"Play freely"
Two tiny but powerful words
On Monday I interviewed Professor Karen Schlimp, author of Impromosaik. It was great, she had so much wisdom to share. I’m still editing the video, I’ll post it soon, but before that I wanted to share something we talked about that reminded me of you guys, my readers.
A topic that often comes up in the Piano Creativity survey is how to help reluctant students to feel comfortable when improvising.
Here’s a great tip:
Don’t use the word improvise.
Use the words “play freely”.
“Play freely” are words that are free from pressure, free from expectation, free from “right and wrong”. They are simply free. Your student can do whatever they want.
That might sound like a recipe for chaos, but in my experience it’s the exact opposite: “play freely” liberates your student to play more confidently, which increases their inventiveness.
The instruction “improvise”, on the other hand, can induce fear. Many students instantly tense up when they hear the word. They associate improvising with being on the spot, with “good” and “bad”.
Here’s an example of how using “play free” can work in practise.
Next time you’re teaching a student a scale, go through the fingerings and explain the tonic (I explain it as the “home note”). Play an accompaniment with them as they practise (here’s a great resource for scale accompaniments). Once they’re confident with the pattern, say:
“play freely using those notes”
Continue playing the accompaniment and let them experiment for as long as they’re enjoying it. As they play, you might want to encourage them whenever they do something you find interesting, but in general it’s best to just let them explore and have fun. Try to react to what they are playing: speed up or slow down with them, follow their articulations, copy some of their melodic motifs. Let them bring the piece to an end.
What’s crucial is that we put them in charge, and we follow them. Students, especially younger students, really love this.*
At the end, you might want to say “we were improvising, wasn’t that fun?”
*NB: In free play, some students will experiment with what we might diplomatically call “very loud dissonance”. Like many teachers, I really don’t love that soundworld but so long as they’re not damaging your piano or disturbing your neighbours, I encourage you to just follow their lead. They will love that you’re willing to break the “it must sound nice” rule and usually they quickly get the dissonance/loudness out of their system.