Do you incorporate composition into your teaching?

If you didn't grow up improvising or composing, you may feel intimidated by the prospect of nurturing these skills in your students. But it's never too late to stretch those creative muscles!

I think a lot of our insecurity about composing with our students comes from our own unfamiliarity with the process.

The truth is, creativity thrives with parameters, boundaries, limits. In music, there are lots of parameters we can set up at the outset of a creative project to help our students be successful.

For instance, when I'm improvising with my young students, I might ask them to play in a certain register or use only black keys. I may ask for a specific dynamic level or rhythm pattern.

For elementary students, I will ask for a specific 5-finger position or key. I might ask for a piece that uses only steps or only skips, a piece in major or minor, something made of blocked chords or broken chord patterns. I might also limit the length of the piece they're creating to a certain number of patterns or phrases.

Another way to provide some parameters is to use a particular musical form. In February of this year, I organized a month-long, studio-wide composition project based on the 12-bar blues.

This form dates back to the 1800s, emerging from the oppression of enslaved African-Americans in the U.S. It's based on the three primary chords: I, IV, and V and lends itself well to repeats or loops and different variations.

I got the idea for this project from a session I attended at NCKP last summer, led by Leila Viss and Bradley Sowash. Leila shared how she's structured a blues composition project for her students and I thought it would be a good way to acknowledge and celebrate Black History Month and incorporate composition for my elementary and intermediate students.

Today, I'm sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how I organized this project in my studio, how I structured and guided the composition process each week, some blues examples we studied from the repertoire, and a few of my students' final compositions.

For show notes, click here.

Resources Mentioned

*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Key Ideas with Leila, Ep. 017 - The 12-Bar Blues

Rock Around the Block (Sam Holland, Music Tree, Part 1)

Jazz Blast (Faber, Piano Adventures, Level 2A)

Captain Hook's Rockin' Party (Faber, Piano Adventures, Level 2B)

Black Bear Boogie (Chee-Hwa Tan, Circus Sonatinas)

Slide Easy (Robert Vandall, Celebrated Jazzy Solos, Book 1)

Surfboard Boogie (Martha Mier, Jazz, Rags, and Blues, Book 1)

Spiderman Theme (old-school theme song)

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2)

Stuck in the Middle With You (Stealers Wheel)

Hound Dog (Elvis)

Be Cool and Play the Blues by Leila Viss (digital resource)