This is the first episode in a five-episode mini-series on “idiomatic improvisation” as a pedagogical technique in the music theory and aural skills classroom. In this episode, Alex Jonker and Peter Schubert invite students to improvise doo-wop songs which take place in a simple harmonic context while offering a lot of freedom, and a lot of fun!

This episode was produced by Amy Hatch & Katrina Roush along with Team Lead Caitlin Martinkus. Special thanks to peer reviewers Phil Duker and Joseph Straus.

SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/

Welcome to SMT-Pod, the premier audio publication of the Society for Music Theory. This is the first episode in a five-episode mini-series on “idiomatic improvisation” as a pedagogical technique in the music theory and aural skills classroom. In this episode, Alex Jonker and Peter Schubert invite students to improvise doo-wop songs which take place in a simple harmonic context while offering a lot of freedom, and a lot of fun!

Hi, I'm Alex Jonker. I'm an assistant professor of music theory at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. This is the first episode in a five-episode miniseries called Idiomatic Improvisation, where we discuss improvisation as a pedagogical activity in the undergraduate music theory and aural skills curriculum.

[Intro music – “Maybe” by The Chantels]

I'm here with my colleague and mentor, Peter Schubert, who is a professor of music theory at McGill University. Peter, you've been including improvisation in the undergraduate curriculum for quite a while now. Why do you think this is an important activity for students to do?

Oh, there's a lot of reasons. One is it gives the student agency, like it puts the student in charge of making the music. And it draws on their intuitions. I think too often we think that the student is a blank slate. They come in, we think “these people know nothing, I'm going to show them what music is,” and it's not true. They have, actually, musical backgrounds, and doing improvisation draws on their instincts. So that's a really important part of it.

But there are other reasons. I think we teach theory in a very sort of abstract, idealistic way. And that there's somehow theoretical ideas are floating in space, and it's not true because theoretical ideas are at the keyboard. You can touch them. You can hear them. You can see them on the page. You can see them on the keyboard. You can sing them. And you can sing and play them. And you can feel them. Because singing the third of the chord feels like something. And all these sensations, this kind of makes it a kind of multimodal experience. And it means that these different modalities, reinforce each other. So I think they actually learn better.

Yeah, I think that's true. And I think that's also backed up in some of the pedagogy literature. There's been a couple of articles published as early as the mid-1990s. There was one by Steve Larson and one by Kate Covington. And they talk about how improv is like the kind of synthesis of theory and aural skills, where they really come together in real time. And students need to be drawing on their knowledge of music theory as they're performing, and it's like this very active music-making experience that kind of brings to life the thing that they're talking about in their theory classroom.

Right. You know, the CMS Manifesto is a nice example. And I was reading that again lately. And I thought, they don't really tell you very many specific, here's how to do it kinds of things. They say, oh, improvisation and composition are so important. And I think what we're going to try to do here in these podcasts, is give people an idea of what actual specific step-by-step exercises they can do with their students.

We have five different episodes coming up. And each one of them is based on a different musical style. We have how to improvise a doo-wop song coming up later in this episode, as well as episodes on how to improvise a melody over a Baroque ground bass, Fauxbourdon, classical phrases, and Renaissance first species canons. These are all activities both of us have used in the classroom for several years, so we'll give you a taste of how we approach these activities with our students.

Yeah, good.

In each of these episodes, you will hear performances by real students to serve as examples for how we do these types of activities in our classes and how we deal with the wide range of creative responses that our students come up with. The clips are unrehearsed and unedited. The student volunteers have little or no experience sometimes with the particular style that we're trying to illustrate. What you hear is what the student improvised in real-time. All of our activities are designed to meet the student where they're at, and you will hear this in all of our interactions with our students. They will struggle, and we change what we ask them, and—

And sometimes it's cringeworthy.

And sometimes it's cringeworthy. But all of them learn a little something at the end of it, which is what we're aiming for.

Absolutely. You said there were five musical styles that we were going to do. What's the advantage of style-specific, do you think?

I think when we think about improv, a lot of people associate this with jazz right away, and jazz has a lot of rules and a lot of, like, guidelines, and people that are trained in jazz, they have this specific set of rules and guidelines that they follow.

Right, there are frameworks.

Yeah, frameworks. And that makes them very successful improvisers. But I think we can apply the same sort of idea to other styles. So, if we give our students a set of rules, a set of norms, kind of introduce them to a style and then improvise within that style, it kind of restricts the freedom a little bit, while still letting them be creative, so that we can also, as instructors, tell them how to get better and kind of use some guidelines for grading them and giving them suggestions for how to improve in the future. So I think for both the student, they can learn very specific learning outcomes from these activities. And also, as instructors, we have a way of assessing it and talking about it intelligibly with them, rather than anybody does anything whenever they want.

Right. Yeah. The first episode is the doo-wop song, which we've been doing for a while. And what are the learning outcomes that we think this is useful for? For me, the chord progression is given. It's the same for every doo-wop song, I-vi-IV-V. And there are millions of doo-wop songs, and they're all different. And so it gives the student a lot of freedom to invent something over that chord progression. And what it is they learn, what can they take away from this? They learn about chord factors, and they learn about lines, and they learn about how lines fit together with chords. So it's a nice marriage of counterpoint and harmony.

People say, oh, yeah, Roman numeral analysis isn't really the greatest thing. It doesn't tell you enough about the piece. Well, it sure doesn't, because all it tells you is the pitch class content above each bass note. And in fact, what makes the piece work is how the parts of the chords are connected to each other up above. And so, in Earth Angel, which we are going to play you now shortly, you'll hear there's the bass line, which is the usual I-vi-IV-V. And then there's the backup singers, who do something quite different. And then there's the lead singer, who does also something quite different. And these three lines account for most of the chord factors in each of the chords. And how are they connected, and why is this a good song? It's a great song.

Our first improviser is Maria. And when we got together with Maria, we asked her a little bit about herself. Here is Maria.

Hello, my name is Maria. I just finished my first year in vocal performance here at McGill University. I did a little bit of theory in the Royal Conservatory of Music before getting here, but I only completed one exam, first level theory, and then just the one year of theory here at McGill.

So the first thing that we asked Maria to do was to analyze a doo-wop song to get her familiar with the style. So we played her a clip of the song Earth Angel by—

The Penguins.

The Penguins. And asked her some questions about it.

We're going to play you a model of the kind of thing that we're going to do in improvisation. And it's a song that I happen to be very fond of from the 50s. And it's a doo-wop song by the Penguins. And it's called Earth Angel.

Okay, so the first time through, listen to it and see if you can just find what the tonic is.

Okay.

[Audio clip, then Maria sings]

Okay, good.

Great.

Where is it on the piano?

Hmm. Can I have, you can't tell me what key it's in?

Nope.

No, you can tell us.

Yeah.

Okay.

And you can just like poke around and see where, you don't have to get it on the first try.

[Plays on piano]

Great. What key do you think that is?

A flat major?

A-flat. Yep, you got it.

Nice. Okay, I'm going to play it again. This time I want you to listen just for the bass line.

Okay.

And see if you can sing and then play the bass line.

Alright.

So, here we go.

[Audio clip]

Can you sing the bass line for us?

[Maria sings]

Good. Yeah.

Okay.

Can you play it on the piano?

[Maria plays piano]

Great. So, you knew where the first note was, you were very close to the first note, so you must be an alto and you might have a very low range, and so you must have known what it felt like.

I know it was below middle C.

Right. Okay. And you knew, and you seemed to know it was about a third. The question was, which kind of third? So that's good. Okay.

If you were to put scale degrees on that bass line in the key of A-flat, what would you, what scale degrees would you put on it? Could you sing it with scale degrees?

[Maria sings]

What was the name of it again? I don't—

Is it the same note again?

Four, four, five. Four, in-between, five.

Yeah, right. So really the question is, is it a sharp four or a flat five? Do you have any sense of which you'd like it to be?

I feel like flat five? No, sharp four.

I think either way I would say sharp four because it's going up.

Okay.

Because it continues on that's a good way to think of it, yeah.

Kind of pulls up to five. Okay. Nice.

Okay. So the next thing to do is find out what the backup singers are singing.

Okay.

Remember they, so first is like one period of four chords and that's just the bass line just instruments and then the backup singers come in, so listen for them.

[Audio clip, then Maria sings]

Great. So what scale degrees do you think those are?

[Maria sings]

Maybe you could play it.

Maria plays piano

That's great.

Should I play it again?

Yeah, here I'll play the bass.

Could you play the bass and sing that part, do you think? If not, it's okay.

[Maria plays and sings]

Wow, that was terrific!

Yeah, really good.

Do you play the piano? Did you ever study piano?

Yeah, I went to grade six RCM.

No kidding! So you're comfortable doing that? That was really great.

I know my way around, more or less.

So clearly Maria is quite advanced and she does really well with the analysis, and this certainly isn't the case for all of the students that we asked to do this activity. We challenged Maria because she was so good, and we asked her to play the bass line and she while she analyzed the intervals above the bass, and this was something that we only did with Maria because she was figuring it out very quickly.

For other students who were struggling more, Peter played the bass line while they sang the intervals above the bass. For some of them, they only got as far as analyzing the scale degrees of the melodies they were hearing or the bass line. For other students, just finding the notes on the piano was such an adventure. Some of them didn't even seem to be thinking in a key, it was just like any note on the piano was just like a key, and I was up for grabs. And they would play the whole chromatic scale, trying to find the note that they were singing.

So I think for every student, it was very much about, like, meeting them where they were at and figuring out how to work with that particular student, which is one of the things that makes improv and this sort of interactive analysis activity fun, but also very challenging for us as instructors,

But very useful for the student.

Absolutely, another common challenge with this activity, and some of our others when it comes to analysis, is finding these interior voices. One of our students really struggled to hear the backup vocals, and we played it for him so many times, and he really struggled to hear it. So, this idea of like kind of pulling apart the texture again, not something that we do super often in our ear training or theory classes, but such a valuable skill for them to be able to pick out the backup vocals and be able to sing those back and figure out what they're singing is another really valuable lesson that they can pull from this.

Yeah, great!

After the student does the analysis, our next step is asking them to actually improvise a melody now over a new bass line; it's the same chord progression, of course, but with a different meter, a different rhythmic feel to it and in a different key. So next up, you will hear Jasper.

My name is Jasper Ward, I am a music theory major going into my third year of undergrad, I have a management minor and a music technologies minor, and my main instrument Is guitar, I studied classical guitar with the school, but I really play all kinds of guitar.

Jasper will improvise a melody over a new bass line. Let's listen to what Jasper comes up with.

Here we go. You can start any time. You can sing.

Should I play the piano or sing?

Sing.

[Jasper sings]

Okay, that was great.

That was beautiful!

Yeah, that was really nice. Do you think you can remember it? Because the first time through it wasn't the same as the second time through.

Oh I, oh I didn't, I can like, yeah, I can—

Pick one.

—repeat the same thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So can you pick one of those two? Which one did you like better?

Like I like that I'll do the—

[Jasper sings]

Yeah, I like those dada things, very nice.

Yeah, I'll do that one.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Ready?

Yeah.

Here we go, three, four,

[Jasper sings]

That was great.

That was lovely.

Okay, yeah, that was very, very nice.

So, one of the things that um is interesting for the students is sometimes they'll improvise something and then we'll say “well can you remember that and sing it again?” and they say “no,” they can't, and it brings up the question of the specificity of the musical activity. Like, people don't say sentences and then not remember them. People don't say sentences and then not remember them, so uh why would you sing something and not remember it? So this is actually a very important thing. We think musical memory is something that's worth developing.

One thing that we noticed is as soon as we gave our students lyrics, they were much more inclined to remember what they sang.

Yeah, do we have a clip with some lyrics?

Yeah, let's listen to Emilie now.

My name is Emily Popolo, I am a rising U2 at McGill but I'm from the United States, so this will be my third year and then I have one more year after that. Um, I'm a mezzo-soprano, but um, I'm in BMus History. I really like improvising. I like improvising for fun, along with Spotify or the radio, I always get a little bit more nervous when I feel like it's more classical music or baroque because I feel like although the structures are similar, it's it feels more complex. But for pop music, I really enjoy it.

She is going to sing, improvise a melody with lyrics.

So we're going to give you a poem that you know, probably.

Okay.

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and I love you.

Okay.

Okay?

You can still start on scale degree three, though. I thought that was very nice. Ready, three, four.

[Emilie sings]

That was beautiful.

You really uh, you took off there.

Yeah, just give Emilie some lyrics, and she, yeah, that was amazing.

It makes the singer brain happy.

Yeah!

So after our students make up a melody with lyrics, now we want to know if they know what they're singing so we ask them to analyze their invention a little bit and we do this in a few different ways sometimes with scale degrees, sometimes with chord factors, sometimes with intervals above the bass. So let's listen to Maria again, and here's Maria analyzing a melody that she made up.

[Maria sings]

That's very good! I want to ask you to do one more thing, and it's much harder, I think, which is to name the intervals above the base of each note, and we can go a lot slower.

Okay, yeah.

Well, you can see this is a whole other adventure. And if you wanted to, you could play the bass like just a skeleton of the bass, you don’t have to repeat the notes

Sure.

And think about like playing with your left hand, singing the thing and thinking “what interval is this that I'm singing above the bass?”

Okay.

[Maria sings and plays]

Should I be, should I start trying to sing it?

Sure, just say like, whatever the number is, the interval above the bass.

[Maria sings and plays]

That's all I sang, right?

Yeah! That was really great.

Yeah!

Sometimes the student's instincts aren't exactly what we would expect, and they produce something that is completely coherent, and to them especially, and sort of coherent to us, but maybe they haven't thought about what it is they're doing that's quite idiosyncratic. So a really good example is Hubert, who did a really nice improvisation on the same doo-wop progression, but he had one note there that he absolutely insisted on singing, and I don't think he knew what it was until we pointed it out to him. Maybe we could hear Hubert now.

My name is Hubert Paré. I'm a voice, a lyric voice major here at McGill, and I just finished my fourth year and final year of my undergraduate degree.

[Hubert sings]

What were the last two notes you sang?

[Hubert sings]

Right, three, two. And that came over here. And what parts of the chords, was there any dissonance in there?

This would be a sixth in a five-chord.

That's right. And what else? So let's go back to the beginning. Ready? Okay. You're starting a third above the bass. Ready? Here we go.

[Hubert sings]

What interval is that?

This is the fourth, major fourth.

Perfect fourth.

Perfect fourth. Sorry. Yes.

What is that? What is that part of the chord?

This? The A?

The D.

The D. It could. I guess not.

Well, I don't know. It sounded funny to me. But, you sang it so many times, you liked it so much, that I thought, okay, that's how the tune goes.

We just believed you.

Like I said, it could.

It could. It would be... I don't know what chord it would be. Here. Let's put the chords. Here we go. Got it? Ready? Start singing.

Sorry. Can’t just stop laughing.

Ready? Three, four.

[Hubert sings]

Whoa.

It's pretty exciting!

Chunky.

Yeah, it is. It is. That was very much fun.

So this particular exercise offers the student some framework to work within, which is the chord progression, but also a huge amount of freedom. As you see, some people obsess over a motive, it was also Jasper, I think, who did the same motive over and over again, even though occasionally there were dissonances, and Hubert, of course. And the amount of freedom that the student has and what the limits of the framework are, this will change depending on the style of music and the exercise that we give. So you'll see in subsequent episodes different amounts of freedom and different restrictions.

One question instructors might have about this activity and all of our others is how it's graded. Peter, can you tell us about how you handle grading improv activities in your class?

Yeah, well, I'm sure some people will disagree with this, but I think that everybody has to be graded for trying. Trying is the best thing you can do. And so the results, who cares if they sing parallel fifths or parallel octaves? When I give this as a composition exercise, I say the one thing you must not do is go in parallel octaves with the bass. And that gives them some limit. But the truth is, if you listen to the Everly Brothers, “Dream,” there's a moment when Phil or Don or whoever it is sings in parallel with the bass, and it's perfectly good music.

In fact, it's great music. And so “All I Have to do is Dream” is a piece that I have them listen to. Also, the Marvelettes, Dion and the Belmonts, “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love?” This is an absolutely deathless tune. And so these are models that they get for their composition exercise. So that one can be graded on, you know, notation and did every downbeat have a chord factor? And what chord factor was it? So there are things that you can ask for that are evaluatable. But the improvisation is just try stuff out. That's the bottom line.

Do you ever have students that just kind of like throw in the towel and don't really try if it's just based on participation grades?

That's such a good question because it really, we do so much improvisation here, and we were scared to death when we instituted it. This was like, oh my God, it was like eight years ago that we started doing this. And we were scared to death that people would say, they would run screaming from the room. They would say, oh, I can't do this. No, don't make me do this. And nobody ever did. And we used to say, oh, if you're too scared, you can come do it in my office. And nobody did. It was amazing. And now it could be that because McGill is a music school, that people are used to performing in front of each other. What do you find at the Crane School of Music? Do you find that they run screaming from the room?

No, nobody's run screaming from the room, thankfully. And I also think that they actually try their best every time because I think doing it in front of their peers adds a little bit of peer pressure. So they're not just going to do nothing. They're actually going to try something. And then they end up learning something. And over the course of the semester, they do get better.

Yeah. One thing that we insist on is that in the class, if somebody goes to the piano in the class and improvises something, then we ask the rest of the class to sing it back. Maybe the rest of the class has to sing it back on scale degrees, whatever. And that means that there's a real requirement for intelligibility. Did the person at the piano actually sing something that you could tell what those notes were? So that's a huge lesson right there.

Yeah, definitely. Other ways we get our students involved, I like to ask them, did you notice anything nice about that melody? Was there a particularly nice feature? And sometimes they'll comment on, oh, I like when they did this leap. I wasn't expecting that, but I thought it sounded really nice. Or some students will maybe comment on the contrary motion, like, oh, the bass line went down here, but the melody went up, and I thought that sounded really nice. So I think we can have lots of really intelligent conversations with the whole class based off of one student's improv to kind of get everybody involved too.

Right. And sometimes, the person does their little improv, and the whole class erupts in applause. That's the best. So, what are we doing next episode?

Our next episode is actually a little bit similar to this one. Our students will be improvising over a ground bass. Our doo-wop songs are kind of a ground bass, you know, this repeated bass line. But our ground bass improv activities use Baroque ground basses. So the harmonic progression is a little bit more complex, and the progression is also longer, which offers more opportunity for students to be creative and really pushes their musical memory a little bit more. So join us next time to hear about that.

[Outro music – “Dream” by The Everly Brothers]

[Outro Theme by Yike Zhang.]

Visit our website, smt-pod.org, for supplemental materials related to this episode and to learn how to submit an episode proposal. You can join in the conversation by tweeting us your questions and comments to @SMT_Pod. SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. Thanks for listening!