As preservice teachers, we have been working on developing our own improvisational and compositional skills throughout the semester. This has been a growing experience for me, but I have also found it very valuable. This journey has taken me through small in-class composition exercises, to an arrangement of a chosen piece for flexible classroom ensemble, and then on to a 2-minute composition using a scaffold which we personally designed based on a ‘model’ piece.
I based my compositional scaffold, and subsequently my composition, on Fiona Hill’s Pentography, using the first two movements titled Spring and Summer. Creating a scaffold involved first analysing the music and identifying compositional processes, then breaking these processes down into a series of simple ‘baby steps’ that are repeatable and achievable for any student. The steps themselves are not necessarily taught by explicit instruction; rather they are often fun learning games, open-ended tasks requiring a creative response, and opportunities for musicking.
One of my baby steps for Spring uses TUBS notation. This is the opening of Spring followed by the opening of my composition using the TUBS notation.
Another one of my baby steps was a backing track I made in Soundtrap as an arrangement of the beginning of Summer, to use for improvisation on E Lydian mode.
Using ‘model’ pieces as a guide for composition gives context and purpose, and increases accessibility for students. With an understanding of the compositional strategies used by the ‘model’ composer, the student is more easily able to develop their own musical ideas into a unified whole. I have found that having a model takes away the challenge of “blank-page” syndrome. It provides a starting point, and even a point of continuation, yet there is always the flexibility to take the ‘model’ steps in a completely new direction if creativity calls for it, or even to discard them completely. That is the beauty of composition.
I will take the skills and knowledge I have gained this semester into the classroom to be able to teach improvisation and composition with greater self-assurance. Whilst this experience has been daunting at times, it has given me the opportunity to step inside my future students’ shoes and understand what they might think and feel through the compositional process. I still don’t take on the identity of a ‘composer’, but I am more confident in my own ability to compose, and I believe I can provide inspiring, meaningful, and engaging learning experiences for my students.