Music Creativity

Our second assignment in class this week was to create a reflection post describing at least five ways and situations for involving students in making creative choices in music.

Having already taken the Music Creativity class in the UF program, much of this seems like review, though for the sake of this assignment I will try to experiment with a least a few new ideas.

Obviously, creativity in music involves things like aesthetic decision-making.  In my private clarinet instructional setting, I utilize this technique quite frequently.  From approaching aesthetic decision making from the point of view of purely making the music more interesting (adding aspects to music that are unwritten), to having my students create pictures in their minds that relate to what the music is depicting, to describing music in terms of feelings that connect with them personally, there are many ways to get students to use their minds to make the music both more meaningful to themselves through creative processes, but hopefully to audiences as well through improved performance through using these processes.  Having students make decisions like adding dynamics or particular articulations to add a certain "feel" to the music they are playing is one way.  I usually offer an example, "You could play this measure like this" and have the students come up with an alternative, and have them come up with techniques to use in future measures that are not all written.   As for connecting the music with feelings, using a simple prodding question such as “how does this music make you feel” can do it or "how do you think this music is supposed to make someone feel?"  For creating a picture, I usually use cartoons like Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry as examples, where there is a lot of music accompanying the actions onscreen, but that this time they need to figure out the pictures with only the music provided. 

Creativity also implies creation, which to music means composition.  At the elementary band level, this could be accomplished in a number of ways.  Taking certain steps to provide criteria and boundaries for the students such as providing the rhythms and each student could pick a note within certain guidelines like a particular scale or arpeggio or reverse it to having the notes set and they pick the rhythms, and within given guidelines.  This could give each student a say in the creation of the project, but ensure that it does not become too overwhelming by having too many choices to pick from.  This could also be done in stages, first rhythms, then notes, then articulation, then dynamics.  Votes could be taken as opposed to each student picking as well, to approach the project from a different angle.  This would all be done with ample guidance, and maybe even some experimentation playing examples of what they had decided on to see if they wanted to change anything. 

Another possibility for getting a middle school jazz band ensemble to be creative is by introducing improvisation for everyone, which is similar to composition.  Once again, establishing guidelines to adhere to, such as only be able to use three established notes while providing a fairly static rhythmic background.  Giving students freedom with rhythm and timing with selection of notes, while not having to worry about which notes to always pick, in addition to knowing ahead of time that the notes will always sound good with the background provided will help students gain confidence both individually and in a social context. 

Being creative does not always have to be relegated to one's own performance, but it can be done from the aesthetic decision making process viewing others.  Either commenting on another individual in a high school band ensemble, or maybe more likely a scenario where the clarinet section comments on how the trumpet section is playing a particular passage, would foster similar thinking as in the first example describing aesthetic decision-making.  If student critiquing is being discouraged, having the same level students use the techniques as described above to evaluate a performance by another group entirely, either through a field trip or through audio or video examples brought in by the teacher could also provide the same results.

Another example of music composition could be to have students (general elementary) each come up with a measure (or two) ostinato.  Maybe only rhythms are picked, maybe only simple melodies, or possibly both depending on the level of students which would be dictated largely on how far into the class year the are and how much background knowledge they possess.  After each ostinato is created and performed, they can start to be combined, by simply pointing to different students to begin or drop out.  A recording could even be done by the instructor for the students to listen to when it is done, giving them time to critique the final product using aesthetic concepts describes earlier.  Without knowing who would come in when, this could then turn into a creative example using aesthetic decision-making, composition, and improvisation all in one!

In all cases, setting the right environment like by being supportive of the creative process, smiling, and enjoyment of the products created by the teacher are all essential, otherwise you risk affecting the student's self-image and possibly discouraging the student's desire to be creative in the future.