Music: The Role Of Improvisation In Music

Unit Questions:

What is improvisation?

Improvisation is the ability to be able to on the spot, compose a range of notes based off of the scale provided. Improvisation is most commonly used in music when the performer is performing a solo and must create a composition using the same scale as the melody played.

Improvisation also gives performers a chance to “show off” their skills as a musician and create something that has never been created before (it encourages creativity).

What are the different aspects that would help you improvise?

Improvisation is such an open concept in music, however, there are certain aspects that could help you improvise no matter what scale you are playing such as,

Make sure you are very familiar with the melody

Different cultural music has greatly developed over time and will continue to do so. Take Jazz as an example, Jazz was originally an African form of Music. Then when the slave trade period started, Jazz was moved to American. It went from Blues all the way to Rock Jazz, due to the culture change the African people had when they moved to America. As the african people changed, so did their cultural music, Jazz.

Music and improvisation change in so many different ways over time (as shown above), and I believe from my perspective, that the connection between cultures helps develop music from those of different cultures ( like when African music, Jazz, was changed from the American culture).

Reflection:

This year, our unit was all based on improvisation. We studied the different types of improvisation by analysing all the the use of improvisation used in different forms of music based of of different scales, from different cultures. We looked at the different forms of Jazz and its development over time, we also studied the African, Chinese and Indian scale. We then later were given a melody and memorized it, once that was done we had to either create an improvisation based of of the given scale.

From this unit I have learned many things such as,

How to improvise off of a Indian, African or Chinese scale.

The development of Jazz over time.

How to play the xylophone, drum and piano.

How to read and write the notes given to us.

Although I learned a lot this unit, I found this unit very difficult. This is because it was my first time ever studying Indian, Chinese and African music. It was my first time ever playing the piano and my first time ever improvising off of these scales and instruments. However I found that the more I practiced, the better I got, and by the end of the unit, I was nearly fluent in all that I found difficult.

In near the end of the unit, our final task was to create a composition based off of one of the scales we studied and create an individual improvisation. I was very lucky, I was put in a group with some very hard working talented musicians,

Karla, on piano.

Hana, group leader,