In my last blog I wrote of my plans to implement some different techniques in teaching improvisation to one of my jazz ensembles. The ensemble I used was my Jazz Lab group. This group is a non-auditioned group that is for students who didn't get into the jazz band or who do not play a traditional jazz band instrument, but still wish to learn and play jazz music.
For warm-ups I had every student take a four bar improv solo over blues changes. But instead of having them use a blues scale, I made them pick one note out of that scale. It was intended to get them over their fear of soloing, which it did. But what I really liked was the students who were comfortable about trying solos really had to work on making their one note creative and interesting. In other words, they had to put all of their focus on rhythms, spacing and phrasing rather than melodic and pitch content.
This was a great exercise and I plan on using this and other techniques from the article "How to Make Your Musical Improvisation More Interesting" with my jazz band in the next couple of weeks. I will keep you posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment