I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of creativity. When I was younger, this stemmed mainly from my personal belief that I was not creative. In my teenage mind you were either creative or you weren’t, and there wasn’t a lot you could do about it. Creative people were artistic, extroverted, fascinating people. More specifically, creative musicians could compose, improvise, sit down at the piano and just play whatever came into their minds. I was bookish, academic, and rubbish at art. I played Classical music, but only when I had the music in front of me. NOT my idea of a creative person.
As I got older, I started to question this long-held belief. What if creativity wasn’t just an elusive skill that you were either born with or you weren’t? Was is possible that it was something that could be learnt and developed over time? Was it possible that even someone like me could learn to be creative? As a piano teacher, could I teach my students how to compose and improvise?
These questions eventually became the starting point for my Masters dissertation, where I carried out an investigation into the use of improvisation in piano lessons in the UK (download the pdf here). I was interested in finding out who taught improvisation and who didn’t, and, more importantly, why. Along the way I discovered a lot about the benefits of improvisation, the barriers teachers experience in teaching it, and ways of getting started in developing this skill. Over the next few posts I’m going to share some of these discoveries with you, starting with a brief look at the history of improvisation in piano teaching.
By the end of this series, I hope you will be convinced of the importance of developing this skill in our students and that you’ll go away with some practical ideas of how to get started!