A fiction-inspired collaborative composition lesson plan

Amie Webster's lovely idea is a great way to finish off the school year

If you’ve not already broken up for the holiday, here’s a fun little creativity project you could use to round off your student’s learning year.

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know several inspiring people through this project, one of whom is Amie Webster. Amie holds the Royal Conservatory of Music’s demanding ARCT qualification and when she’s not teaching in her busy studio in BC, Canada, she shares passionate videos about contemporary piano music on the Motif Music Studios YouTube channel.

In the video below Amie presents an idea for a collaborative composition/improvisation that teachers can do with students.

As you watch (or read her notes at the bottom of the page), note how Amie asks her students for their ideas, discusses how they could be realised, then creates a compositional framework that leaves space for the student to create their own music. Besides leaving them something creative to work on over the summer, it has several other advantages, which I explore below.

Why Amie’s approach is so smart

The fact that Amie and her student take it in turns to take creative lead of the project may seem an unfamiliar process, especially if you’ve had classical training.

In actual fact the process mirrors how many professional composers work, whether that be in the major film music composition studios or in jazz groups. I’ve actually been doing it recently in my creative work with some composer colleagues and it’s a remarkably powerful approach.

Moreover, Amie’s approach has particular pedagogical value:

• it will be particularly useful when working with students who struggle with structure and harmony, which is a common problem with elementary students

• the approach allows the student to observe the teacher modelling their compositional process in real life, apprentice-style. This can be a powerful learning experience

I’m currently working through Amie’s format with one of my most imaginative students* and it’s a very promising activity. I encourage you to try it out!

* “Imaginative” is something of an understatement. My students character requests include a platypus called Steve and two papayas—yes, the fruit—called Boris and Donald.

---

Amie’s explanation:

As a fun starting place for improvising or composing together, I check in with a student to see if they have an idea of a fictional character or a character card that we can use as a starting place.

Some of mine are avid collectors of game cards and others were inspired by fictional characters in books they have enjoyed. These themes gave us endless ways to create music that represented their chosen character. If the student has a visual of the character, they bring that to the lesson and explain the character to me. I’ve also loved getting to know more about each students through this activity. They explain the character qualities and we chat about ways we might be able to represent that in the music.

I was especially impressed with the descriptive ideas students came up with and it was a fun challenge to then turn it into music.

This improvisation piece was inspired by a student’s fictional character based on the Wings of Fire book series. My student is a talented artist and had drawn her own character in the style of this graphic novel.

We called our piece, “Ode to Scorpian, the Sandwing Princess”. This dragon princess was fierce, beautiful and brave and our task now was to find notes fitting for such a iconic character and dragon leader.

My student challenged me to write a piano solo of my own with these ideas, but I decided instead to think through “ingredients” that we could use to place some fun parameters that could lead us into endless opportunity for creativity together and I hope these ideas might get you started on some fun explorations as well.

I loved the sounds of this piece with the use of the damper pedal and we explored it using the ‘ingredients’ in various orders. It can be helpful to not only think of the notes that are played, but also where you might like to leave spaces for lingering sounds as well.

Here’s some notation to give you a visual guide to how Amie presented it to her student.

Thanks so much to Amie for sharing this idea. Follow her on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook.