Why Improvise? Help Me Improvise!
Clinician(s): Dillon Walters
When babies learn to speak, they will listen (a lot), babble, speak some words, put some words together to form sentences, then improvise sentences with professional speakers (adults). Hopefully, during this time they have been read to. They will slowly make the connection from words they heard to the words they see. According the Edwin Gordon’s Music Learning Theory, children learn music the same way. They listen, echo, improvise, associate musical words with solfège or rhythm syllables, then are shown what those notes look like, asked to read words they know, mix up the order (sightread), then shortly after compose those words. The clinician will provide a quick overview of Edwin Gordon’s Music Learning Theory and will provide practical improvisation tools for teachers and students.
Session Handouts