[Note to Teachers: This series of lessons uses songs that address the use of drugs for recreation and escape. If your school policy allows, you might take advantage of opening a discussion on the topic of inappropriate use of drugs. If your curriculum is subject to restrictions on the topic, you should review the videotape before using it in the classroom.]
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Takin’
It to the Streets
Lessons for Band Classes, Middle School and High School
(This lesson can be adapted for string or vocal students)
Improvising in the Birthplace of Jazz
Lesson 4 of 4 |
Objectives
- Students will improvise “blues licks” using notes from
a minor pentatonic scale.
- Students will recognize significant developments in jazz music that
took place in New Orleans.
National Standards for Music Education
Standard 3: Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
Materials
- Videotape of Takin’ It to the Streets
- Television
- VCR
- Transparency of F minor pentatonic scale (F A-flat, B-flat, C E-flat)
with transpositions for each band instrument
- F minor blues rhythm background generated from Band-in a Box (Buffalo,
NY: PG Music), or from Nothin’ but Blues, vol 2 of A New Approach
to Jazz Improvisation, Jamey Aebersold Jazz 1971 (Jamey Aebersold
Jazz, PO Box 1244C, New Albany, IN 47151)
- Overhead projector
- Audio-playback equipment
Prior
Knowledge and Experiences
- Students have studied the 12-bar blues form
- Students can play melodies by ear on their instruments
Procedures
Part I
- Tell students they are going to view a videotape about musicians
who make their living performing on the streets. Tell them to pay
special attention clarinetist Doreen Ketchers and her band that performs
jazz on the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans.
- View videotape Takin’ It to the Streets.
- Discuss with students any observations they have about Doreen, her
tuba-playing husband, and their band and music. [31:20--40:08] Accept
reasonable observations, including growing up in a neighborhood that
nurtured music, a family that supported her musical talents, and experience
and training in her high school band.
- Lead students to discuss their observations of Doreen’s clarinet
improvisations. Accept reasonable observations, including playing
melodies by ear, proficient knowledge of scales, and improvising while
drawing from years of musical experience.
Part II
- Tell students they are going to experiment with improvising.
- Start the recorded background track for the blues in F minor. With
a good swing feel, model short blues licks (two-to-four notes maximum
length) using the notes F and A-flat concert. Have students echo them
back immediately in correct tempo with the background music.
- Repeat step 1, using a gradually expanding collection of notes.
Add notes in this order: F, A-flat, E-flat, B-flat, C.
- Ask students to improvise softly as a group to the background track
using licks they learned in steps 1 and 2 as a model.
- Have students improvise solos to entire choruses when they feel
comfortable. Then have them “trade fours” or “twos”--that
is, exchange, or trade, two-or four-measure performed solos.
Indicators of Success
Students improvise blues licks using notes from the F minor pentatonic
scale
Follow-up
Have students improvise blues licks in a similar way in other keys.
Teach students various blues tunes by rote. Have them play a selected
tune again and then improvise over the changes, imitating the styles of
various professional blues or jazz performers.
Extension
Have students explore the developments of the jazz form, in New Orleans,
including
artists who were originally from and/or jump started their career in this
city.
This lesson is adapted from Strategies for Teaching High School Band,
compiled and edited by Edward J. Kvet and John E. Williamson (copyright
1998, MENC).
VH1, in partnership with Cable in the Classroom, collaborated with
MENC: The National Association for Music Education to develop this series of lessons.
National Standards for Music Education
- Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
- Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
- Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
- Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
- Reading and notating music.
- Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
- Evaluating music and music performances.
- Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
- Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
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