Bob Keller
19 December 2011
I use Impro-Visor in teaching a class on jazz improvisation
(Music 84 at Harvey Mudd College). A sample syllabus is
found here. Harvey Mudd College does not offer a music
major, but some students minor in music. The students generally excel in
mathematics, engineering, and the sciences, and music seems to go along with
these skills to a great degree.
I give students
assignments of writing out solos for one or two choruses of a tune that we
happen to be studying that semester. For reasons I state elsewhere, I think
this a better exercise than transcribing another personŐs solo, regardless of
how famous. Here are the steps:
1. I give a demonstration of how to use Impro-Visor during the class.
2. The assignment is issued, usually a week
before it is due. Normally I email, or let the students
download, a leadsheet with chords, but no melody. I
typically provide versions for concert treble clef, bass clef, Bb, and Eb transpositions.
3. Students email their assignments to me
prior to class (by attaching Impro-Visor leadsheets, which are just text files). Ideally each
student can also play his/her solo, although I have tended to be not so strict
on this. It is easy to write beyond oneŐs means.
4. Off-line, I create a composite leadsheet with each studentŐs solo being one chorus. I
label the choruses with their first names, so that I can find any studentŐs
solo easily in Impro-Visor, as those names show up as
chorus tabs in the leadsheet window. This is pretty
easy to do. I open two windows, one with an individualŐs leadsheet
and the other with the composite, to which I add chorus tabs as I go. The
trickiest part is when students write their solos for transposing instruments.
Then I have to use Impro-VisorŐs transposition
facility to bring the solo back to concert pitch, which takes a half-minute or
so extra.
5. During class, we play the composite and
watch it being played in Impro-Visor using an LCD
projector.
6. During class, I ask the students to
critique each otherŐs work, and I add my remarks. Sometimes we stop the
playback at a specific point for discussion, or return that point later.
It is not possible
to provide a control, as if this were a scientific experiment, to objectively
test the validity of my approach. The class makeup is different each time and I
canŐt have the same student both do the assignments and not do them. However, I
have found subjectively over the years that students learn to play jazz better
having gone through these exercises than they did before I started using them.
My class features
a final performance, in which each student improvises in at least one small
combo. We are usually studying tunes from a single composer, using with music
selected from an Aebersold or Hal Leonard play-along
book. Often the student has no prior jazz experience. In some cases, a more
advanced student may play in three or four combos. The combos are decided
toward the end of the course, after everyone has had a chance to work on some
tunes and decide which are most suitable for their respective levels.
Below, I give
examples of composites from various assignments. You can compare the variety of
artistry, creativity, proficiency and jazz knowledge of the students. In the
cases where more than one assignment appears in a given semester, hopefully you
can detect improvement, although the second solo is usually on a more difficult
piece. Each page consist of images of the solos, a MIDI file so that you can
hear them, and the Impro-Visor leadsheet
file, in case you want to experiment with that.
It takes quite a bit
of work to create one of these composite web pages, so I will be adding to them
as I get time.
Impro-Visor uses optional note head coloration
to give visual feedback: Black = chord tone; Green = color tone (sonorous with
chord); Blue = approach tone (chromatic step away from chord or color tone);
Red = none of the above (may be a scale tone, or just totally outside). As you
listen to the solos, see if the inharmonious sounds correspond to ones with red
color.
á
Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues Are (by Thelonious Monk, Spring 2007)
á
Nutty (by Thelonious Monk, Spring 2007)
á
Manteca (bridge section only, by Dizzy
Gillespie, Fall 2007)
á
MomentŐs Notice (by John Coltrane, Fall 2008)
á
Song for Strayhorn
(by Gerry Mulligan, contrafacts rather than solos,
Spring 2010)
á
Blues in the Closet (by Oscar Pettiford, Fall 2010)
Some of the issues
that I, or other students, often bring out in critiques are:
á
Reference
or quoting the melody (generally good).
á
Quoting
another tune (good, but rarely happens, because the studentsŐ knowledge of
standard jazz repertoire is usually pretty limited).
á
Good
swing feel. (Note that Impro-Visor provides the swing
to eighth-notes for swing styles. But it is still
possible for the solo not to ŇswingÓ by awkward placement of notes.)
á
Long-held
fourths over major chords and unresolving fourths
over dominants. I try to get the students to hear this mistake, before the
assignment is issued, but it doesnŐt always sink in.
á
Long-held
notes that are outside the harmony (which show up as red on the leadsheet), particularly wrong thirds and sevenths.
á
Too
much tendency to start everything on the beat.
á
Not
leaving enough breathing space.
á
Not a
good sense of sections.
á
Complexity
occurs in abrupt bursts.
á
Parts
are too busy or difficult to play. Too much virtuosity.
á
Parts
have awkward or extreme range jumps.
Sometimes a solo
might just be boring, although this tends to be less frequent than one might expect.
Sometimes it is a result of waiting until the last minute to do the assignment.
More often the solo is downright pretty.