Introduction to the Series of Lessons

Concert Orchestra is an instrumental string ensemble comprised of sophomores,

juniors, and seniors at Okemos High School. It is one of three string orchestras;

Freshman and Philharmonic orchestras are also available for students. Freshman is

only for freshmen, Philharmonic is audition-based and plays the most advanced

repertoire, and Concert Orchestra is a non-audition ensemble that works at a slower

pace than Philharmonic.

Before my series of lessons in fulfilment of the Student Teaching Portfolio, the

current students of Concert Orchestra as a group had never once learned the

pentatonic scale or improvised. They have, in the past, composed for pop music cover

projects. Improvisation in the classroom was an entirely new concept to the students. A

small handful of the students improvise outside of Concert Orchestra, one student in

particular plays guitar in Okemos High Schools jazz ensemble and takes regular jazz

improving lessons. Students in Concert Orchestra have learned all twelve key

signatures, and have practiced and been tested on major and minor scales up to four

sharps and flats. The class regularly uses the term and concept of scale degrees,

which easily facilitated teaching the pentatonic scale in both major and minor keys. For

two months now, Concert Orchestra has rehearsed Red Rhythmico by Kirt Mosier, a

piece with audible jazz and blues influence written in g minor pentatonic. The piece has

a section for orchestral vamp and soloists, so the class in familiar with the performance

concept of vamp and solos that are written to sound improvised.

Across the series of three lessons, students will learn:

 How to identify the pentatonic scale of any major and minor key

How to compose a simple bass line using only the pentatonic scale

How to improvise using the pentatonic scale

To identify the length of a vamp

In this series of lessons, students will be engaged the creation, performance, and

assessment of music. Improvising is creating music, and every lesson of the series

includes individual student improvisation. In the second lesson, students will

video-record their groups performance of a bass line they compose (create) and

individual improvisation. Students will be able to assess tonal and rhythmic patterns

from the pentatonic scale that I model. In every lesson, students are able to observe

and assess the improvisation of their classmates, and learn from others musical ideas

as they learn to improvise.