The Dreaded Standard 3

So one of the neat perks of my job at my middle school is that Jazz Band is a class that I get to work with 5 days a week, as opposed to an extracurricular. Now, this jazz band has a really diverse group of learners as well as a diverse instrumentation. As per last year's auditions (don't forget, I'm the brand new teacher), they have a couple of trumpets, some saxes, a few flutes, etc. It's a real grab bag, which means that we are incredibly limited in what literature we play. Without tenor and bari saxes, trombones 2-4, a piano player, etc., we're not playing Basie charts. We're not even playing Victor Lopez charts. There are too many holes. It'd be like playing football with no offensive line.

So I've been preparing a lot to make this class more rooted in improvisation than anything else. The traditional jazz band format (which I don't dislike at all) is to build up a book thick with swing tunes, jazz waltzes, ballads, sambas, and other appropriate charts. But since that is not really possible for us, my vision for the close is some kind of exploded combo where we do learn jazz idioms and rhythms, and we learn how to read, but we also spend a lot of time trying to help kids find a creative, improvisatory voice, and just playing.

This is a daunting, scary task. I'm dealing with middle schoolers. Girl middle schoolers. The thought of sticking out in anyway can send them into a full on freak out. All kidding aside, middle school students are still in an awkward emotional and social stage, where taking risks and expressing themselves and being vulnerable is just not done. There's so much self-consciousness. Especially with me, their new, goofy teacher who they don't know.

And even more than that, it's....improv. We're all more at home teaching most any other standard. We're given a big bag of tricks and rehearsal techniques, rehearsal frameworks, strategies, etc. But teaching improvisation seems so nebulous and impossible. It seems like improvisation is just for the Bela Flecks and the Tito Carrillos (my jazz improv teacher in college) of this world. But I don't think that needs to be the case. I think we can and should teach students the deep musical, emotional, and interpersonal joy of spontaneous creation.

So in order to do this, I want to establish the right classroom tone and sequence it correctly. From day one, we are constantly reinforcing that this jazz band classroom is a safe classroom. Nobody gets made fun of. Everybody takes risks and stretches themselves. We all support each other. We're going to talk about Miles Davis' quote: "Don't fear mistakes. There are none." We're going to put an emphasis on taking risks, making mistakes, and learning from them. I realize that it's certainly going to be a long process, but the goal is to foster an environment where students overcome their self-consciousness and their fears of sticking out and just go for it, and where we all support each other in doing so.

But I also have an instructional sequence to work out. We can't start by turning on Aebersold tracks and saying "have at it." (Admit it, you just heard "One, Two, One Two Three Four" in your head.) They don't know any applicable theory. They don't know how to swing. They're still afraid to play and abandon themselves to music making. So we're going to start with some general improvisation games to try to loosen us all up and start to get a hang of the whole improvisation concept. We'll be doing a lot of "Yes, And" theatre type games during the first week. These type of games will lead into carefully limited improvisation games on our instruments (for example, we have a drummer who can play some pretty sick beats. He'll play a general groove for us, we'll get the bass player to play a simple Bb major ostinato, and we'll just trade fours throughout the class on anything in the Bb scale. From there, I hope to go pentatonic, because it's just so easy and fun sounding. And from there, blues scale).

This is dangerous, for me and my students. I hope they buy into it. If they do, we can have some amazing musical experiences where students are truly in the moment, truly creating, truly taking risks, and reaping the rewards. I'll keep you updated on how that goes throughout the year. Any comments, suggestions, or critiques are welcome!

Glenn