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Improvisation Ms

This document provides an introductory lesson plan for teaching improvisation to 8th grade students. The plan aims to make students comfortable improvising over a I7 V7 IV7 chord progression. It involves listening exercises to identify chord changes in songs. Students will then learn three scales (Bb, Eb, F) and how to lower the 7th scale degree to create a "bluesy" sound. They will create short melodies using these scales and eventually improvise with the chord progression. The goal is to get students comfortable with improvising through focused practice of scales and chord changes.

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53 views

Improvisation Ms

This document provides an introductory lesson plan for teaching improvisation to 8th grade students. The plan aims to make students comfortable improvising over a I7 V7 IV7 chord progression. It involves listening exercises to identify chord changes in songs. Students will then learn three scales (Bb, Eb, F) and how to lower the 7th scale degree to create a "bluesy" sound. They will create short melodies using these scales and eventually improvise with the chord progression. The goal is to get students comfortable with improvising through focused practice of scales and chord changes.

Uploaded by

api-452779794
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Intro to Improvisation

8th grade class - 7 people


With improvisation, there are so many means to go about learning such a broad and
spectacular subject. I’ve debated many days on what would be the best way to go about beginning to
teach this subject to this particular class.
There are a few things to consider:
1) Which students are and are not comfortable playing by themselves in front of other
people? Especially when we take away sheet music as a factor. What accommodations
can I make for both parties?
2) What level are these students in terms of aural skills? Can they identify chord changes?
If I were to play them a short melody, could they a) sing that melody b) find that
melody on their own instrument?
3) How comfortable are they with playing their scales? And how much do they
understand about their scales? Such as, why does it matter how many sharps and flats
are in a scale? Especially for transposed instruments, do they understand their
transposition and is it something they can do on their own?
Each class is around 45 minutes, so this beginning crash course might be split into two classes
depending on how quickly the students grasp the concepts.

Objective
Students will be able to improvise over a I7 V7 IV7 chord progression.

Procedure
● Listening Exercise: identify the chord changes in the song
○ Rolling in the Deep - Adele
○ Everyone close your eyes, and when you think you hear a chord change, raise your
hand
■ This first round is an assessment, to see which students are able to hear it and
which ones are not.
■ If students are struggling to hear the changes, I’ll play it again and provide
them a hint to listen to the guitar very closely
○ Crocodile Rock - Elton John
○ Wait for when the electric piano comes in to start listening
■ For this round, we can identify them together, they don’t have to close their
eyes, so they can receive a more straightforward answer
○ Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” - Beethoven
■ This one is purposefully trickier
■ Only the first few seconds where you hear the descending 7th and hear it
resolve it back to major
○ So What - Miles Davis
○ Begin at 0:50 where the wind instruments come in
○ For the excerpt they will listen for the key change, in this case, the bridge and then
when it goes back to the home key
■ This acts as foreshadowing to maybe upcoming lessons
○ Hound Dog - Elvis Presley
○ Last excerpt, this song uses the 12 bar blues which includes the chord progression we
will be learning that day
● Scales
○ Students will need to know three scales: Bb, Eb, F
○ We’ll focus on one scale for now: Bb
■ Transposition: Clar/Trum=C, Sax=G, Flute=Bb
○ Play through the scale as is, to make the scale “bluesy,” we’re going to lower the 7th
scale degree
○ Play through the scale with the lowered seventh
○ Create a four or five note melody including the seventh
■ I’ll play an example
■ The simpler the better, it doesn’t have to be flashy
○ I’ll either have a backing track prepared or accompany them on keyboard, whatever
would be available.
○ I’ll give the students a chance to play all at once, and then ask for any volunteers who
would be willing to share their short melody
■ Using notes from the Bb7 scale
○ We will repeat this process with the next 2 scales Eb and F
■ Play through the scale as is
■ Lower the seventh
■ Play the dominant scale
■ Create a four note melody (that includes the seventh)
■ Play altogether, then share with the class
○ We will accomplish playing out short melodies with the chord changes

Assessment
Are the students able to successfully identify and play a scale with a lowered 7th? Does their melody
include the 7th? Are all the notes in their short melody correct with the associated scale?

If this were to take more than one class period, we will spend other days comparing the scales,
identifying common tones. We will continue to practice this concept and create new melodies so the
students can become more comfortable with the chord changes, and eventually progress to
improvising with the chord changes.
We may even focus on improvising to just one chord, so the students can feel more
comfortable creating on the spot. They can even pick a partner to improvise with.
The main idea is to get the students thinking about improvising and growing more
comfortable with the practice. From there, we can challenge ourselves to do more things such as
transcribing solos, learning other chord progressions or modes, applying arpeggiation.
Middle Schoolers are capable of improvising, they simply require a gateway into the artform.

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