Improvisation & Performer Creativity

This lesson is part of the Style & Compositional Techniques category.

Objectives

• Students will be familiar with improvisation in historical contexts, including baroque ornamentation, basso continuo, and cadenza.
• Students will be familiar with various types of aleatoric music.
• Students will be familiar with jazz improvisation and jams.

Resources

Readings

• Music Theory Online:
  • Hannaford, "Subjective (Re)positioning in Musical Improvisation: Analyzing the Work of Five Female Improvisers"

Class Activities

• Discussion and exploration of different elements of classical ornamentation, and discussion of improvisational performance practice in Baroque and Classical music
• Discussion of figured bass and basso continuo
• Discussion of improvisational performance practice in jazz and popular music
• Discussion of twentieth-century aleatoric music
• Guided in-class improvisation in one of more above styles

Assignments

• Identification and analysis of different types of Baroque and Classical ornamentation in written and recorded music
• Written realization of figured bass
• Improvisation over a rhythm section playing changes
• Transcription and analysis of a short improvised solo
• Composition of a short piece which uses an aspect of indeterminacy