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Active Listening in Music Improvisation

This document discusses creative music making through improvisation and composition. It contains quotes emphasizing that music can teach self-awareness and that creativity flows from removing obstacles. The creative process is described as a spiritual path of discovering one's authentic self. The document then lists various activities for rhythmic, vocal, and sound exploration exercises that involve call-and-response, manipulating musical elements, and using voice and sound effects to describe scenarios. The activities are designed to develop improvisation and composition skills.

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344 views2 pages

Active Listening in Music Improvisation

This document discusses creative music making through improvisation and composition. It contains quotes emphasizing that music can teach self-awareness and that creativity flows from removing obstacles. The creative process is described as a spiritual path of discovering one's authentic self. The document then lists various activities for rhythmic, vocal, and sound exploration exercises that involve call-and-response, manipulating musical elements, and using voice and sound effects to describe scenarios. The activities are designed to develop improvisation and composition skills.

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  • Creative Music Making: Introduction: Introduces the course on Creative Music Making, highlighting its purpose to explore improvisation and composition.
  • Activities: Details the musical activities designed to facilitate improvisation, including rhythmic exercises and vocal chants.
  • Sound Effects: Explains how sound effects are used in storytelling through music and movement exercises.

Creative

Music Making: Improvisation and Composition


MUSED 341, fall 2015

In my own life, music taught me to listen, not just to sound but to who I am
(Nachmanovitch, Free Play, 1990, p. 11).

the work of creativity is not a matter of making the material come, but of
unblocking the obstacles to its natural flow (p. 10).

The creative process is a spiritual path. This adventure is about us, about the deep
self, the composer in all of us, about originality, meaning not that which is all new,
but that which is fully and originally ourselves (p. 13).

Activities
Ideas were gathered from a number of sources: workshop by Mary Cohen, ISIM
Conference at UM, December 2010; workshop by Maud Hickey and Betty Anne
Younker in a workshop: Just Compose! A Structure for Teaching Music Composition to
Teachers and Students, Michigan State University, October 2011; Getting Started with
Vocal Improvisation by Patrice Madura, The Rhinoceros in the Classroom, R. Murray
Shafer (1975); Pauline Oliveros book Deep Listening
Rhythmic

1. Counting Game (if two people say the next number together, the group starts
again). Close eyes.

2. Pass the clap (and its energy).

3. Say as dramatically as possible the name of the person to your right.

4. Create an ostinato with your name (rhythmic or melodic with body motion)
and add it to group sound. Build up and then drop out until one person is left.
5. Students are organized in A/B pairs in a circle. Student A sings a phrase (or plays
a rhythm) and B finishes it, continuing on to the next pair in the circle etc.

Vocal
1. From Deep Listening, by P. Oliveros, Sonic Tonic (1992), p. 47
(what sound(s) and color or combination is most beneficial for a particular
person. Beneficial means that which produces a feeling of well-being in the
person.

2. Throw/bounce ball back and forth with sound effects; match the sound with
the motion. Receiver can be dramatic.
3. Vocalize with the name of the person on your right.
4. The Telephone Game: Students stand in circle. One student creates either a
spoken or sung phrase; Moving around the circle in clockwise motion, have each
student manipulate one musical element of the previous phrase; At the end of the
circle, compare the original phrase with the resulting phrase. Identify changes that
occurred and discuss them.
5. Using only your voice and non-speech sounds tell a classmate where you have
hidden a certain object.

Sound effects
A. Recall some moment that occurred yesterday. Imagine the place - What sound(s) did
you hear? Choose one sound and find something in the room to make that sound. Do it as
a group together, then in smaller groups.
Improvise on the sound of rain. Then improvise on the feeling of rain.
[Link] your voice (solo or group), describe the sound a shovel makes (a) in clay (b) in
gravel (c) in sand (d) in snow
C. Give a card with a theme on it, e.g. rainstorm. Have students improvise around it. The
same activity can be done using an art work or a poem.
D. Create a musical soundscape around a story. Teacher analyzes the story and imagines
how music can enhance the telling of the story or tell the story through sound.

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