchestral, eventually taking up the Saxophone and learning ‘formally’ i.e. stave notation. The relationship with the saxophone developed into an extension of musical identity, where she felt ‘it was my voice, as opposed to all of the other instruments I played’.

Opportunities to develop improvisation skills happened out of school, learning alone or with little assistance from music departments or teachers. There were transformative moments when discovering how to improvise, showing an inclination for self-discovery and having an innate ability to improvise; in ID B’s case, he had a profound experience which shaped his values as a teacher of improvisation. Their transformative moment occurred after discovering how chord symbols work in notation (Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat). ‘I realised that if I could figure out how to play these chords, find a system, a code, then I could be free (expressive) in the music, and I could improvise an accompaniment.’

This is comparable with ‘D’ who, after spending time learning the basics of musicianship and theory, had a realisation when they started to improvise without the need for reading music, using their ‘ears’ (an expression used to identify ideas gained from musical imagination and aural skills), helping ‘D’ express the emotions she felt at the time, something that was implied as missing from the music she had learned previously, thus beginning a reflective journey to go beyond the boundaries of her music education.

Despite a similar affirmation, the piano teacher of ‘B’ did not share this and was dismissive: “We don’t deal with this rubbish here!” (improvisation over Jazz standards) And then she just literally, like, just chucked it (the Jazz standards book) away. Literally threw it away, you know, on the floor. So I was like, wow!?’

ID B’s negative experience shaped his teaching ethos. It profoundly impacted how he supports students with their self-expression, as evidenced by his determination not to allow the teacher’s dismissal of his discovery of improvisation to affect student’s discoveries.   

‘D, on the other hand, had a more supportive teacher who encouraged her to develop creativity by modelling, supporting, and offering advice on developing improvisation skills; a crucial moment came in the lesson when D learned to improvise over the Jazz standard, ‘Stormy Weather’.

Other early experiences were not so obstructive. ID C discovered his transformative moment by being put on the spot to solo in a big band performance despite never improvising up to that point. It positively affirmed his relationship with improvisation, discovering the excitement of improvising.

All interviewees’ experiences of developing improvisation skills varied during Higher Education, except for ‘D’ who did not study music during her undergraduate education. ID A and B studied at Conservatoire, with A’s connections to future influential jazz musicians evident in his development to his status as a musician and educator. However, his development came from working with and learning from experienced and established jazz musicians outside of the educational environment. There also were the beginnings of a split music education, where all improvisation learning takes place outside their formal education.

Definition

Definitions of improvisation varied throughout the interviews, with the interviewees opening up about their own experiences and beliefs. References to the relationship between the self and music theory were sparse but focused on the comparison to genre vernacular, a cognitive approach, and composition, with this poignant quote attributed to Lionel Grigson:’ Improvisation is composition without the benefit of hindsight.’ Genre and learning by ear were also included.  

All responses expanded upon the Model Music Curriculum’s definition, offering insight into each interviewee’s relationship with improvisation and rationalising a frustration with the MMC’s definition of improvisation. Though ID A adds this caveat, ‘implicit in our experience is experience. And much of our experience as improvisers is in our strategic choices we make in terms of practice and preparation, before we improvise with other people’.   

These ‘strategic choices’, improvisational practice and preparation, could relate to composition, ID B and C mention this, with the former stating, ‘the things which affect composition effects improvisations, the things that we would agree make a good composition also relate to the improvisation.’   

Genre, Non-Genre or Both  

References to the genre were often associated with blues (blues scale, 12-bar blues, etc.) and jazz, with genre being highlighted as necessary when teaching improvisation in secondary music. ID C argued that blues is ubiquitous with pop and rock music phrasing and melodicism; therefore, it is easy for students to engage with improvisation as they are already aware of it. ID A references the Jazz standard for ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’ for GCSE students to help them understand chord tones (intervals), cadential harmony and Tierce de Picardie.  

ID C agreed with genre’s importance in improvisation. However, he stated that teachers should wait to introduce it so as not to confuse students and take anything away from the learning process. ID A and B agreed that ignoring genre in improvisation will be problematic later on due to musicianship skills needing to be embedded enough for memory recall and would be confusing if a teacher were to engage with a fusion of genres. ID A’s frustration with the assumption that ‘anything goes’ when it comes to teaching improvisation or a chaotic, unplanned and ‘on the spot’ approach to teaching ‘messes up the learning process’ adding, ‘If we do that with kids that anything goes, the music will sound chaotic.’   

Reference of genre material from an education standpoint highlighted Jazz and the American Songbook, but the focus on fundamentals jazz pedagogy was underlined through the ‘teaching and learning principles of learning by ear and through the body and through the voice and the principles of memory and improvisation, harmonic and rhythmic literacy.’ (ID A)

ID A’s reference to ‘Genre Wars’ i.e. the argument for not teaching genre due to its’ ‘exclusive and elitist’ connotations and diversifying music to be about ‘less genre’ is unethical. He argues that ‘They’ (those against) ‘haven’t actually evaluated the outcomes of different strategies to improvisation’ that other disciplines would not debate this and ‘its amazingly unethical for those people to pontificate about that, without knowing the strategies, what strategies are, and what how the outcomes are occurring, and then have a go anyways’.

His view is not dismissive of people accessing Conservatoire through genre-associated improvisation study and the importance of knowing stylistic and musical nuances. For the sake of improvisational teaching accuracy and authenticity, ID C recalls a memory when covering Rag Desh for his GCSE class but not being in a position to confidently say to his students if it was a good improvisation, stressing that teachers need to be in control of improvisation assessment, ‘A teacher who doesn’t know anything about blues or jazz trying to teach blues scale, and I’ve seen distinguished musicians demonstrating a blues improv, it’s just horrendous and the kids model it on that and they play something that’s awful, un-bluesy and has missed all useful styles.’

ID D believes that genre can be implied through the backing of improvisation, ‘I’ll say, give me some Afro Beat. The scale that we’re we’re improvising is exactly the same (as other genres), but all I’m doing is trying to get different rhythms out of you’, continuing with, ‘if I want them to now focus on their feeling, we’ll play something like a ballad….the genre will help them bring out the different styles, syncopation, legato, whatever it is changing (the) playing.’

Strategies, Activities & Methods

Strategies, activities and methods varied among the interviews and interviewees’ responses. ID C’s approach came from an instrumental jazz musician’s perspective, a non-generalist approach that specifically wants to learn jazz improvisation through a jazz musician’s transcription, exploration, and performance approach. 

His approach also uses composition, Blues music, and encouragement to break down improvisation’s intimidation factor: ‘I find giving them pointers, less stylistic pointers is useful’ by choosing exemplars that demonstrate accessible models in improvisation. Listening is crucial to ID C’s rationale for learning improvisation.

ID B’s approach focuses on individual piano lessons rooted in melodic and harmonic activities. This allows space for students to explore, make mistakes, and learn from his exemplars. He also uses creative workshops (at primary school level), using his project ‘Olly and the Owl’ to encourage jazz listening skills and instrumental improvisation.

ID A’s strategy is based on a neurological study, engaging with the ‘left’ and ‘right’ sides of the brain to explain why people find improvisation challenging to learn (perhaps teach?) and suffer from cognitive overload: ‘If you talk about improvising, if you provide visual symbols for improvising, certainly with words and numbers, rather than shapes, of if there not metaphors, then you’re going to make it much harder to improvise, and you have to undergo a translation from the left brain cognitive analytical to the synthetic cross domain. The left brain can only work in one domain at a time, whereas the right where you can go multiple domains, more or less simultaneously’.

ID D’s method works with a similar ethos, starting with a symbolic action of getting students to remove music stands in an ensemble rehearsal; she coaxes the musicians to reveal their inner musical voice not through musicianship skills but through careful scaffolding of emotional support and encouragement to rid themselves of inhibitions. D models this by demonstrating her sound is not perfect, ‘I play with a metal of mouthpiece on my saxophone, and it’s a squeaky mouthpiece that squeaks all the time. And I’ve learned just to know that that is part of my sound’. She goes on to explain further, describing a holistic master student model where students are supported in improvising via prompting the music based on latent skill, ‘it’s almost like somebody revealing their inner self, revealing their inner thoughts, and you have to, you have to treat it with respect, and you have to treat it softly’. Her band supports the students, who vamp a groove or simple chord progression for as long as the improviser needs, taking turns to solo.

Learning Outcomes 

For these results, successes and failures are defined for strategies, activities and methods, playing experiences, teaching and attitudes, and philosophies regarding improvisation in secondary schools.   

Participants’ experiences of improvisation in secondary had mixed results. ID C’s early success with his transformative experience mentioned before gave him a positive grounding to continue with it in his teaching career, but he expressed a lack of confidence when comparing his skills to ‘people who’ve dedicated their lives to doing it’ and emphasised with fellow teachers who lack the experience to teach it to secondary students confidently. Confidence is mentioned again for good modelling of improvisation, as is to be aware of one’s skill as an improviser regarding grading and quality. Success represents the quality of improvisation as a model vs. the failure of quality and poor practice modelling for students.

ID A framed successes and failures from a pedagogical perspective, failure by not creating a reliable method of teaching improvisation. His tenet is that ‘improvising requires some things to have been learnt previously, to be in the present.’ he underlines difficulties when expected to improvise on the spot and lack of ‘informed discussion’ on improvisation’s ‘multi-layered set of phenomena’.  

Politically, funding for PGCE Music bursaries was omitted from the Department of Education Initial Teacher Training (GOV.co.uk 2022). This represents a failure in getting music graduates, let alone jazz graduates into teaching to help promote and develop improvisation in secondary schools (though this may change under a new DoE). The Jazz In Education organisation mooted a potential model for improvisation in secondary. Aimed at the key policymakers who can influence national curriculum to ‘create some momentum around the discussion about what’s really necessary to enhance music education in this country.’ (ID A) by acting as a ‘well-meaning catalyst’ by advocating for a jazz specialist in a music department (Ibid) and ‘inform decision making policymaking strategy about music education in the UK to enhance it.’ (ID A and C). ID D mentions the issues around assessing improvisation, specifically how to create criteria for evaluating, citing an example of an improvisation playing outside ‘the changes’ and the difficulties of grading it, despite this type of solo heard at prestigious music venues such as Ronnie Scott’s.

ID B’s view stems from a peripatetic standpoint, with an example of his student connecting and identity with improvisation. When describing a student’s experience with learning improvisation, the student was technically advanced but could not overcome their inhibitions towards improvisation and how it made them feel. He also felt that music teachers would view improvisation as ‘a bit of fun at the end of the lesson, it’s just a bit of a tool’, questioning how teachers plan the teaching of improvisation in lessons long term, lack of pedagogical development, ‘even 20-30 years ago, when I was studying there was this ‘we need to bring improvisation in the classroom’. ID B values the legitimacy of improvisation’s value in education ‘as an art form in its own right’ and music education’s indoctrination on students that music must be played as written regarding exam boards: ‘There’s one recently who, one of the exam pieces I was teaching, they said “I think the ending was how much better if we did this” and I said “well, do it! Why not?” (they said) “because I’m allowed to”, “who’s telling you that you’re not allowed to do it?”, “well its just I’m suppose to do it” (play the piece as written)’.

Benefits

The benefits of music improvisation to secondary education and what secondary education can teach educators from a jazz background are symbiotic. Jazz educators can impart improvisation pedagogy and, by proxy, improvisation skills to secondary education, with secondary imparting lesson and curriculum organisation skills to jazz educators (ID A and C). Improvisation was also credited with helping understand classical music, using an ‘improviser’s mind’ to analyse and explore pieces in greater detail and further develop an understanding of the composer’s intention. (ID A and B).

‘B’ created another transformative moment when realising his disconnection with classical music was related to how he was taught improvisation was also mentioned to benefit confidence, identity and self-expression (‘C’), with the former referring to having enough ‘vocabulary’ (analogy for improvisation knowledge in a given style) to cope with the unexpected at his job interview at his school.     

Improvisation, from a personal perspective, allows for musical development without relying on sight-reading, ‘It forces me to look at how I present music in a number way. I think it’s why I developed as an improviser; I want to be able to play music I couldn’t read properly.’ (‘B’)

Improvisation was also mentioned in helping to embed knowledge, by creating ‘another layer of understanding in this in the realm of sound about what has been memorised.’ (‘A’), hypothesising that music can only be learnt through ‘the realm of sound through singing and embodiment’ and strategies for learning music, key outcomes’ need to have an improvisatory element in order to be learned deeply’.

‘D’ advocates for music education to create space in the curriculum for students to learn improvisation and to develop their expressive qualities (Note: also helping to channel emotions too?). The benefits of this are that students create ownership of their music, creating a relationship with it and empowering them to regard music as boundless, ‘You’ve heard me speak about getting young people engaged in music, showing the power of the music. But, that comes from when they have that magical feeling, you know, and that doesn’t come from just sitting in a class and sort of looking at the whiteboard or listening to a piece of music. It comes from the creativity, but also giving the young people license to say, do what you want. There’s no real (wrong) notes.’