TME Tuesday: Improvisation - Just Do IT!!

I am not always comfortable improvising.

My jazz band teacher in junior high made me very nervous about making up any sort of solo and my perfectionism sealed the deal with that anxiety. My teacher would bark that it was my turn to improvise, and everything I knew about music and music theory would dribble out of my ears and I would end up crying (well, in seventh grade, I did - I found a backbone in eighth grade). This pattern of panic and loss of knowledge continued until my internship when my internship director gave me the best way of thinking about improvisation in music therapy sessions.

"Just match your music to what you see your clients do, and then sing about what is going on."    - Sheryl L. Kelly, RMT-BC

When she told me that little bit of reframed information, I felt that it made sense to me and my brain. I could do that. It wasn't rooted in perfection or following someone else's theory rules, it was rooted in my clients.

Now, I still don't like jazz improvisation, but I am able to improvise a bit more now than I did then...

Well, that's probably not true. I go into panic and anxiety when I have to sit in front of other music therapists when improvisation is part of our creative interactions. I tend to be one of those music therapists who put their heads down when a presenter is seeking participants. I would rather watch than improvise as a part of a big group of musicians.

Yesterday, I went into a classroom to do a push-in session. Since I am an educational enrichment type of therapist (rather than an IEP related service therapist), I am able to do what I want to do with my non-group schedule time. So, this year, I am going into our classrooms for students with limited communication and more involvement with their developmental symptoms to do some classroom support.

Yesterday's group was comprised of adolescents and they were working on tasks focused on function and emotional recognition. The teacher forgot that I was coming in, but I want to support what is already happening in the classroom, so that was perfect. Last week, when I did this in another classroom, the teacher stated that everyone was really calm at the end of the session. The comment I heard yesterday was, "Wow, they are really flying through these cards today." I don't know if the presence of music influenced how quickly the students finished their work, but I like to think that it did.

All I did yesterday was improvisation based on what my ID told me to do many years ago. I noticed that students were doing their regular motor patterns. I used those patterns to set my tempo and then found some chord progressions to repeat. I changed up the progressions and the keys about every seven minutes to keep students engaged. Occasionally, I would hum or scat or whistle a bit to add a melody to the chord progressions. The new sessions this week have been an interesting reminder of what music can do in the classroom to encourage learning and engagement.

So, here's what I do to encourage Sheryl's type of improvisation with other music therapists.

• Find a chord progression that you can repeat without having to think too much about it.
• Watch your clients. Are there any repeated movements that you can base your tempo on? 
• Start playing the chord progression at a steady tempo.
• Play the chord progression several times.
• Add a melody line through humming or whistling or singing nonsense syllables.
• If needed or desired, sing statements about what clients are doing in the area.
• Change the chord progression and/or key of the music occasionally to increase attention to the music. Change the tempo to encourage clients to either speed up or slow down their observable behaviors to a desirable level.

There you go. That's my formula to improvisation in sessions. I'm still looking for my comfort level for improvisation in jazz or presentation settings. I've given up that particular skill for the moment. Perhaps I will get back into playing jazz when I retire. Probably not, though.

Thanks for reading!!