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“I Feel My True Colors Began to Show.” Designing and Teaching a Course on Improvisation

Ursel Schlicht

Published: 2007-12-03

This article discusses my design and teaching of an interdisciplinary, multi-style course "Improvisation in Music". It discusses fundamental considerations on improvisation and a variety of pedagogical considerations and factors that influenced the course design. After a synopsis of the core elements and topics, each course meeting is described as it happened, and the article concludes with a final analysis of the overall process.

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...partly because I know that’s the only way that we could solve a creative problem [using improvisation with children ranging in abilities] and what doesn’t work is trying to impose a template on the students who are not able to respond to that template.

– Pauline Oliveros (in working with Abilities First)