The Red Thread: 12 Bar Blues: Part 3

Lesson 3: Improvisation

We’ll Need Both Syntax and Vocabulary

Lesson 1 of this series was all about aurally identifying the harmonic form of the familiar 12 Bar Blues, and having an authentic aesthetic experience grooving within its framework, utilizing a play-along backing track sourced from a contemporary and very popular cross-genre hit. In Lessons 2-A and 2-B, we explored more genre-bending elements present not only in this particular backing track, but in all of popular modern music, and further tracked the pervasive nature of the 12 Bar Blues through Americana musical legacy. Now, it is time to turn over compositional and improvisational agency to our students. The 12 bar blues exists as a sandbox for improvisation, a template for individual creativity, and this particular musicality is the most important crossroads between the Blues tradition and elemental music and movement teaching.

Improvisation is about using your past experiences and immediate attentiveness to the sounds around you and the sounds you make to create music in real time. It is an act that is a summative expression of the technical, emotional, and communicative abilities of that individual, and is the hallmark of all of the Americana styles that we have discussed following the 12 Bar Blues. Improvisation often functions as an exercise in creative exploration, so with too many constraints, the improviser is limited and less able to explore. With too little structure, the improviser may become lost, unable to conceive of a place in which to begin or end, which suggests that improvising within musical structure offers a guiding pathway for the developing improviser to harness their experience and attentiveness and manipulate their musical element (their instrument, voice, or body) expressively in real time. Perhaps that is why 12 Bar Blues are where secondary jazz ensembles begin when teaching improvisation - it is a guided path. In a general music setting, more guidance and training than just explaining chord tones and blues scales should be scaffolded, because just with any other skill set in the canon of musical mastery, improvisation is a technique that needs structure and fostering, and a “safe” environment to explore in. The establishing of a safe and supportive environment – an "improvisation culture" – where improvisation, spontaneity, and interaction are nurtured throughout the music curriculum is the crucial first step. That culture can be built by introducing improvisation and solo-craft as group exercises anchored on social and social-constructivist strategies that allow all students to have the safety of a set of rules and guidelines, and the freedom of exploration.

Build the Toolbox

Fully formed improvisations, complete with diatonic mastery, phrasing, and timing are not random creations that spring from the wells of sudden inspiration. A well-crafted solo is a culmination of skills that can and should be taught in the same scaffolding increments as any other musical accomplishment. Providing students with a small sandbox of rules and guidelines in the early exploration phases leads to a sense of accomplishment and understanding, which then can be expanded and compounded upon in increments, sustaining confidence and the sense of “I know how to do this” that leads to expressive freedom over time.

Rhythmic building blocks and speech are, again, the most accessible and constructivist approach to begin with. Ask students to create a 2-beat word chain. Since I was working on this unit in Spring, our word chains looked like:

Next, grab your poly spots, take off all the bars except tonic from your Orff instruments, and put on a tonic drone and a metronome at an easy, relaxed speed, around 60bpm. This exploration could be accomplished in a day or two by an experienced and older group, or it may be an exercise that is best returned to in increments over many days and weeks, but it should not be rushed.

Begin by directing the exercise by visually conducting with the red poly spot, which will represent do, or the tonic. In time to the metronome, and over the drone, step on the poly spot in half notes, which will each contain one iteration of a chosen building blocks chant. Experiment with conducting these patterns one at a time (trading out each of the building block chants to experiment with how the rhythms feel), alternating with even spaces of rest and play, creating 8 and 12 bar figures that incorporate rest and play, and have fun with long periods of rest, followed by less-expected entranced of the played figure. Silence is an under-appreciated and ill-defined tool that can be added into the sandbox immediately, and is a powerful component of masterful solos. Best to teach them about it right at the beginning.

Next, add in the blue poly spot, representing sol, and have the students set that pitch up on their instruments. Be sure to space the poly spots apart to represent the distance of do and sol on their instruments - we will be filling that space in later. (Note: as you set up these and other poly spots, they should be mirrored to the instruments that your students are sitting behind. So, while their scale is being built left to right, the poly spots will be assembled in ascending order right to left.) Now, alternate between do and sol, using the same rhythmic speech to pace the exercise. I lead this exercise over 12 bars, not-so-subtly bounding the length of each improvisation to fit within a single progression of 12 Bar Blues. Stepping between the two pitches, the students are now playing in time, in tone, on a two-pitch composition that is visually represented in front of them. This is when the first round of student conductors get to try out leading the improvisation. Have them experiment with do, sol, and silence by directing their peers within that same 12 Bar timeframe. They can change the rhythmic speech pattern, or expand it, and manipulate the elements to their hearts content.

This is the point that I introduce the first rules in diatonic phrasing. Do is “home,” and an improvised solo is a journey. It tells a story, and our job as the musicians is to communicate that story. When we take a trip or go on a journey, it always begins at home. Then we leave home and travel, and at the end of the story we return back home. Again, giving them easy, social-constructivist anchors and rules in the beginning of the exploration is both an anchor and a set of wings. In these beginning stages, constricting their template and focusing on mastery of the most basic and boiled-down techniques gives them context and confidence. Will these rules always apply? No, of course not. In fact, students will naturally start branching out, experimenting, and “breaking the rules” as they gain understanding and their creativity gains confidence. But as the old adage goes, “you must know the rules in order to break them,” and teaching them guidelines right up front gives them a secure place to start.

After several rounds and experiments with student conductors working with do and sol, it is time to add in mi, which will be placed right in the middle of do and sol, with space left in between the three poly spots, just as there in a space between the 3 bars now on the instruments. On an interesting color theory connection, we now have the three primary colors outlining the triad. The story-building continues with the introduction of mi. We start and begin our travels at home, the most important note, and now sol is our second-most-important note. Think of it as our bus stop or the airport. In order to take any kind of trip, we begin at home, we leave home, and then we need to make it to the place that will transport us to our destinations. From the bus stop, we can travel to other places, like mi (and soon other tones), but we also need to take that bus back home, so before we wrap up our solo, we need to visit the bus stop and then head finally for home. We just taught them in easy-to-understand-terms a V-I cadence.

Next add in high do, and allow those student conductors to continue to explore and experiment with the sonic combinations that they create. The next additions are re (orange poly spot), and la (purple poly spot). Interestingly, now that we are venturing to secondary tones to the triad, so too are we introducing secondary colors! The rules about our story remain the same. Begin at home (do), travel to the bus stop (sol), then go on your adventure through the tones available. When it’s time to come home, take the bus back (sol), and then finally return home (do). One of my favorite organic discoveries that inevitable happen once re is in the mix is students figuring out mi-re-do, and asking if that can be an ending. Yes, of course, but that means that you took a walk home on your way back from the bus stop.

**The credit for using polyspots to represent the pentatonic or hexatonic scale, and using them to craft student-led composition activities belongs to Matthew Stensrud. I have learned this avenue of composition and improvisation from him across several workshops and Conference sessions, and the technique has changed my approach to composition and student-agency in the process immensely. I highly recommend looking up Matthew for an even deeper and more comprehensive dive into the the myriad of creative pedagogy he has created for our students.

Now the entire pentatonic scale is on the board, and it is time to again increase the size of the sandbox and introduce more freedom. Now, the student conductors have the option to do away with the rhythmic building blocks and experiment with quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, and whole notes. I ask careful guiding questions here, like “How would you represent shorter, faster notes in your feet?” and “How can we create a note that stretches across four whole beats?” The students will naturally start supplementing their conducting to represent things like subdivisions and tremelos and even dynamic contrast. I only intervene if a student needs help communicating or to create clarity or consensus - they are developing a language and and improvisational culture, and it is not my job to dictate my own preconceptions onto their creations. This is also a great moment to introduce the idea of Q&A phrasing in a composition. How does a question sound when you ask your neighbor what they had for lunch, or what they are doing this weekend? It has an upward inflection. Which tones would be a good place to land on to ask a question musically, and how would that tone need to be approached? From below, we could land on mi or sol or high do. How does an answer sound? It moves down, it sounds final, and sounds like it belongs to the question. We would play that by mimicking the gesture of the question, but turning the phrase downward at the end, probably landing on sol or low do. This little detail is immensely fun to experiment with, and can be broken out into partners or small groups, and is a great place to take some time notating Q&A solos (either color-coded or on the staff, whichever is more accessible for your students). This is further exploring a deeply entrenched Blues tradition - call and response.

We can even experiment with constructing chords. With two student conductors, give them formulas to create a variety of open fifth chords (each student takes the root or the fifth) and let them construct a progression. They will naturally use their tremelo conducting to stretch out the tones and some incredibly beautiful creations (and a whole lot of aesthetic wonder and joy) results.

From here, the rules can be relaxed, the training wheels come off, and the students have had lots of practice successfully manipulating improvisational musical decisions in time, in tone, with rhythmic phrasing, and in a narrative quality. All of these tools are at their disposal now, and moving into crafting original solos over the 12 Bar Blues is a small step to individual freedom and creativity, not a vague and undefined or intimidating ask.

Justine Marie Sullivan is an elemental music and movement educator from Denver, Colorado. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Music Education, Performance, and Composition, as well as Orff-Schulwerk Certification. She splits her professional career between instructing in classroom and studio settings ranging from kindergarten through undergraduate music education courses, and in marketing/social media/design projects for local and national music education professional development and advocacy groups, including ACEMM.