Improvisation is an extremely useful skill for any musician to have, but learning the art can seem very scary and daunting at first, even to advanced students. When teaching an ensemble how to go about improvising, the players will feel the most comfortable and confident when there are clear structures to work with, and when they are supported by their fellow players. Most importantly of all, the students will look to you, their conductor or teacher, for positive feedback and assistance, and you need to be as encouraging as possible at all times.

For the purposes of this blog entry, I will not attempt to cover everything about improvising: that would be impossible. What I wish to leave you with, however, is a basic starting point for your untuned percussionists to feel comfortable playing short, interesting and spontaneously composed segments of music. This will add to their individual skills as players, and give your ensemble another dimension and colour to explore.

The first step is giving the students something to improvise over. It’s much harder to create ‘something out of nothing’ than ‘something out of something’; set up a groove in the group that can inspire your soloist. Many of the tunes on this website have repetitive grooves that can support your lead player’s journey into the unknown. Take ‘Conga and a Samba’ for example, and the music in particular at C. Click here for excerpt. You could repeat these bars over and over to provide a platform for someone to step into the limelight. Or you could even loop the first 3 bars of ‘Up and On’, and slip a solo section in the middle of the tune to fatten it out. And of course, if those examples don’t float your boat (or you’ve used them both already and are looking for more!!), you can make up your own.

Once you have successfully set up a base for improvising over, and it’s grooving like mad (see blog number 1), you’re ready to start making music up. But you can’t just tell the students “Ok! Improvise! Make up what you like!” because they won’t know where to start. At least, I wouldn’t, if I were them. A great way to begin is by trying a ‘call and response’. You can take an instrument, like a tom tom, and play a simple pattern on it for 1 or 2 bars. Then ask a student to respond to what you played, trying to keep it the same length. They can repeat what you did, or make up something of a similar style. My tip: start simple. Simple, simple, simple. If the groove that the rest of the band is playing sounds good, then even just playing 4 crotchets (quarter notes) to the bar is going to sound cool. Then move to quavers. Or to whatever level is appropriate for your group. Have a few exchanges with one student, and then get them to get back into the groove, and have another ‘conversation’ with another member of the group. Keep that smile on your face, it will help keep their nerves down. And once everyone, or at least the majority, of the group is comfortable, they can start trading ideas amongst themselves. Choose 2 players and get them interacting!

The next step is to have your players improvising on their own, without needing to hear anyone first for inspiration. Arrange a solo section in a tune, and say ‘Ok, can Johnny take a 4 bar solo over this part?’ or something along those lines. And when they come up with something creative, or at least, don’t give up halfway into their feature, shower them with praise. It’s important for to know that their ideas don’t suck.

Of course, you don’t have to only have improvising over a groove. You can create a ‘break’, where the rest of the band stops, and one person solos on their own. During this time you can get everyone else hitting beat 1 of each bar, or you can leave the whole section silent. Breaks are very effective between loud groovy parts of a tune, for example, if we take the same section of ‘Conga and a Samba’ as we did before, we can play the section twice as written, throw in a 4 bar break for a snare drummer, and play the groove one last time together.

In order for this to work, your soloist needs to feel very confident with improvising, as well as having a great time feel. This kind of idea works best when you have an advanced player looking for a chance to step up to the next level and wanting to show off their skills.

I hope that helps with some basics. In the next blog, I will explain some of the elements that you can use to make improvising more interesting, and create longer solos. I will also provide advice for teaching the development of improvised ideas in a logical and exciting way. Happy drumming!

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