Many people are looking for the door to the treasury of music in the wrong places. They obstinately keep hammering on the locked gates and pass right by the open doors that are accessible to everybody

- Zoltan Kodaly

Improvisation games: notes for teachers

All rhythm and pitch games can be used as a resource for improvisation. 

Always improvise in the new key when you are learning a different scale.  (Try modes too!)

Also try:

• performing a sound track to someone's mime or a piece of film with the sound turned off - use voice, your body or instruments
• use a poem or a picture for inspiration - or even a shopping list
• start with a simple phrase, and produce different versions:
  • high and low versions
  • fast and slow versions
  • staccato and legato versions
• when this is easy, try variations
  • major, minor or modal variations
  • repeat the phrase starting on notes of an ascending or descending scale
  • produce a 'happy', 'angry' or 'sad' variation on the theme
  • upside down or reversed versions
  • transpose the theme

This paper, produced as part of the CT ABRSM course in June 2006, looks at ideas for teaching improvisation and composition in more detail.

Resources

• Jazz Piano from Scratch, Charles Beale
•  Play piano by ear, Simon Schott
• Do It Improvisation Vols I and II, J. Froseth
• Cakewalk Music Creator