Cynthia Taggart

Learning to Improvise

All children can learn to improvise musically, given the right music experiences and instruction. And through improvisation they can express their own musical ideas and take ownership of their musicianship. Yet teachers are reluctant to incorporate improvisation into their instruction because they feel unprepared to teach it. Designed for elementary general music as well as middle and high school choir, Learning to Improvise provides hundreds of detailed teaching plans, dozens of songs, and numerous practical strategies and extensions to develop improvisation readiness and skills. Authors Cynthia Taggart and David Potter also provide a pathway for teachers to develop their own improvisational skills through the teaching plans and provided audio recordings. Organized into four parts based on common harmonic functions in major and minor tonalities, this book focuses on developing harmonic audiation, which lies at the core of successful improvisation. It gives students strong models of improvisation and scaffolded opportunities that facilitate success while learning to improvise. In addition to teaching plans, Taggart and Potter also provide extensive lists of popular music and links to recordings for each harmonic function so that teachers can incorporate popular music into their teaching, bridging the gap between classroom music and the music that students encounter in their daily lives. Click HERE to download the free audio recordings. Cynthia Taggart is Professor Emeritus of Music Education at Michigan State University, where she directed and taught in the Early Childhood Music Program of the Community Music School, served as Chair of Music Education and Associate Director for Graduate Studies, and taught courses on music in early childhood, elementary general music, measurement, research, and the psychology of music. She is a past president of the Gordon Institute for Music Learning (GIML) and the College Music Society. David Potter is the Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music Education at the University of Wisconsin–Superior, where he founded the university’s community music school. He teaches undergraduate courses in music learning methods, ear training, and songwriting, as well as early childhood and elementary music classes at the community music school. He is an active researcher and clinician whose interests include creativity, improvisation, and the development of audiation.