This week in Fundamentals of Western Music class at the New School, we did an in-class improvisation exercise, where students created spur-of-the-moment scores to scenes from No Country for Old Men. I did this in response to being told by a faculty evaluator that I should have more music-making during class, a suggestion I strongly agree with. Students could choose between bringing their own instruments, playing synths from my computer, or using the piano in the classroom.
Most students opted to play the piano. It’s not remotely in tune, especially in the middle octaves, but for this movie, that’s a positive thing. Some students played Ableton synths or GarageBand strings from my computer via a MIDI controller. Only a few chose to do the same using the aQWERTYon. Beginner-friendly though the aQW is, it has some major limitations for this exercise. First of all, it doesn’t allow for different note velocities or chromaticism. Also, the aQW’s browser window has to have keyboard focus, so I couldn’t fullscreen the movie clips.
A few particularly ambitious students brought their own computers with soft synths ready to go in Logic or Ableton. However, their laptop speakers were no match for the room’s sound system. Next time, I’ll bring a portable speaker for people to plug into. One student brought a Volca Keys, which she used to play hellishly distorted noise for a wild David Lynch vibe. Two others played acoustic guitar, one with a blues feel, the other with a vaguely flamenco feel. The blues completely removes the despair from the movie, making it seem like a fun adventure instead. The flamenco feel is a classic Western trope, which also felt more reassuring than the avant-garde synth noise or atonal piano that most people played.
I did not provide any guidance or guard rails for this assignment. Most students didn’t need it. They showed up with a plan, or quickly figured out an approach within a few seconds of improvising. But the less confident and experienced musicians were clearly stumbling aimlessly around, and they would definitely would have benefited from some scaffolding. Next time, I’ll offer some suggestions for those who want them: play single notes repeatedly; play block chords repeatedly; try to avoid triads in the action scenes; fill space continually; and either use steady rhythms throughout, or avoid using steady rhythms throughout.
In general, I think I’ve done a great job of devising out-of-class assignments with low floors and high ceilings. But now I need to come up with lots more in-class performance and improvisation activities that are similarly low-floored and high-ceilinged. This is urgent partially because I need to reduce the amount of standing in front of the room and talking that I’m doing. But also, by making these things mandatory and graded, I’m going to create more of an incentive for attendance (which is, shall we say, a growth area for some New School students). As with the homework assignments, I won’t be grading these things for their quality, but instead, based on whether the student put in good-faith effort. Here are some activities I’m thinking of:
- When we do drum patterns, I’ll divide up the students into kick, snare and hi-hat groups, and have them drum or clap their respective parts.
- When we do intervals and scales, everyone will sing them together over a tanpura drone.
- When we do chords, I’ll split the class into groups and give each one a note: root, third, fifth, seventh. We’ll then sing the chords over the drone, rotating the groups through the different chord tones.
- For everything, I’ll do lots more collective improvisation exercises.
I’m realizing that I was hesitant to dive into this kind of thing because I was feeling out a new group of students in a new institution. But now that I’ve felt them out, and a representative of the institution has encouraged me to go for it, I’m feeling confident about turning into that guy who makes everyone sing and improvise all the time. And there’s a few weeks left to do more singing and improvising with the current classes too.
This is great. I think I would have benefitted beyond my ability to imagine to have had such an experience at school.
I like this assignment because my grandfather used to play piano for silent movies a hundred years ago or so. He had some stock things he’d do for chase scenes or love scenes or whatever, but he pretty much had to be able to do it on the fly because sometimes he had to do it without having sen the film beforehand.
I run a digital storytelling class (http://ds106.us/) where the students get to create assignments for the course and choose which ones they want to do (http://assignments.ds106.us/). Would that concept work in your course?