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Improvisation
Сказка "Репка"
It is worth starting to practice improvisation around the end of the first year or at the beginning of the second year of learning to play the instrument.
Children receive improvisation tasks in group theory lessons, but you can check and work on them in individual lessons, with each student separately. When the little guys go through some technique, it is advisable to work it out at home.
After all, what is improvisation ... When we want to learn how to improvise on an instrument, we must be fluent in various techniques, keep them in our "pocket" so that we can pull them out and use them on occasion.
Improvisation is the first version, you cannot stop, correct, replay. Composition is the best version to be written down, learned and memorized.
In the lesson, you can show the technique, and at home you need to play through the versions. We do not set homework as an order that's to be carried out. It is much more effective to suggest: whoever wants to, let her or him play at home. In the next lesson, there is always going to be at least one person that tried. We go through it, discuss, praise with the whole group.
And then everyone prepares for the next lessons.
And it all started like this: When I was 10 years old, I got the task to compose variations on the theme of Tchaikovsky's "Old French Song". And this is what happened:
Relay races
We improvise in different textures and genres. First you need to come up with a chord progression, decide on the genre, what it means, which texture to choose, and then play with the melody.
Chord progressions (in different textures)
Improvisation on Varlamov's "Waltz" theme.
The girls changed the texture of the accompaniment, added episodes and this is what happened:
"The Enormous Turnip" folktale.
Little lovers of the classics grew up and became big lovers of musical improvisation.
There are also other ways to learn to improvise - see more on the expanded page.
Playing by ear
The ability to play by ear should go in parallel (simultaneously) with the ability to improvise, this is a prerequisite.
With small ones (in the prep group), we sing a lot of tunes using notes, sometimes repeating after the teacher, and sometimes in the form of a short dictation.
"Old French Song". Tchaikovsky.
You need to play by ear using two hands right away. It is wrong to play the melody first, and then the accompaniment. We begin to learn to play by ear in the theory group by singing dictations. (Unlike traditional music theory approach, we do not write down dictations in the lesson - it takes a lot of time, during which you can sing 4–5 dictations).
But you can then suggest at home, from memory, to take some dictation, make up an accompaniment and play it using some genre. Make a "waltz" or a "barcarole", etc.
Children who have sung through many dictations during the year, play easily by ear.
This is Chen - she plays any repertoire by ear, in any style, including the classics.