Andrew Nicoll Scripted Lesson Plan Standard(s): ​
Students will improvise and compose music (USOE Band III Standard 2); Comparing and contrasting to other sources of knowledge (Utah Core College and Career Anchor Standard for Reading R9) Objective(s):​
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to demonstrate understanding of comparing the process of learning jazz improvisation to learning a foreign language by making a comparisons with similarities and differences of the two concepts and by being able to play simple melodies over a tune with simple chord progressions. Assessment(s): ​
Playing a lick (informal), ask for questions after reading the article (informal), “Learning to Improvise” quiz (formal) Lesson script: Teacher (T): Good morning class! Today we have an exciting aspect of music to talk about...(Proceed to the board and write the word ​
improvisation​
)...IMPROVISATION! How many of you have heard of this word before? Students (S): (¾ of the class raises their hand) T: What do you think of when you hear this word? (Proceed to the board to write down students’ responses.) S: “Making stuff up,” “Comedy improv,” “unsure of what to do in the movies” “we’ll just have to improvise” “Made up solo” T: Good! Very good! This list gives us a good sense of the word to begin our discussion today. How many of you have had any experience with playing jazz improvisation? S: (1 or 2 students raise their hands) T: Awesome! Charlie, what does improvisation mean for you in jazz? Charlie: Well, it means playing a made up solo over a jazz song. T: Yes! Improvisation in music is the ability to spontaneously compose music. In jazz, it is usually called a solo. Listen to these players improvise a jazz solo (Teacher plays various records of jazz musicians found in their disk collection. Take about one minute per excerpt, and play 2­3 records with different artists playing in different styles.) Tell me, does that seem hard, being able to play that on the spot? S: Yes. T: Many people struggle to improvise simply because they don’t understand how to learn to improvise. I have an article that I would like us to read that can shed some light on making the idea of improvisation much less intimidating. (Hand out article). Who can read for me the first paragraph of the article? S: (Reads first paragraph) T: Thank you. Can someone else please read the second paragraph? S: (Reads second paragraph) T: Excellent! Thank you! So the author presents that question we may all have right now, “How do you play jazz?” He said that there are two things that any jazz musician will say is necessary in order to play jazz. Did anyone catch those two things?” S: Um, the first one is to listen to jazz, and the second one is to memorize a lot of tunes. T: Yes! Two very important words you said, listening and memorizing. Now, how many of you have learned or are learning a second language? S: (About ⅓ raise their hands.) T: So let’s talk. What are some of the things you are doing to help you learn that language. Is it French you are learning? S: Well, I memorize vocabulary, my teacher speaks to us in French, I read in French. T: Good! What other exposure do you get to the French language? S: My teacher has us watch movies in French, I write in French. T: Yeah! See how much exposure has helped you to learn French? S: Yeah. T: Great! When a musician improvises, in a sense, they are expressing themselves by speaking the musical language. Based on what we have talked about, I would like you to get with a partner and talk about your experiences of learning a foreign language. If you don’t know a foreign language, speak with your partner about when you were learning to speak, read, and write English. That’s perfectly fine. Then, again with that same partner, try to see if there can be connections made to learning to improvise based on what we read from the article. (Allow 3­5 minutes for conversation) Alright, what did we talk about? S: (Raises his hand) My partner and I talked about how we learned to spell. We had to memorize spellings, just like the reading said that jazz players have to do memorizing. T: Excellent connection! (Writes on board) What else? S: I have a baby sister who is learning to talk. We say the same thing to her over and over again. She listens and responds, and the article said that learning jazz requires listening. T: Bingo! (Writes on board) S: I had to memorize lines when I was in a play. This reading said that jazz musicians have to memorize a lot of tunes. T: Yes they do. A tune is basically a song. They have to memorize songs like an actor has to memorize lines. Not only to they memorize tunes, but they memorize what other players have played as well. Can someone read the third paragraph of this article? S: (Reads paragraph) T: Thanks! It mentioned a word in here­­transcribing. What this means is listening to a recording of a professional and learning to play it by ear. This is one way to learn how to improvise. Let’s do some of that now, but before we go on to that, ​
does anyone have any questions about what we have talked about this far? S: So what does learning a language have to do with improvising? T: Good question. Music is related to language in a lot of ways. Language has letter characters, music has notes. Language has words which are letter combinations, music has phrases which are a combination of notes. They are connected in several ways, and as we continue to progress forward, I believe that you will continue to see a stronger connection. T: This is an improvised solo played by Miles Davis. He was a famous trumpet player. Let’s play through it together with this recording. All: (Play excerpt) T: The way that Miles knew what to play was because of this letter and number combination right here (point to the symbol D­7.) This is called a chord symbol. When Miles saw this chord symbol, he knew that these were some of the notes he could play. When the letter changed to Eb­7, he had to play different notes. Now, the article suggested learning a one or two measure “lick,” or phrase, to be able to play. What I would like for you to do is to pick your favorite “lick” that you played over the chord symbol D­7. We will have that chord sounding the whole time, and we will go around in a circle and play our lick WITHOUT LOOKING at the music. In between each of you, we will rest for one measure. ​
Does anyone have any questions about what we are doing?​
(Proceed to playing a D­minor seventh chord in a comping pattern with the right hand and with a walking bass line in the left hand.) S: (Some struggle) T: Okay, so not bad! Not bad for a first time. We’ve sounded out our new word for the first time. Now I think that with another shot we can get it. Really focus on putting your lick in the proper time and count of the measure. S: (More success) T: Good! I think you are all understanding this a lot better. ​
Does anyone have questions, comments, or frustrations with this experience? T: You can all see that, like learning a language, this is a long process, but one that you can start now. By listening, transcribing, and doing as much memorization as possible, we can all become jazz improvisers. You have learned one “word” or “lick” today with the one that you played. Now all that is left is learning some more licks, learning some scales and chords, and you will be very well set. ​
Does anyone have any final questions? T: OK. Then before you go, please fill out this quiz. All of the questions are concepts that we talked about in class. When you finish, you can hand the quiz to me and pack up your instrument. Name:____________________ Date:____________________ Score: /5 Learning to Improvise Quiz 1. The two important aspects to learning to play jazz as mentioned in the article are: a. listening and learning tunes. b. swinging and improvising. c. keeping good time and playing with consistent articulation. d. practicing and performing. 2. Writing down and playing phrases played by other professional musicians on a recording is known as _____________________________. 3. Write down one similarity between learning to improvise and learning a language. 4. Write down one item of contrast between learning to improvise and learning a language. 5. What is one thing you can begin doing in your practice today to begin learning to improvise based on the discussion and/or the article from today’s class?