Improvisation Games Over Zoom

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Play Together Remotely — Unmuted!

We can combat the isolation of pandemic music education through creative music experiences. Although we can't hold traditional rehearsals over video conferencing platforms due to latency, we can play music together—unmuted—and have meaningful experiences in real-time. We need to embrace the audio delay as part of the creative process.

Whether you use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, or any other video chat/conferencing platform there will be a delay in audio between participants. Although we can’t hold traditional ensemble rehearsals in real-time or lock into a rhythmic pulse, synchronous music-making is possible! (Low latency platforms like JamKazam, Sonibus, Jamulus allow for playing rhythmically in-sync, however, each musician needs hard-wired high-speed Ethernet and an audio interface)

Improvisation requires us to work within musical limitations, whether a specific tempo, key, chord progression, or form. Now we have a new limitation—latency. We need to understand that there will be a delay, and play/sing in a way that will make sense even as we hear it slightly out of phase. If you're used to always locking into a groove, these frameworks will push you into new territories.

Watch the video presentation for the OMEA conference, or scroll down for resources:

Setup

- Participants need to listen through headphones to hear everyone else and minimize echo and feedback

- Have each musician play a quick soundcheck. If a participant is too loud or too soft, they can adjust their input level in the audio settings, or move closer to/further from the microphone.

- Participants need to enable “Original Sound” on Zoom

- Record the meeting so you can all listen back to the recording, reflect on the results, and come up with new strategies for the next session

Sound Worlds

The Sound Worlds inspired by my time at New England Conservatory working with saxophonist and educator Allan Chase, now chair of ear-training of Berklee. Through musical limitations and deep listening, we can create evocative soundscapes and textures. Below are some of Allan’s structured improvisations, which are well suited for remote playing:

Call and response - (a good way to start with reluctant or inexperienced improvisers at any level):

Take turns being the leader. The leader calls, and the group responds together, either strictly imitating or freely answering the leader (specify which).

Stars - Pointillistic textures with substantial silence around them; short, isolated sounds or small groups of sounds, with long silences before and after them. A high ratio of silence to sound.

Clouds - Relatively sustained, overlapping sounds: floating chords or colors or washes of sound, with the option of silences (space) before and after them.

Forest - Everyone begins together on the leader’s downbeat, each playing a short repeatable (not too high, with breathing space, etc.) ostinato figure in their own tempo. Try to hold your tempo and repeat your figure exactly while listening to how it shifts in relation to the other figures. Listen to the whole group texture, then try to focus on each of the other musicians in turn, never changing your ostinato. The leader stops the group by giving a cut-off, either to all at once or one at a time. This exercise teaches patience and commitment to what you play, as well as listening skills.

Free chorale: Start on a unison and play a slow-moving harmonic choral-like improvisation, with no one emerging from the texture as a melodic soloist. Don’t change notes too often, and try to hear all the pitches as they change. Try this using various scales and modes, then with the chromatic scale.

Learn more from Allan’s Blog.

This inspired me to create more Sound World textures that to work with students of various levels:

THX

A musical impression of the THX trailer from the movies.

• Begin with soft noodling/warm up sounds and gradually transition to a fortissimo concert D over 20-30 seconds

• The noodling sounds and concert D should overlap in the middle

• Gradual crescendo throughout

Factory

Key clicking, knocking, and other percussive sounds

Jungle

Extended techniques

Windstorm

Begin with soft air sounds, crescendo adding rain and thunder sounds, transition back to air sounds

Farm

Barnyard animal sounds

Factory

Imitate traffic and other noisy city sounds

Casino

Rapidy arpeggiate a (concert) C major triad

More Games and Activities

Pentatonic Ostinato

– Teach the ensemble a pentatonic scale (scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, 6)

– One player improvises a short ostinato (continually repeating phrase) using the pitches from the pentatonic scale

– One at a time, players enter with their own ostinatos (no predetermined order)

– Ask players to use a variety of rhythms, phrase lengths, and registers

– Once everyone in the ensemble has entered, players drop out one at a time

Variations

Players can gradually alter and develop their ostinatos

– Ask soloist(s) to improvise over the ostinato

Play My Face

Pin the video of a volunteer conductor. The conductor will make a variety of facial expressions, and the rest of the ensemble play

Musical Signature

– Ask each musician to create a “musical signature”

• Speak their full name while clapping the syllables

• Accent the strong syllables (ba-RACK o-BA-ma)

• Compose a melody to go with the rhythmic framework

• Accented syllables should be the highest pitches of the phrase

– On cue musicians repeated play their signature with space in between.

– A conductor and start and stop individual musicians to create a variety of textures.

Guess the Animal
From Jeffrey Agrell’s Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians

– Divide into breakout rooms, with 4-8 musicians per room

– Each group chooses an animal to express musically and rehearses for 3-5 minutes

– Return to the main session, and each group performs their animal

– The audience tries to guess the animal!

Variations

• Guess the Machine

• Guess the Emotion

Soundpainting

A multi-disciplinary sign language for live composition. Learn more at https://www.soundpainting.com/soundpainting/

Example of Soundpainting performed and recorded over Zoom, featuring Scrambler:

Walter Thompson, founder of Soundpainting, composing a piece, with subtitles for each gesture:

Graphic Scores

Video intro to graphic scores:

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