Is an improvisation-based method the way to start absolute beginners?
My answer to this question is an unequivocal yes!
Below are excerpts from my showcase speech to the ASTA Conference in 2023 where I officially launched my new Playing From The Heart series, explaining why.
“I am very proud to introduce my latest creation. It’s called Playing From The Heart, and it’s a whole new way to teach absolute beginners. It is currently available for violin, viola, and cello, and there are plans to create versions for the bass, harp, guitar, and flute.
“There's only one reason to create a new way to teach beginners and that's if you believe that you found a way that's better than everything else that's out there. I am going to ask you to forget for a moment everything you think you know about the best way to start beginners. To suspend your loyalty to methodology that is proven easily accessible and dependable, and instead open your mind to a whole new possibility that there just might be a better way. A way that is better for children from all backgrounds and opportunities. A way that brings children joy, empowerment, and development in a way that is beyond anything we have seen before.”
I began by sharing members of the Tour Group playing something called the Super Duper Human Looper. Then I shared a recording of a 2-year-old working with Playing From The Heart. I asked the audience to think about what they were seeing and what the 2 performances had in common.
The Response: Heightened levels of creativity, strong creative voices, and a deep communication with their fellow musicians and their audience.
Then I asked the question, “How would you define artistry?” I explained that I Define Artistry as excellent technical proficiency and unique musicality. Then I invited another question: “What if we could teach that kind of artistry to absolute beginners right from the beginning?”
“Playing from the heart was initially inspired by students who struggled to learn. Students who perhaps started a little too young, or had difficulty with technique, reading skills, memorization, or were simply super creative. I found that for them, improvisation seemed to be easy and fun. for them, improvisation was inspiring and almost magical. It changed their struggles into progress and gave each of them a beautiful musical voice right from the beginning!
“But that's not the whole story. As it turned out, many of the children who started this way became the most successful musicians I ever taught!
“I began to realize that improvisation might just be the best way for all children to begin their music lessons. Not only is improvisation fun and engaging, it also leads to a more natural and fluid mastery of technique. The pure enjoyment of musical creation also leads to longer practice time, organically increasing proficiency. Most important of all, the creative study of music develops skills that go far beyond the playing of an instrument. Creative music making:
Develops the mind, intellectually and intuitively.
Engages the ear, teaching us to listen deeply.
Teaches us to play together, building our ability to empathize and have respect for each other's ideas.
Teaches us to communicate in a language that is universally understood.
Develops an appreciation for beauty and a striving for truth in art and beyond.
Teaches us to play with passion and with love.
“Perhaps most important of all, it teaches us to play from the heart!
“It is interesting that in defining artistry we separate technical and creative ability. We do this because we realize that these are separate kinds of ability, each defined in its own unique way, and therefore should be trained separately and appropriately. In Playing From The Heart, We use five steps in Daily practice to achieve the separation of intellectual, technical, and creative development.
Technique building involves exercises designed to develop good posture, good sound production, relaxed movement, and excellent facility.
Warm-ups are a part of technique building, and they also provide the student with an opportunity to explore scales, rhythms, sound effects, dynamics, and musical ideas.
Creative development. Each day, the student gets to explore the possibilities of musical creation with a given musical puzzle. The puzzle is a musical piece designed for the student to improvise with. The student is given a group of notes to work with that match the puzzle. They are also given rhythms to explore which they might find intriguing. The pieces, which represent animals and bugs, also act as catalysts to each child's imagination, encouraging them to musically become like a "caterpillar dreaming” or an “antelope dancing.” There is even an accompanying slideshow available with beautiful pictures of the animal the student is portraying. The intuitive nature of improvisation allows the student to develop skills at an intense pace while remaining physically relaxed and emotionally engaged.
Literacy. After creative exploration, the student gets to see what the notes and rhythms they have played look like when written down. Just as when a child first learns to speak a language and then learns to read it, the visual representation of what they have heard makes much more sense following the aural experience.
Review or Exploring. Finally, the student is invited to review and explore through improvisation with older exercises and supplemental exercises. this encourages them to try new ideas, rhythms, and finger patterns with familiar backing tracks or inspiring new tracks, thereby building creative skills naturally and exponentially.
“The new Playing From The Heart book has 99 exercises and 75 musical tracks to play with. the teacher can, at their discretion, decide how many exercises in each chapter a given student needs, based on the student's level, interest, and needs.”
I then did a live demonstration of how this would work in a lesson. we looked at four players at four very different ages and stages of development.
Then I asked, “Why is playing from the heart better than other methods?
“I have been a Suzuki teacher for 40 years, trained by Dr Suzuki himself. He had a brilliant vision to teach children to play by giving them the same tools they use to learn their native language: nurturing parents, intense ear training, and intelligently incremental steps.
“But there is a big ingredient missing: desire. Why do children want to learn to speak? It is because they desire to communicate their needs.
“So the real question is, "Why do children want to learn to play the violin, or the viola, or the cello?” Music is emotion, music is expression of self, of each individual's perception of truth and beauty. It also opens a whole new world of imagination, a place to explore and play.
“When children pick up an instrument, they want to give it their voice. Just as when children pick up crayons they want to create pictures. They don't want to draw between the lines, they want to create the lines. Playing From The Heart meets them where their passion is.
“The technique of learning to play an instrument shouldn't be so complicated that it prevents a student from pursuing that passion.”
TIPS: Technique, Intelligence, Passion, and Social Skills
Creative Ability Development (CAD) is the guiding method behind playing from the heart. CAD develops technique, intelligence, passion, and social skills, sometimes all at once.
Teachers of CAD create an environment that encourages passion; an environment that inspires love for music as well as a desire to be expressive within its unique language. CAD teaches technique in a way that allows students to rapidly increase their competency through personal ownership and control of their progress. Simple note and rhythm charts are used to guide the creative act, leaving the students unhampered by note reading, memorization, repertoire, scales, or etudes. The technique guide, used for warming up will be used while improvising, while the student is engaged in the purpose of his technical improvement. During an improvisation exercise, students will intuitively and intentionally correct technique to create a beautiful sound, sometimes even discovering expressive techniques such as vibrato or shifting before they have been taught.
Intelligence, both analytical and creative, is powerfully engaged in CAD by multiple simultaneous acts of creation comprehension. A student will intellectually engage their understanding of theory by studying keys, rhythms, or harmonies. At the same time, they will make intuitive choices regarding the same notes, rhythms, and harmonies while improvising. They will ultimately judge themselves and self-correct based on their own aesthetic choices.
Social skills, or the ability to interact with others, is first developed in Playing From The Heart through the use of the recorded tracks. Rather than practicing alone without accompaniment, students are actively engaged with another musician by improvising with imaginative harmonies and melodies. These musical tracks, depicting fun and interesting animals, engage the child's imagination, inspiring and drawing them into active communication with the recorded musician. In performing these improvisations the child is also communicating with the audience, building confidence in their creative ability, and in their ability to perform and share their ideas. Through the three rules of CAD students are also taught to respect the ideas of others. They learn to share, listen, and thank each other for those ideas.
When something is truly beautiful, honest, or powerful, we feel it in our hearts. passion Wells up inside, our hearts beat faster, sometimes we even cry. Great music and great artists have the power to move us this way. Children have an enormous capacity to feel passionately and to express themselves artistically. Tapping into this raw passion and powerful need to create is where music education should begin. We all greatly underestimate our students' powerful creative capacity. All of us have deep feelings and needs. Children intuitively use their innate creativity to express those feelings and needs in a multitude of artistic ways.
Every child perceives beauty differently. There is not one right or wrong answer to a creative exercise, only each child's search to find the best within themself. Allowing a child to make those choices, encouraging them to continue to search when they are not satisfied, and teaching them to use the discipline of repetition are all ways of facilitating their unique creative passion.
Ultimately, teaching passion is about teaching ownership. allowing a child to make his own choices about what he wants to communicate musically will organically build his love for the beauty of sounds. When he begins to fall in love with his own creations, his tone will intuitively improve as he seeks to share those ideas. He will, in fact, teach himself to play passionately.”
