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Improvisation in the Guitar Classroom: Teaching Beyond the Blues Scale

Weed, Andrew Improvisation in the Guitar Classroom: Teaching Beyond the Blues Scale. 2016. Radford University, Thesis. Radford University Scholars' Repository.

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Abstract

As music education has continued to develop in the early years of the twenty-first century, the concept of improvisation has become increasingly prominent in general music, band, choir, and even some orchestra classrooms. This thesis serves two purposes. First, as a defense of classroom improvisation by focusing on how it affects students’ confidence and creativity. Second, to suggest methods based on those already in use in other classrooms that guitar teachers may use in order to incorporate finer aspects of improvisation into their lesson plans. To defend the benefits of improvisation on student confidence and creativity, it is important to define these terms to be measurable. For the purpose of this thesis, confidence will be defined by Nathan Buonviri as the students’ level of comfort with creating music, both on the spot and with time. Creativity will be defined by Andrea Coulson and Brigid Burke as having musical variety (notes, instrumentation, rhythmic patterns, etc.), originality in the context of similar genres, and personal appeal. The theoretical approaches are adapted from scholarly reviewed models that cover beginning and advanced methods of improvisation to find ways to fit classical guitar pedagogy.

Item Type: Thesis
Subjects: M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study
Divisions: Radford University > College of Visual and Performing Arts > Department of Music
Date Deposited: 18 Sep 2017 18:32
Last Modified: 20 Apr 2023 18:43
URI: http://wagner.radford.edu/id/eprint/277

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