One of the most interesting but also petrifying classes we've had this semester had to be our class with Dr. Watson. We learned about improvisation, especially in a jazz context, and it was a crazy time. As background, I am not a jazz musician at all. In fact, improvisation has always scared me! I'm a big 'stick-to-the-rules' type person, and I like to follow music not lead it.
Needless to say, Dr. Watson coming in to teach us about improvisation was definitely a time when I felt the least comfortable, and the most vulnerable. But thinking about it now, music and art in general really should make us feel vulnerable. Music is such a personal thing we choose to share with other people, if we didn't feel vulnerable sharing our music, wouldn't that mean that it doesn't really mean anything to us on a personal level? Regardless, I'm really glad that Dr. Watson slowly eased us into improv. I think of all my improvisation background, it was a lot of getting thrown into the middle of things and "pick a note, any note!" type of situation. I like how we first eased into it by analyzing different jazz music. I think by listening we were slowly integrating ourself into what we were going to be playing. Just having a sense of "jazz tunes" in my ear when we moved on to improvisation really helped guide my own improv, especially since before I had just been going in cold. I like how we slowly moved into improv by starting with only 1 or 2 notes and slowly adding in more. We also did a lot of call and response that was very helpful. As I mentioned above, it was nice to have some sort of base to start with when asked to improv. Later on in the class, we went around in a circle each having a chance to do some improv over a track. Had we started with that I would have been absolutely petrified! However, the slow ease of listening first, starting with few notes, and then adding more really eased some of my nerves and actually allowed me to have fun. I think often musicians forget that music is supposed to be fun. We worry a lot about tendency tones, cadences, tempo, rhythm, etc. but I think that things like improv remind us that in the end, all music is music. We don't always have to worry about all these things that classical musicians learn and sometimes we just have to let loose and have fun, something that until recently, I didn't notice had happened. I felt like music had become a chore and it was no longer fun. This workshop really perked me up, and was a definite pick me up!
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Carole PalattaoI'm an 18 year old studying classical voice at Western University. I'm also a hardcore mental health advocate, and I do creative writing on the side for fun!
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