Feeling the groove: Whole-class improvisation

In the Kingdom of Fife many years ago, a youngish music teacher was well into a lesson on funky drumming in which a room full of 14-year-old students were clapping, grunting and moving to an infectious groove. The door opened and in walked the headteacher.

‘Mr Michael, I want to see you outside.’

Mr. Michael followed the head to the corridor thinking: ‘OK I lost my register again, big deal,’ when the head said: ‘The trouble with you, Richard Michael, is that you get paid to enjoy yourself when the rest of us teachers are teaching Pythagoras, the rain forest and bl***y quadratic equations and you're in there enjoying yourself.’

And with that I was sent back into the classroom, realising that the one weapon I had at my disposal to survive in a typical comprehensive secondary school was rhythm, or as I refer to rhythm – groove. Without it, kids (whether from a privileged background or not) will touch the surface of music but never really get it into it. Here is a guide to how you can introduce pupils to the magical world of creating their own music through jazz.

1. Be rhythmical – stamp and clap (video clip 1)

Having mentored many music teachers over my career, the first thing I find myself saying after observing a lesson is that ‘you cannot conduct a music lesson as if it's a funeral’.

If you can start each lesson with a simple, but infectious, groove that everyone can clap along with, then you have everyone onside and ready to participate in the lesson.

I would suggest you do the following – to a click of one crotchet equals 120:

• Stamp on 1, Clap on 3 until comfortable, then perform three bars, stopping on bar 4 for a bar of silence.
• Stamp on 1, Clap on 2, Stamp on 3, Clap on 4 until comfortable, then perform three bars, stopping on bar 4 for a bar of silence.

This will take time and eventually you are aiming to double that last example and physically wear out the class through exhaustion. (I remember one lad saying to me through a pool of sweat, ‘Haw Sir, this is not gym class!’)

The musical aim behind all the movement is to get your class feeling the backbeat of 2 and 4, which gives what some educators call ‘forward momentum’. Tell them: ‘Don't ever clap on 1 and 3, from now on it is always 2 and 4’.

2. Look rhythmical – the count-off (video clip 2)

Teaching is an art form through which we constantly develop our skills. As music professionals we can judge how a pupil is going to perform from the way they walk on to the stage, and equally the pupils judge us from the moment we walk into the classroom.

Body language is important in conveying our love of music and it can take time to develop a confident, but not aggressive, demeanor through which pupils can feel comfortable.

Here's how to practice this –

Stand in front of a mirror and count off: ‘One, two; a one-two-three-four,’ and reflect.

Does your count-off convey energy and excitement or does it sound like you're counting your change? In all the work I do on the Benedetti Foundation and with my own virtual Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra (around 60 players on Zoom, average age 12) I spend time teaching how to count in with attitude.

3. Move to the groove (video clip 3)

Now's the time to annoy the rest of the school and create controlled mayhem.

Have a selection of music in different grooves cued up on your sound system. Create a playlist from a wide range of styles – a Beethoven scherzo, a Bach gigue, a Beatles hit, a TV theme, anything!

Play the music, stamping on 1 and 3 and clapping on 2 and 4, and then – cut the volume. Indicate for the class to continue trying to feel the groove and then turn the volume back up and check to see if they are in time. This can really focus one of the basic skills in music, which is how to listen.

In my experience, unless challenged, pupils would just slouch in class and display a total lack of energy. My mission was to reverse that process and wear ‘em out through constant movement, which also had the added benefit of keeping me fit!

4. The body drum kit (video clip 4)

To play any instrument requires some degree of independence between hands, feet and maybe lips, and the best way to learn independence is to leave the instruments alone and work at independence of hands, then feet, then hands and feet.

Sit or stand with your right hand on your right leg, your left hand on your left leg, and at around crotchet equals 120, say in a rhymical voice, ‘Right, together, right, together’ and let the class see you do the actions, with your hands coming together on the back beat of 2 and 4. Repeat this at different speeds until it feels comfortable.

Go back to the original tempo and just walk in time. Change the speed as you do so. Now for the fun bit – combine hands and feet without falling over! For some reason it is easier to do this walking than it is sitting, but eventually your pupils will be demonstrating four-way independence of hands and feet.

5. Add vocal sounds (video clip 5)

A bass drum sound is a deep ‘Goong’, a snare drum sound is a short, energetic ‘Kah’ and a closed hi-hat is a short ‘Tch’. It is so easy to sound like a drum kit by just saying ‘Goong tch kah tch’ over and over again, until the groove is secure.

All that happens now is that you add variations, which are the first steps in improvisation.

For me, the cardinal rule is that in order to improvise pitches, you must first improvise just rhythms. It is then a logical step to add pitches to the rhythms.

6. Add fills to a click (video clip 6)

Children are fascinated by technology, it is part of their lives. Explain what a click-track is. Let the pupils understand that nearly everything they listen to will have been recorded with the musicians listening to a click through headphones (suddenly the metronome doesn't seem such an old-fashioned idea after all!)

Most popular music is formed of four- or eight-bar phrases with a ‘fill’ connecting phrases at bars 4 and 8. Demonstrate a three-bar phrase (‘Goong tch kah tch’) for three bars and then perform a fill. I suggest that the first time you do this you make a meal of it and play too many notes and lose the place.

Do it again but make the fill much simpler and less frantic. Ask the obvious question, ‘Which was better?’ Hopefully your class will see that it's where you put the notes that counts, and not how many you play. This is a wonderful opportunity to make the important point that less is more.

Final thoughts

I started my teaching career in Oxted County Secondary School in 1972 with a piano and a record player. There was access to a photocopier that took ages to print one sheet of A4 and the Banda machine left you smelling of meths for days afterwards. When I retired from Beath High School in Cowdenbeath, Fife, in 2007 to follow a freelance career, I left behind a classroom with a full set of iMacs equipped with Logic, a smartboard and any number of keyboards and drumkits. The transformation from 1972 to 2007 was phenomenal and, since then, technology has been in danger of outstripping the brain power to use it!

Since lockdown last March, I have had to learn my way around Zoom and Microsoft Teams, to lead workshops online, to broadcast and do any number of things from my music room in Kirkcaldy that would have been inconceivable to earlier generations. Having delivered a lesson on drumming, you can now call up the great drummers on YouTube and let a class see the technical brilliance of Buddy Rich, watch how Ringo could play a simple groove that made the Beatles sound the way they did, or see first hand how a swing groove is different to a rock groove. And when you get your kids grooving and becoming totally involved in the music, you may find your headteacher saying to you: ‘It's not fair – you get paid to enjoy yourself!’

Richard will be running a weekend's course for church organists and pianists in late March (see address below for details).His guide to jazz piano, his jazz podcasts (containing his rhythm games) and his online resource Beginning the blues can all be accessed at richardmichaelsjazzschool.com for the special lockdown price of £10.