Learning to Improvise

Although all children can learn to improvise, teachers are reluctant to incorporate improvisation into their instruction because they feel unprepared to teach it. Designed for elementary general music as well as middle and high school choir, this helpful resource provides hundreds of detailed teaching plans, dozens of songs, and numerous practical strategies and extensions to develop improvisation readiness and skills. The authors also provide a pathway for teachers to develop their own improvisational skills through the teaching plans and audio recordings provided. Organized into four parts based on common harmonic functions, this book focuses on developing harmonic audiation, which lies at the core of successful improvisation. There are also extensive lists of popular music and links to recordings for each harmonic function so that teachers can incorporate popular music into their teaching, bridging the gap between classroom music and the music that students encounter in their daily lives.