TME Tuesday: Improvisation

When I was in college, the word, "improvisation" caused my brain to freeze, all of the knowledge that I had of music leak out of my ears, and shot me into a state of high anxiety. I blame Mr. Olson, my junior high band director who would try to make me improvise solos in jazz band, stated that there were so many rules and yet, no rules at all, and didn't understand that I had no idea what I was doing in seventh grade but would ridicule me and the others when we didn't do anything really cohesive. I was not comfortable with the concept of improvisation until I went off to my internship.

At my internship, I also struggled with this concept. My internship supervisors, Sheryl, Mary, and Angie, kept encouraging me to break away from a session plan, especially with my individual clients. I was petrified of letting go of the compositions and just finding my way through music. So, I had to figure out what I was doing.

My problem? I was all mired down in the music theory of it all. Make sure you stay in the key structure. You can't use accidentals because that would clash. No parallel fourths, fifths, or octaves. Stick with the chord structures that you have already established. It has to be perfect and there is nothing acceptable that is less than perfect. My brain would lead me down the path of panic as soon as anyone uttered the word, improvisation!

My internship director, Sheryl Kelly, was the one who solved my panic problem. She told me that I had to do some improvisation. I told her that I panicked each time, and she helped me unpack the situations that led to my emotional response to the word. To end it all, she told me that I had to shape my thought process into something that would not lead me into the realm of panic and anxiety. In the end, she said to me, "Improvisation is just playing what your client is doing."

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Those words helped me relax and move into a world of improvisation that I had never been able to access before. Who cared what my theory professors or my band directors required? Improvisation is someplace where the rules don't have to apply - ESPECIALLY if you are musicking by yourself. Once I had that concept altered and settled in my brain, I had no more problems with the concept, and I improvise quite a bit in my music therapy interactions now.

Yesterday, I had planned to sing a skeleton song written by one of my former interns with a group. Once they arrived, I decided that I wanted to do something different. The song itself is primed to promote movement - we sing about moving our bones. The group did not appear to be in a movement type mode. They were uncharacteristically quiet and just seemed to be there, so I threw out my planned song and started to improvise. I based the improvisation (very loosely) on a traditional American folk song and then just started in. We ended up spending about 10 minutes identifying different bones in the body. Is this important information in the lives of my clients? Not really. Did it fulfill the expectation that my facility has for my service to clients? Yep, it was definitely educational enrichment. Did everyone participate when cued? Yes, indeed. Did we practice the Latin names of our bones? Yes we did. Was that something on their IEP? No it was not because I do not provide IEP related services in the service delivery model that my administration wants. Am I okay with my role? Yes, I am, mainly because I can do things that my clients respond to in each moment of every session rather than having to do IEP things all the time.

Okay - let's get into some practical tips for learning how to improvise when you are not all that comfortable with improvisation (or when, like me, you have huge anxiety associated with the sound of that word!!) - these are not in any order, but practice these things, and I bet you will be more comfortable improvising music:

• Practice improvisation - make improvising a part of your regular musicking practice. How do you do this? Just play. Just sing. Close your eyes and make sounds with your instrument. Get comfortable doing things that Bach and Stravinsky would abhor!! Your music? Your way!
• Practice piggybacking - take a familiar melody and change the words to reflect things that are happening around you. All of the accompaniment and melodic structure are there for you - all you have to do is change the lyrics. I do this often when I am people watching - mostly in my head, but there are times when I feel comfortable singing what I see - I do this with my clients in music therapy ALL the time!
• Set up a chord progression. Do you have a comfortable chord progression? For me, it is the 12-bar blues. I love that chord progression. If I have to improvise something, I tend to go straight to that progression because it is ingrained in my hands and my musical lexicon. I will start my 12-bar blues (in E major or e minor, by the way - my home key!!), and then the words just fall into a melody. I have the structure of the chords, I know where my melody line can go within that chord progression. I can easily hear notes that don't belong within the "rules" AND USE THEM ANYWAY!!
• Just go with what you feel or what your clients are doing in the moment. If you are feeling tired, start off with quiet music and then change it if you want to change your mood, or maintain your mood through playing music that supports how you are feeling. The ISO-principle works here. I would argue that this principle is more important when improvising than in any other time in the music therapy life.

So, what do you think? Is improvisation part of your music practice? I have found that my ability to improvise has had a positive effect on my composition skills, my therapeutic music experience (TME) development, my feelings about my job and profession, and on my clinical interactions with my clients. The moments that I have shared with clients who realize that the music that they are hearing is reflecting what they are doing are the reasons why I continue to be a music therapist.