Abstract
In this exploratory case study, I examined how preservice music teachers (PMTs) developed collective free music improvisation (CFMI) competencies in a teacher training program in Singapore. Nine PMTs participated in the 6-week course, where they acquired CFMI skills following a curriculum derived from improvisation and free improvisation literature. Data obtained through video recordings of course proceedings, field notes, interviews, and surveys were analyzed through the constant comparative method of analysis. Findings revealed PMTs’ learning processes as a 3-part journey based on recurring behavioral traits in each segment. Over weeks of performances, PMTs transitioned from a conservative behavioral state to an increasingly volatile one that challenged socio-musical boundaries, finally establishing unique group identities at the end of their journey. Based on their learning experiences, I provide suggestions to scaffold CFMI training.
Keywords
Music improvisation is vital in music education as it affords musicians creative expression and opportunities to develop musical skills and understanding (Azzara, 2002; Delia-Pietra & Campbell, 1995). It is the spontaneous expression of meaningful musical ideas, foregrounding individualization, interpersonal interaction, being in-the-moment, and is analogous to verbal conversation (Azzara & Grunow, 2006). Countrywide studies on the nature of music improvisation in school music classes revealed it was mostly of a limited form (Gruenhagen & Whitcomb, 2014; Koutsoupidou, 2005). The instruction of improvisation in this setting had three common attributes: (a) a definite path for accomplishing an improvisational product judged on tonal or rhythmic success, (b) limited opportunities for students to manipulate their musical material when improvising, and (c) teacher-directed instructional methods (Hickey, 2009). These attributes tend to inhibit spontaneity, individuality, and creativity, all essential elements of improvisation.
Inhibitions may be overcome if students are allowed to improvise freely, engaging with diverse hybrid of styles and idioms crafted with whatever tools, skills, and experiences the improviser has, who may vary styles and techniques in response to the moment-to-moment performance situation (Ng, 2014). It is unbounded by established musical traditions, procedures, and styles, rather “striving instead for experimentation and countering hierarchical musical structures and music-making contexts” (Kanellopoulus, 2011, p. 118). Defining such improvisation as “free” does not discount the latitude of freedom given to players within existing improvisatory traditions such as jazz. However, it holds obligations to a specific extant musical tradition and its associated technical and stylistic demands, whereas in free improvisation, the rules of music-making during performance may be changed, or invented, in response to real-time circumstances and personal factors including thoughts, feelings, and technical skills.
Free improvisers who perform together must constantly make real time attempts to understand each other’s musical intentions to respond and sustain musical congruence. This foregrounds spontaneous and individualistic musical interactions evolving within the changing contexts of music-making. Collective free improvisation may therefore be conceptualized predominantly as a socio-communicative endeavor (Ng, 2019a). The communicative interplay where free improvisers decide when to play, what to play, and when to keep silent based on moment-to-moment negotiations during performance compels them to constantly strive to understand each other’s communicative patterns.
Value of collective free music improvisation in music education
Due to the predominantly socio-communicative nature of collective free music improvisation (CFMI), performers develop their social relationships and identity as they construct music and its meanings through socio-musical interactions (Burrows, 2004; Sansom, 2007). These interactions develop communicative skills as players converse with fellow improvisers through music, an endeavor paralleling verbal dialoging (Sutton, 2001). Through CFMI, players may converse with different musical genres and skills and engage in reflexive exchanges, which mediates unequal conversations between diverse improvisers (Lange, 2011). Free improvisers may also develop shared understanding as they strive for understanding through communication (Canonne & Aucouturier, 2016) and reconcile their musical differences (Van der Schyff, 2013).
In schools comprising students from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds and who possess disparate musical preferences and competencies, these educational benefits have ramifications. Firstly, CFMI enables students to interact and make music collaboratively despite their musical differences. Secondly, it allows them to communicate and express themselves with any preferred musical languages and resources at their disposal, which makes music-making personally meaningful. Finally, CFMI may encourage diverse students to negotiate and reconcile their differences by actively listening and responding to fellow players in a socially appropriate manner.
Need for study and research purpose
Given CFMI’s potential contributions to music learning, teachers should explore its effective incorporation in school music curriculum. However, current lack of CFMI pedagogical training and research impedes their ability to deliver such programs. In Singapore, educational research specific to free music improvisation is very limited. Additionally, free improvisation was not offered as a core module to preservice music teachers (PMTs) in Singapore’s teacher training college, National Institute of Education (NIE).
To prepare teachers to teach free music improvisation, they should be given opportunities to experience it themselves (Hickey, 2015). They need to experience acquiring CFMI competencies to enable its effective incorporation in their curriculum. Therefore, I initiated a CFMI teacher preparation course in NIE to examine PMTs’ learning processes as they acquired CFMI competencies. The research questions were:
1) How did PMTs develop CFMI competencies in the free improvisation course?
2) How could CFMI training be scaffolded as informed by PMTs’ learning journey?
Through this study, I intended to address two gaps that impeded Singapore teachers’ ability to conduct CFMI classes—lack of CFMI pedagogical training and lack of research on CFMI learning processes to inform how such training could be supported.
Methodology
This qualitative case study (Stake, 1995) was conducted in early 2019. Ethics approval was obtained from my university’s Institutional Review Board before research commencement (approval code: IRB-2018-09-043).
Participants
The participants were nine PMTs in their final year of study at NIE. Adrienne was in primary education whereas the rest were in secondary education. Referencing written surveys and interviews conducted before course commencement, they were inexperienced improvisers willing to learn CFMI and conduct free improvisation lessons in their future classes. They had completed music and music education courses in Western music theory, world musics, popular musics, music technology, music pedagogy, and music curriculum planning. In addition, they were further exposed to the musical practices of Western and non-Western cultures in the form of electives such as Band and Gamelan. They were also trained in at least one instrument, attaining at least Grade Eight certification under the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music examination board. Table 1 provides more information.
PMTs’ primary instruments, musical exposure, and instruments used in the CFMI course.
At course commencement, they formed two groups. Abril’s group also comprised Andy, Chloe, and Henry, while Adrienne’s group also included Indra, Jared, Megan, and Valerie (all pseudonyms). I served as course facilitator given my prior experience as a practitioner, educator, and researcher in free music improvisation (e.g., Ng, 2014, 2019a, 2019b).
Procedure
The CFMI course was a core module PMTs had to complete in their final year. Preceding course commencement, they were briefed about the research aspect embedded within the course. They were given the option to participate as well as withdraw from the research at any time. As their participation only determined whether their data will be recorded and used for research purposes, their decision to participate will not affect their course attendance.
Following this, I surveyed and interviewed them to obtain information on their musical background and disposition to better understand their actions and behaviors when analyzing data. The course itself comprised six 3-hour CFMI sessions conducted over 6 weeks. The course curriculum, designed specifically for this study, is based on my literature review on CFMI as a socio-communicative endeavor (Ng, 2019a). Table 2 delineates the general flow and format of the course.
General flow and format of the CFMI curriculum.
The curriculum takes reference from Hickey’s (2009) recommendation to develop an improvisatory disposition in students by beginning from the unstructured end of Pressing’s (1988) 5-approach continuum to allow them to freely improvise in open-ended contexts before moving toward more skills-oriented learning over time, even as they consistently revisit improvisation as a free and learner-directed activity. In each session, I alternated between providing informal community spaces to allow PMTs to freely explore CFMI, and using more formal teaching approaches to introduce learning concepts that may help develop their free improvisational skills. I labeled this alternation between informal and formal pedagogies Context Setting, Focus Setting, and Focused Practice, which formed the general structure of most sessions.
Context Setting served as a warm-up activity where PMTs set their own performance contexts and improvised collectively and freely in informal learning settings. In Focus Setting, I formally introduced one of the three CFMI enablers to help them develop their free improvisational skills. These enablers, derived from my literature review (Ng, 2019a), were categorized under Personal Musical Language, Shared Understanding, and Socio-Musical Interactive Skills. One enabler was foregrounded in each session. For example, I introduced Monk’s (2013) interactional strategies for collaborative improvisation as a possible way to develop their group interactions in Session 3. In Focused Practice, they improvised in groups while more consciously developing the foregrounded enabler in informal learning settings. This was followed by a formal class performance, which served to consolidate their learning. Each session ended off with a focus group discussion, where they reflected on their learning experiences.
Data analysis
Data collected comprised written surveys, audio-recorded interviews, field notes, and video recordings of all course proceedings. Data obtained from course proceedings and interviews were transcribed. For transcriptions of PMTs’ performances, I recounted salient aspects of their playing through live and video observations. Constant comparative method of analysis (Glaser, 1965) guided the research analysis. My analytical processes were informed by the method’s four stages: (1) comparing incidents applicable to each category, (2) integrating categories and their properties, (3) delimiting the theory, and (4) writing the theory (Glaser, 1965).
In the first stage, I coded each incident in the data in as many categories of analysis as possible, and compared each incident with previous incidents coded in the same category. For example, when I coded an incident in which PMTs established musical roles during performance to facilitate their collective improvisation, I compared this incident with others previously coded in the same category. Through constant comparisons, theoretical properties of the category started to expand to thicken the category’s narrative, including how the established musical roles often comprised melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic roles. As the narrative expanded, I began to write analytic memos to articulate emerging theoretical notions, which informed subsequent coding and comparisons.
In stage two, I began to compare between the properties of different categories. For instance, after discovering that participants established musical roles as a strategy to facilitate their CFMI performances (a category), I began to compare it to other categories of strategies which they adopted to facilitate their performances. Through this process, I discovered that the category on musical roles is related to the category on establishing shared contexts—both categories describe how PMTs improvised together and achieved musical congruence in the absence of extant musical rules by establishing shared performance systems. As different categories synthesized through comparisons, the theory on how PMTs improvised continued to expand.
The previous two stages of analysis melded into stage three—the process of reduction, where a smaller set of higher-level concepts were uncovered by discovering underlying uniformities in the identified categories. To illustrate, following the discovery that both establishing musical roles and shared contexts helped PMTs improvise together through shared understanding of performance conventions, I discovered that all strategies to establish shared understanding could be subsumed under strategies that facilitated PMTs’ performances; an underlying uniformity was discovered between shared understanding and other categories of performance strategies—they were all strategies that facilitated their performances in different parts of their improvisational journey. These higher concepts were delineated by inducting from initial categories. As an increasing number of higher concepts were created and interrelated, they began to map out an emerging framework for the theory. As this occurred, I also became more focused when returning to my data by only considering and analyzing incidents that could contribute to concepts in the emerging theoretical framework. The analysis ended when it could no longer add to the theory’s depth and dimensions.
In stage four, the writing process involved synergizing the coded data, analytic memos, and the theory. I first collated the coded data (excerpts from transcripts), codes, and memos, and organized them under the established categories. As I wrote, content in the memos were summarized, further analyzed, and elaborated as necessary to provide the material behind the categories. These categories became themes that framed my theory on CFMI learning. Higher concepts that relate multiple categories together became master themes.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness was enforced through triangulation, construct validation, face validation, and theoretical sensitivity. Triangulation addresses issues with biased interpretation of data inherent in research approaches adopting a single method, a single theoretical framework, and a single observer (Lather, 1991). In this study, I triangulated data from diverse data sources to discover converging and counter patterns to gain a broader and richer understanding of participants’ experiences. Construct validation prevents drawing conclusions from research that are biased toward existing theories by consistently confronting existing theories drawn from literature with empirical data obtained from actual research studies. I sought construct validation by constantly comparing my a priori understanding of free improvisation literature with emerging research findings.
Face validation verifies whether the research data reflects accurately what it purports to reflect. I invited the PMTs to review my research drafts to ensure my writing reflected accurately their thoughts, feelings, and actions in the course. All concurred with the drafted content and did not request changes. Theoretical sensitivity also adds trustworthiness to qualitative research (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). As a practitioner and researcher of free improvisation with much experience conducting CFMI classes in NIE, I brought theoretical sensitivity to the study by analyzing data based on my expertise in the field. Additionally, due to my dual role as researcher and course facilitator, I sought to reduce response bias by assuring the PMTs that their behavior in the course would not affect their grades, which were instead determined by their lesson plan submissions co-marked by me and a colleague. As this is a PhD study, peer debriefing was also conducted by my PhD supervisor throughout the research process.
Role as facilitator
This section describes my facilitative role in the CFMI course to provide clarity on how my actions may have affected PMTs’ learning processes to address questions on reflexivity. As described under “Procedure,” I created the learning framework and presented learning content to PMTs during the Focus Setting segment. In the Context Setting and Focused Practice segments, I adopted a mostly hands-off approach by letting PMTs work in their groups with minimal intervention from me to observe how they make use of the given learning content to construct their own learning. Through their group explorations and struggles to figure out how to improvise on their own, I sought to understand what scaffolds might be useful in lubricating their learning process. These suggested scaffolds, as informed by their struggles, are presented in a later section, “Implications on CFMI training scaffolds.”
While I did make suggestions to facilitate their learning processes in these group practice sessions, they were rare and light suggestions made as an outsider after hearing the issues they were facing. I was careful not to intrude into their discussion flow or disrupt their group dynamics; my personal experience facilitating creative group projects suggested the need to give learners sufficient space and time to interact amongst themselves and construct their own learning without disruptions to their workflow. To provide more input regarding their learning, I would do so outside their practice sessions, such as during focus group discussions. In these discussions, I would elicit their reflections on their learning processes to help them make conscious understandings acquired in the course. I kept my initial questions very open, generally asking for their thoughts regarding their performances, and then allowing the discussion to chart its own course, prompting them to elaborate further to clarify their thoughts along the way.
The improvisational journey
PMTs’ CFMI journey may be distilled into three segments over the 6-week course (see Figure 1). These segments delineate their improvisational growth, transitioning from a bound to a volatile behavioral state that challenged socio-musical boundaries to establish their group identities. Though the description of the PMTs’ learning journey is segmented for clarity, the actual process, like any other creative endeavors, is messy and haphazard. Nevertheless, the following narrative describes the general flow of their creative processes even as they occasionally fall back on earlier segments’ traits.
PMTs’ CFMI learning journey.
Segment one: Falling back on common pasts and establishing common grounds
In earlier CFMI sessions, PMTs spent most of their time negotiating a common definition of CFMI. By the end of the first session, both groups understood CFMI as improvising freely, and yet collaboratively, within pre-established common parameters:
. . .a mood, or a style which we decide on, and then within that we are free.
I thought the free part was like we had like that big idea of what we wanted, and then we were free to play however we wanted to play.
(Snippets of conversations from group practice sessions, CFMI session 1)
Based on this understanding, they established shared parameters to sustain collective musical congruence while freely improvising. These preset shared contexts were drawn from PMTs’ common past knowledge and include mood, style, narrative, motif, tonality, and structure. For example, in the second CFMI session, Abril’s group explored improvising “freely” in the pop style. The performance, while bound, was also enabled by their shared understanding of pop features, including typical pop chord cycles (e.g., I, IV, V, vi). The established pop parameters created a congenial and safe environment, within which they improvised confidently and comfortably.
During performance, PMTs also established complementary musical roles based on their shared understanding of the musical style adopted. For example, when Jared began his group performance with a 12-bar blues harmonic groove on his electric guitar in the first CFMI session, fellow players entered the performance by filling in musical roles common to the style—Megan with a bassline on the piano, Valerie with a melodic line on the same piano, and Adrienne with a rhythmic ostinato on a drum. Besides musical style, PMTs’ musical roles were also influenced by the affordances of the instruments, their instrumental competencies, and their shared understanding of the instruments’ common musical roles. For example, Abril’s group established musical roles common for their instruments in a practice performance in the first CFMI session: Andy played a live melody on the violin, setting a jaunty mood. Henry then entered the musical conversation with the Cajon, setting the rhythmic groove and directing the tempo of the music with varying rhythmic patterns. Finally, Abril and Chloe joined in on a shared piano, setting the harmonic progression and adding a rhythmic pattern that complemented Henry’s groove.
The creation of musical responsibilities, and in the process their musical relationships with each other, helped them improvise collaboratively within the boundaries of their roles.
Common parameters replacing socio-musical interactions
PMTs’ behavior in these early improvisational attempts also reflected their difficulties striving toward greater freedom as they relied heavily on maintaining shared musical parameters and conventions to sustain group musical congruence. These constraints tended to stunt their real-time musical exchanges and development. They often automated their musical parts and stayed in their established roles within common parameters, unwilling to break out of these comfortable confines beyond limited improvisation. As there was a notable lack of dynamic and evolving interactions between players, their performance soon stagnated.
When shared parameters disappeared, PMTs tended to fall into disarray, unable to cope with the unexpected change, suggesting that their adherence to parameters eclipsed their need to actively interact with each other to jointly evolve their performance in real time. This was especially so when they tried to adhere to parameters that were too limiting, such as improvising over a persistent and domineering motif.
Performing within open-ended contexts
The issue with shared parameters was overcome when PMTs improvised within more open-ended contexts. For instance, Adrienne’s group found more success evolving their music moment-to-moment when parameters were looser: Adrienne begins by playing on the drums a repeated rhythmic motif that ends with a brush of the mallet across the drumhead, suggesting midnight gong rhythms in Chinese period dramas. Jared joins in with a sustained pedal on the electric guitar, followed by Indra with a vocal glissando. Together, they create an atmospheric, mysterious, and haunting scene. Valerie and Megan pick up on the context and build on it by playing discordant note clusters and repeated notes on the grand piano over heavy pedaling. There is a noticeable avoidance of anything tonal and a move into musical soundscapes as they explore. (Group practice performance, CFMI session 1)
The exploratory, open-ended nature of the theme and the lack of tonality, meter, and pre-established styles freed them to perform more spontaneously. The loose context compelled players, in the absence of clear common parameters to guide them, to listen to each other more attentively to improvise collaboratively in real time.
Emerging socio-musical interactions
Another way that PMTs overcame constraining parameters was through more conscious group interactions to allow real-time exchanges to evolve their performance beyond established parameters. For example, Adrienne’s impromptu disruption to her group’s status quo elicited a series of real-time responses from fellow improvisers. The musical form evolved from cumulative decisions made by each player in response to other players: Adrienne interrupts what her group is currently playing with a few abrupt hits on the tambourine, seemingly in jest, eliciting laughter from fellow players. Trills first initiated by Valerie on the piano are soon imitated by Megan at a higher register on another piano, followed by Jared on the electric guitar. Responding to Jared’s trills, Megan plays a series of repeated, crescendo high notes over Jared’s trills to highlight it. Adrienne laughs in recognition of Megan’s playful intentions. (Group practice performance, CFMI session 2)
As the PMTs focused increasingly on real-time communications, they adhered less to pre-established musical contexts to allow their music to evolve more organically through socio-musical exchanges. These interactions were incidental and intuitive, occurring before they were introduced as a CFMI enabler in the third session, suggesting that they are inherent in CFMI. They involve shifts in power and authority as PMTs toggled between being leaders driving performances, and supporters complementing the leader. These role negotiations were enabled through aural, visual, and gestural cues, deployed intuitively during performance.
Segment 2: Emerging fluency and breaking away
In the early CFMI sessions, PMTs reported drawing from prior personal and musical experiences for their performances. For instance, Abril and Chloe identified with easy-listening, relaxing pop piano style, which they attributed to their involvement in church service performances. However, what emerged increasingly as a more important factor that contributed to their performances was the development of socio-musical interactions. They developed greater collective musical fluency as their interactive strategies mature. By the fifth session, all PMTs agreed that socio-musical interactions formed the core of their CFMI practices, influencing their musical behavior more than their prior musical disposition and experiences. Moreover, they felt that, while interacting, their prior musical knowledge and skills were shaped into musical vocabularies contextualized to communicate with fellow improvisers. For example, Adrienne developed frequent use of ascending and descending chromatic motifs in her search for a new way to respond to fellow players.
Emerging fluency
PMTs’ group fluency was increasingly developed as they listened and responded to each other more actively, and familiarized themselves with interactive patterns established over time with fellow players. For Abril’s group, fluid musical conversations were enabled by:
Establishing standard patterns of interacting. One such pattern required a player to hold a long note to invite another player to come in with a musical idea.
Better understanding of fellow players’ communicative signals, such as understanding a dominant pedal as a signal to resolve the performance with a perfect cadence. This rapport enabled them to respond to each other appropriately.
For Adrienne’s group, fluent conversations were enabled by establishing an increasing repertoire of motivic and systemic strategies that lowered the hurdles of improvising together. Motivic strategies involve the use of musical motifs as triggers that invite fellow players’ responses to move their conversation forward. These include:
Using short, repetitive, and catchy melodic motifs that others could easily recognize and respond to through imitation and adaptation.
Using a change in musical motif to indicate a shift to a new musical section.
Systemic strategies involve the use of common parameters that were established as the underlying system to regulate their performance as a group. These include:
Using C major as the common key for ease of improvising together.
Using rhythmic or melodic grooves as stable parameters over which players improvised.
Providing slow-changing and simple chord progressions to give others a foundation to harmonize on and sufficient time to react to the chord changes.
Establishing an orderly system of turn-taking to lead and support. The players would take turns being leaders and supporters, where the leader would initiate a new musical idea and set the musical style for supporters to follow.
Breaking away
As PMTs grew confident improvising collaboratively, they began to take more risks by breaking away from behavioral conventions established in earlier CFMI sessions to venture into unfamiliar territory. They became more willing to work in uncomfortable, risky situations where they sounded less cohesive as a group, and where their performances were more awkward as they tried to respond to unfamiliar musical situations. They reflected that as they broke away from their usual ways of improvising, they were challenged to find alternative ways to respond to unexpected circumstances. In the process, they discovered new sounds and ways of interacting. To illustrate, Abril’s group’s more frequent attempts to challenge established conventions resulted in more accidental sound discoveries, which enriched and rejuvenated their musical conversations: Towards the end of their group improvisation, Abril plays a discordant chord as if to challenge Chloe to break out of the tonal, pleasant musical ambience they have collectively constructed. However, Chloe continues to play tonal melodies in D major. Abril again challenges her group members by moving to other tonalities, playing E major, F major, B minor and other chords in succession, becoming increasingly exploratory. Chloe and Andy try to respond by shifting their tonal centres accordingly. In cases where Chloe does not conform to Abril’s key, they produce accidental tonal palettes that enrich the music with interesting sounds. The performance ends when Chloe and Andy can no longer react to Abril’s exploratory chords. (Final performance, CFMI session 2)
These accidental discoveries were mostly absent in previous performances where they were more bound by shared parameters. At this stage, they seemed more comfortable with dissonances and simply exploring. Their explorations culminated in their final performance in the third CFMI session, where they broke away from their usual performance conventions by experimenting with sound possibilities of their instruments without concern for Western theory or tonality. These comprised the sound of spinning helicopter rotor blades using multiphonics on the tuba, whistling glissandos created by blowing into the tuba’s mouthpiece, glissandos on the violin, and random chromatic runs and arbitrary note clusters on the piano.
Upon reviewing their video-recorded performance, Abril’s group noted their diminished use of common parameters as they became more open to embracing the unexpected and taking risks. Andy reflected that nothing about the performance was pre-planned except how they began, and that the performance “didn’t go how I expected it to,” suggesting its emergent and exploratory nature. Concurring with Andy, Henry noted how he responded in-the-moment based on the way the music evolved, which sometimes deviated from his expectations, propelling him to scramble for a musical response.
Segment 3: Emerging group sound
Over the weeks, PMTs collectively developed certain musical sounds and interactive patterns that they tended to adopt when performing collectively. In the final segment of their improvisational journey, group sound emerged as these sounds and patterns became part of their unique musical identity. Group sound was constructed as each PMT contributed personal sounds that could interact with fellow players socio-musically and situationally. They were signature sounds that arose from an accumulation of their shared understanding, interactive behaviors, and individualistic musical voices that slowly amalgamated into their group identity as they performed collaboratively over time.
Abril’s group sound
For Abril’s group, their group sound was brooding, andante, and in the minor key. It comprised three distinct and independent layers—Andy on the violin, Henry on the tuba, and Chloe and Abril on the treble and bass registers of a shared piano. They tended to play long, non-repetitive, and non-distinctive musical lines simultaneously, such that there were few pauses in their lines to allow other players to interject. As a result, each layer sounded continuous, non-porous, and independent of others, like oil and water. At the same time, each layer sounded rather similar to other layers as all players kept to the shared parameters (e.g., brooding mood) and tried to adapt fellow players’ musical ideas while keeping to their own parts. After their final performance in the course, Chloe confirmed that they had realized their group sound: I think we found our common language. [. . .] Our kind of sound is always. . .kind of cinematic. [. . .] It always ends up like that no matter how we start.
Andy noted that their group sound, while distinct and unique, also morphed situationally with each performance: . . .our group sound is atmospheric. . .there’s a certain similarity but. . .it’s always different also and we never know what is going to happen. (Focus group discussion, CFMI session 6)
Adrienne’s group sound
For Adrienne’s group, a defining feature of their group sound was a porous musical texture that emerged from signature socio-musical interactive patterns recurring over the weeks. The nature of the porous texture may be illustrated with an excerpt from their last performance in the fourth CFMI session: During the performance, everyone seems to be listening acutely to respond to each other. To converse with others, they play short, simple, musical phrases with time gaps in between, inviting other players to respond by filling the time gaps with their own musical ideas. In this way, their group musical texture is porous as players proactively fill in the gaps in each other’s musical lines. No one dominates as they engage in these egalitarian musical exchanges.
From the fifth CFMI session, their group sound gained more porosity as they consciously responded to different players at different points in time during performance, in the process creating a complex communicative network and greater conversational fluidity. Leadership became ambiguous as the leader was the player whom they chose to listen and respond to, at different time points. This interactive pattern enabled group communication on an egalitarian platform where no player dominated, and where everyone was free to contribute to any player’s musical line, resulting in a tightly knit performance.
Implications on CFMI training scaffolds
PMTs’ improvisational journey highlighted tensions between establishing and maintaining shared understanding to sustain group musical congruence, and breaking away toward a freer form of improvisation enabled through real-time interactions. The struggle between the two was a source of anxiety for them throughout the course. Their improvisation journey, rather than being “free,” could be better understood as striving toward freedom and group identity. Their processes bear similarities to Bailey’s (1992) personal account of his free improvisation ensemble, Joseph Holbrook’s journey breaking out of idiomatic improvisation to play freely, from which a set of characteristics and an identity unique to his group emerged. The PMTs’ experiences and feedback, while grounded in this case study, nevertheless provide perspectives and generate ongoing dialog regarding how CFMI learning could be scaffolded in teacher education courses. Below are my recommendations.
Develop shared parameters
Early in the course, PMTs defined CFMI as improvising freely within shared parameters. This shared understanding established a common framework for their groups’ improvisational growth, enabling them to develop their free improvisation competencies collaboratively. As they have done, the course facilitator could encourage student improvisers to explore various shared parameters that can encompass the diverse competencies and personalities of all players to sustain their group musical congruence. Through shared understanding, improvisers may maintain interdependence in a group through shared musical and social conventions, or ground rules, to sustain ensemble cohesion (Sawyer, 2003).
At the same time, students should be alerted to the constraining effect of shared parameters on free improvisation. According to Wilson and MacDonald (2016), collective free improvisers exhibit tendencies toward two broad categories of behavior during performance—maintain status quo by continuing what they are doing, or disrupt what they are doing, such as by initiating a new musical direction. In this study, PMTs tended to maintain status quo by staying within shared performance parameters, which caused stagnation and prevented musical rejuvenation. One way to overcome this issue, as the PMTs have demonstrated, is to set looser parameters to allow sufficient uncertainties during performance to stimulate dynamic, real-time communication between players.
Develop socio-musical interactions
With reduced shared parameters, free improvisers may also focus more on deploying socio-musical interactions to collaboratively evolve their music in real time. In this case study, such interactions were intuitive and formed the core of PMTs’ CFMI experiences from their early improvisation attempts. This finding aligns with literature suggesting that free improvisation foregrounds spontaneous dialogs between fellow improvisers as they respond to one another’s musical stimuli (Niknafs, 2013), and with literature that revealed how musical form emerged through ongoing, situated communicative interactions in free improvisation ensembles (Bailey, 1992; Blackwell & Young, 2004; Canonne & Garnier, 2015).
Thus, it might be prudent to introduce socio-musical interactions at the start of a CFMI course, to be nurtured throughout the sessions. By encouraging conversational opportunities between student improvisers, they may avoid stagnation and generate new ideas to extend their performances beyond pre-established parameters. While student improvisers may structure their practice sessions around developing interactive strategies to improvise collaboratively, these strategies need not be consciously developed all the time. As seen in PMTs’ improvisations, they often emerged naturally. Hence, the course facilitator could enable this intuitive process by reviewing students’ improvisations to make conscious interactive approaches used instinctively and incidentally, and then help them refine the approaches over time.
As indicated by the PMTs, the formal introduction to interactive strategies was useful too; it helped them develop communicative skills more consciously and effectively. Besides Monk’s (2013) improvisational approaches that guided their interactions, strategies devised by PMTs to interact with fellow players (see section under “Emerging fluency”) could also serve as useful ideas to facilitate group interactions in CFMI ensembles. The course facilitator could navigate between facilitating the development of socio-musical interactions as an emergent process, and through the introduction and conscious practice of interactive approaches, to address differing learners’ needs.
Develop personal voices
Toward the end of their CFMI journey, PMTs created individualistic musical and interactive patterns that they adopted when performing in their respective groups, which resulted in their group sounds—collective voices that were an amalgamation of personal musical vocabularies contextualized to interact with fellow improvisers. To facilitate group sound formation, the course instructor may encourage student improvisers to develop personal musical vocabulary and performance behaviors relevant to their group performance situations as they interact. While doing so, they may consider how they are heard in relation to their group members, the way the PMTs developed contextually relevant vocabulary and behavior as they negotiated their individual voices around each other.
Limitations
This study was conducted with nine PMTs from NIE Singapore. The common music training they had was Western-centric, notwithstanding their exposure to different musical cultures. As the research was framed within a specific context, the findings are non-prescriptive and not intended to be generalized. They instead serve to propel discussion on CFMI pedagogy forward, to be explored in further research.
Conclusion
In this case study, PMTs learnt to improvise in a CFMI course based on a socio-communicative learning framework. Their improvisational journey delineated their transition from a constrained behavioral state to an increasingly volatile one that challenged socio-musical boundaries. Their experiences and feedback on this journey provide suggestions on how CFMI courses may be scaffolded to enable free improvisers to grow musically and socially to attain a unique group identity that encompasses individual personalities. It will be worthwhile to conduct further studies to see if subsequent findings reveal similar learning processes and suggest similar learning scaffolds.
Within the scope of this research and in various literature, CFMI was conceptualized as a socio-communicative endeavor. But perhaps all musical performances may be perceived as such? When we listen to music, are we not listening to the interactions between musical lines as musicians perform? When studying a music performance comprising melodic line, bass line, harmony, and rhythm, are we not also trying to understand the relationships between these musical components? Perhaps then, as free improvisers improvise collaboratively and in real-time, they embody these components as live bodies, and in doing so, create relationships amongst themselves, interpersonally as well as musically. This understanding could well rejuvenate music learning in schools and teacher training colleges.
