7 Improvisation Experiences for Young Children

I was looking through one of my old issues of Jazzed magazine and came across a short article for piano teachers and those wanting to help children play the piano better. Specifically, it's on the subject of improvising. I thought I'd share it with you and maybe you'll find some treasures in it, hopefully.

7 Improvisation Experiences for Young Children 

      by Dr. Daria S. Hanley

One of the new components of JEN is our focus on jazz for K-8 musicians. Our intent is to offer sessions at each conference designed to show how to engage young children with jazz music. We have already started putting K-8 educational materials and information on the Jen website. My expertise as a music teacher and music education professor leads me to offer the following activities to try with young children that teach them the fundamentals of improvisation.

1. Replace the Phrase

 

Ask children to create scat syllables to replace a phrase in a familiar song. Example: Have them sing Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho in a swing style and ask individual children to replace the "and the walls came tumbling down" phrase with scat. Ask children to sing Joshua on neutral syllables such as "doo" "bah" and "doot" instead of using lyrics and invite them to add their scat phrases.

2. Call-and-Response Conversations

 

Ask children to create cell phones using cardboard, Styrofoam, tin cans, or other arts and crafts materials. Have them form partners and "talk" to each other using scat syllables. Ask the child who is responding to listen to the sounds his.her partner is making and incorporate some of the same sounds (or similar) sounds in the response. Repeat asking children to converse over a blues progression.

3. Diamond Follow the Leader

 

Ask children to create 4-beat rhythm patterns with body percussion, instruments, found sounds, movement, etc. for others to imitate along with a track such as Rockit (Herbie Hancock) or My Baby Just Cares for Me (Nina Simone). Have them form groups of 4 and ask them to stand in a "diamond" formation. Identify the first leader and have him/her create patterns until you call "switch" where everyone turns to the right and a new leader begins.

4. Make a Chain

 

Provide a 4-beat rhythm pattern as the prompts for this improvisation. Distribute a variety of rhythm instruments and ask children to form a circle. Invite them to perform this 4-beat rhythm pattern on their instrument. Establish a steady pulse on a hand drum. Ask individual children (one at a time around the circle) to create their own 4-beat pattern to add to the chain starting from the top each time so all patterns repeat in preparation for the next/new one.

5. Improvisation Needs Vocabulary

 

List music vocabulary words (dynamics, tempi, rhythm instrument names, etc.) on small cards and place in an empty saxophone case (or fishbowl). Ask children to draw a card each week to add to their class vocabulary. Have them write the words and definition in a journal or on a worksheet. Design an activity for children to improvise incorporating their new word and/or it's meaning each week.

6. Riff off Children's Books, Poems, and Chants

 

Identify children's books, poems, and/or chants that feature jazz sounds, jazz artists, etc. Ask children to use their voices to explore different ways to read and/or sing the text. Have them create their own phrase or use words in the text to accompany the book (Example: Read A Tisket, A Tasket (2003, Ella Fitzgerald, Ora Eitan, illustrator) and guide children to speak "tisket a-tisket, a-tisket, a-tisket" while you perform a swing pattern with brushes on a hi-hat. Read Before John Was a Jazz Giant (2008, Carole Boston Weatherford, Sean Qualls, illustrator) and ask children to speak the repeated text improvising with their voices by exploring vocal ranges, tone colors, and dynamics. Have them improvise bongo accompaniments as you read (or sing) This Jazz Man (2006, Karen Ehrhardt, R.G. Roth, illustrator) Ask children to read Jazz Baby (2006, Carole Boston Weatherford, Laura Freeman, illustrator) and then write their own verses using music vocabulary.

7. Pentatonic Expressions

 

Remove bars from Orff instruments (xylophones) or use step bells to isolate only the notes in a pentatonic scale. Ask children to engage in call-and-response, fill-in-the-blank, or free improvisation within a specified pulse using this scale. Guide children to write a class pentatonic composition with "holes" to provide space for improvisation. Invite individual children to take solos in the "holes."

If you like Jazz, here are some resources you may want to add to your music library:

jazz101 jazz201 JITC (Jazz Intensive Training Center)

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"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you." B.B.King

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Quartal and Quintal Chords

Quartal Chords

Quintal Chords

I feel like I am saying good bye summer, hello September! 

I sincerely hope this month is off to a good start for you.

And I want to thank you for your response to my newsletter.
By your questions, I could tell you were reading my article.
And it makes one feel good! Now, some answers to the questions.

1. What are they?

Quartal and Quintal chords have a suspended un-anchored sound to them that differs form regular chords. This quality makes Quartal and Quintal chords very useful in a composer's chord vocabulary. Simply put, whatever notes in the grouping, harmonically tied together, and diatonically correct.

2. What's the history?

Quartal and Quintal chords are now common in jazz, rock music and TV and film music. Quartal chords are also easy to play on the guitar due to the fact that the standard guitar tuning is mostly fourths. But they first showed up in Classical music with Claude Debussy.

3. Where are they used?

Quartal chords are used in "modal" jazz. Think two or three general chords, diatonically...maj7, m7, dom7. In C just think Cmaj7, Dm7, and G7. You hear the Quartal chord moving in a functioning way. This makes sense than just grabbing chords at random, especially when you are staying in ONE Key. 

Now, try this progression: Ebmaj7 | Dm7b5 G7 | Cmaj7 | Cmaj7 ||

Quartals are freely substituted over pretty much any chord, except a dominant. 

4. Application

There are all kinds of quartal chords and each pitch set has it's own color and uses.
A perfect fourth stack ( regardless of number ) moves in parallel  clusters. Other shapes include:

Mixtures of tritones and perfect fourths

Perfect fourths with a major third on top

Perf. 4th stacks moving in parallel over a pedal point (very common in modal jazz) 

Let's take a C Major 7th chord by adding some quartals.  First, remove unnecessary notes from the block chord. In the left hand, play C, E and B. In the right-hand, add a quartal starting on the 9th and play D, G and C. 

I read that all the alteration symbols are not a great "visual" for the fact that Quartal chord should be applied, mainly because the voicing really seems to be the important part of "Quartal". So naming something like F7#5#9(om.3) or just F7#5#9 doesn't really TELL you to stack them in orders of 4ths. For F7#5#9, when reading a chart, find a F7 voicing first, then alter for #5#9. But, this won't always give me a linear Quartal chord, but more of an altered/extended voicing. Spell the basic chord  like "(Quartal) next to it, like "F (Quartal)" or "Fmaj7#11(Quartal)". 

5. Approach

Generally, it's entirely possible to substitute quartal harmony over any non-dominant chord in a tune. It's a very easy way to turn static I chords into something more dynamic and interesting; and the results over minor chords is nice. Herbie Hancock is a good example of someone who often uses this approach. He routinely plans diationic quartals over chords when he's comping.

Approach 1: Diatonically played quartals. 

On a sheet of manuscript paper, write out the following chord (key of C Major): A D G C. Underneath this, write a C root. The chord: C 6/9 no 3. Next, play the entire chord up one diatonic note to obtain B E A D. Leave the C root intact. The chord: CMaj13.
Play up one note to obtain: C F B E. Not quite so useful. The fourth, F, in the chord is "avoid-ish", when playing over I chords. Continue the process to obtain all 7 diatonic quartals in the key of C Major. Now rewrite the entire set with a D root, instead of a C root, and consider this set as a set of useful quartal voicings/subs for a Dm (ii of C major). Repeat the procedure for each possible root in the key of C Major. The general idea: all quartal stacks over an appropriate root are good substitutions, with the exception of subs for Imaj7, that contain the fourth degree of the scale (F, in the C major example). Many of these chords are a bit stark by themselves. Many of them don't have 3rds. But they tend to consistently work well as alternating pairs of voicings in the same bar, or as ascending or descending planed stacks. One quartal voice doesn't necessarily contain a 3rd or a 7th; but a pair (or an ascending or descending group) always includes both in one or the other of the pair.

Approach 2: Pentatonics with displaced roots. 

Consider all voicings of all chords constructed from a pentatonic scale. These are functionally equavialent to quartals, because collapsing the notes of a quartal stack of five notes into a single octave produces a pentatonic scale. Any pentatonic chord is also a voicing of a quartal stack. In the key of C major, there are three possible pentatonic scales: C D E G A; C D F G A; D E G A B. For each, construct ascending stacked voices within the scale. Start with the shape G C E A; and play that shape through the pentatonic scale C D E G A. Repeat for the other two scales. For each of these played stacks, add a root note from the parent MAJOR scale (same idea as what we did with the extra root in quartal stacks). The root note doesn't have to come from the pentatonic scale of the moment. Each of these forms is refered to as a "pentatonic voicing with a displaced root". Each of these forms is a good voicing or sub, with the following exception: voicings that contain the fourth degree of the scale (the "avoid" note), over a I root doesn't work. Just like for quartal stacks. This approach generates all the same voicings. The primary difference is that when you walk the voicings up or down the keyboard, the pentatonic voicings have a more distinctly open sound to them than the corresponding quartal stack. (open in the sense that a 6/9 chord is open). A very distinctive sound, that I'm particularly fond of.

With quartal chords, on the keyboard, the span is a bit wide--you've got a major seventh on the outside. Often pianists will move the bottom voice up an octave or drop the top voice down an octave. This sound is related to stacked fourths, but the interval from bottom to top is only a fifth-easier to reach. A lot of sounds that you assume are fourth chords are actually these kinds of voicings." 

6. Wrap Up - Conclusion

Fourth voicings, also known as quartal voicings, are more of a "modern" sound in jazz and were really explored thoroughly by McCoy Tyner as well as Chick Corea in the 60's. They sound great and can be played in a number of ways. They really are just a pentatonic scale played every other note. Here are the 5 inversions of the C pentatonic scale in fourth voicings: 

 You can use C pentatonic fourth voicings over Cmaj7, C7, D-7, Fmaj7, F#7alt, Gsus7, A-7, Bbmaj7#11, or even maybe B-7b5. So there are many possibilities.
You can also make fourth voicings with notes that aren't in a strict major pentatonic scale. Here is every melody note in the key of C with fourths underneath: 

 You can also take a fourth voicing and move it around in parallel motion. Play this type of movement over a D-7 modal song: 

 These are all examples of two-handed fourth voicings. You can also just play 3-note fourth voicings in your left hand while you play a melody in your right hand. Going in and out of the key will sound very modern and cool if you do it right. Listen to McCoy to get a real lesson on how to do this.

I have the Mark Levine Jazz Book. A lot of this stuff is way over my head. You should get the book. Another Jazz artist whom I respect is Willie Myette.

 Jazz 101 and Jazz 201 will help you:  

Learn how to quickly and easily form tons of jazz chord patterns and runs that are guaranteed to have you standing out from the crowd, how to ensure that no matter what voicings and blues licks you play, they'll turn heads each and every time and the 7 secrets to playing signature solos like a pro from a pro!

Order these music resources from Hear and Play:

Jazz101 and Jazz201

 

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you." B.B.King