I still remember the day in 6th grade when my first guitar teacher taught me my first scale. As with most guitarists, it was the A minor pentatonic scale at the 5th Fret of the guitar. 

After I learned the scale, the next week he said now improvise with the scale. I was bewildered and not sure what to do, so he said just use the scale as a framework to play melodies over this chord progression. Wow, the flame had been lit, and I have enjoyed and studied improvisation ever since.

Rethinking Teaching Musical Improvisation

In my own teaching practice, I strive to instill in my students the same interest, if not love of improvisation, that my teacher instilled in me. Recently, I have rethought how I approach and teach improvisation. My insights and ideas were profoundly influenced by a class that I took in graduate school. The class was titled ME638-B1 Rock Band Performance & Pedagogy at Boston University. It was an eye-opening experience that has had a tremendous impact on my teaching pedagogy.  

The teachers of this seminar were Drs. Gareth Dylan Smith, noted scholar and prolific author of articles and books on Popular Music education, and Bryan Powell, also a prolific author and one of the founders of Little Kids Rock and Music Will. Bryan had wonderful methods of teaching important topics and concepts involved in playing popular music through easy and accessible means.

Fundamentally, Bryan's philosophy about music and improvisation was to break music down to its most basic components, not to overwhelm our students. It was this idea that had a deep and profound impact on my own approach to teaching music in general and improvisation in specific.

It is my hope that by sharing some of my new ideas and methodologies about teaching improvisation, it will either spark ideas in you, or encourage you to reflect on your current teaching practice to see in which ways you could possibly improve and refine your methodology for the betterment of your students.

Basic Tenets of This Teaching Approach

Keep it Simple

Start with really basic and easy-to-understand fundamentals, and teach them in bite-sized pieces of information. I have found that by starting slow and small, my students are not overwhelmed with information nor choices. By being comfortable with the new material, students are more likely to jump in and be engaged with the material.

Keep it Relevant

I think it is essential for students to see, hear, and understand the relevance and relationship of what we teach them to their usage in real musical contexts. So, I strongly suggest that you find or create some really fun backing tracks for your students to learn and practice with. Videos of the material in use by professional musicians, that hopefully the students know, is one place where students can see and hear your teaching materials in use in relevant songs by relevant musicians.

Keep it Fun

Of course, in keeping the music you teach relevant in your students’ lives should mean that they will find the material you teach to be FUN & RELEVANT. Even something as simple as the bass line to “Seven Nation Army,” or “Another One Bites the Dust” will get students excited because these are songs that they recognize and, now, can play.

In fact, more than likely, their parents may know the song as well. I intentionally work to find songs that my students know and incorporate them into my daily lesson plans. Riffs from Pop and Rock songs like “Beat It,” “Enter Sandman,” and “Crazy Train” are timeless songs that students still seem to recognize.

Students also love to learn easy current songs by artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, and Ed Sheeran. I have found that even short melodies from TV shows or movies like SpongeBob SquarePants and Pirates of the Caribbean get students excited to learn and have fun in class.

Keep it Safe

I insist that my classroom is a safe and welcoming environment for all of my students to learn and grow. Words like dumb, lame, and stupid are adjectives that are not allowed to be spoken in my classroom.

I also do not allow students to say anything negative about the music, artists, or types of music that their classmates find appealing. Students should be free to express and discuss whatever type of music they like without fear of an off-putting or mean comment from a classmate. This mutual respect makes everyone feel free and encouraged to participate.

Establishing an Improvisation Framework

I believe that teaching beginning improvisation with a tonal organizing framework, such as a scale, is not only valid but is perhaps the best way to teach beginning improvisation. The first thing I teach students is the A minor pentatonic scale.

 

To get the sound of the scale in the students' ears and hands, I like to use a simple but fun backing track that emphasizes the tonality of A minor. I believe it is essential to go slow, introducing only the first two notes. Then after several repetitions, I add a third note, and continue like this until everyone knows a one octave A minor pentatonic scale. We then practice the scale starting on both the lowest root and the highest root, all with an A minor backing track, so we are in this complete sonic environment of A minor both melodically through the scale and harmonically through the harmony of the backing track.

Our First Improv

In beginning to improvise, I also start small and slow. In students' first attempts, I limit students to just the first two notes of the scale, usually 1 to 3 (A and C) or 1 down to 7 (A-G).

Everyone gets a turn, just making their own sounds with two notes of the scale. I encourage them to be as creative as they like with rhythm, articulation, and dynamics.

Call and Response

Call and response is a great way to work with beginning improvisers. One way I like to use it is to play a short phrase with just the first two notes of the scale and then have the students sing back what I played. Next, I will do the same thing, but this time I have the students play the motive back to me. With both exercises, I start with the entire group, and then ask if anyone wants to try it individually.

As we add scale degrees to the pitch collection, my intention is to have them begin to associate and recognize the sounds of the notes of the scale with the respective chord.  In addition, I want students to begin to sense both what it sounds and feels like to play a specific note on their instrument in relation to an A minor chord, progression, or scale.

Technical Facility

Especially with older students, I want them to develop some technical facility with playing the pentatonic scale. So, I will have them play what I call a “Pentatonic Scale Workout” like the one notated here. As we progress as a class, we do this in a variety of keys, all relevant to improvising on the repertoire we are studying.

Making Music with the Pentatonic Scale

To help early learners start to get a better idea of the flow and organization of a solo, I will have them learn a few isolated melodic ideas and then put them together in a short solo.

It is also important to have them listen to solos and to try and sing some basic solos or even parts of songs that will help them hear the relationship between minor scales, minor melodies, and minor chords.

Minor melodies are also a great way to get the sound of minor keys into students' ears. Two very common melodies in a minor key are: "Seven Nation Army" and "Smoke on the Water."

Curtain Call: Closing Thoughts and Reflections

This short article is barely even the tip of the iceberg, but it is meant to offer creative options and a method to which one may approach teaching improvisation even if they have never taught it before.

There is so much more to share, starting with adding the blue note (flatted 5th (Eb)) of the A minor pentatonic scale, but space does not allow for that now.  However, I hope that if nothing else, you find some ideas to try or, at the very least, find in this article motivation to reflect and reconsider your teaching practice.  Remember, a long journey starts with a few small steps, and, in my view, so does learning to improvise.

Reprinted with permission from the New Hampshire Music Educators Association (NHMEA). The original article, published in NH Quarter Notes Vol. 58 No. 2, can be found here.

About the Author

Dave Cosby
Director of Music

As Music Director in the Fine and Performing Arts Department, Dave Cosby believes music is a powerful force for building community. Guided by the philosophy that “anyone can make music,” he helps students develop joyful, meaningful connections to sound, creativity, and collaboration.

David holds a B.M. in Jazz Studies from Rutgers University and an M.A. in Historical Musicology from the University of Virginia. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Music Education at Boston University, where his research explores connections between musical creativity, social learning, and human development. His work has earned national recognition, and he will present at the International Conference of the Association of Popular Music Education in Summer 2025.

Now in his fourth year at Holderness, Dave previously served as Director of Music at Besant Hill School and worked professionally as a jazz musician. His academic and artistic passions lie in exploring the inextricable connections between history, sociology, and creativity that have shaped humanity’s greatest musical achievements.

Outside of the classroom, Dave treasures time with his family, who he describes as “the rocks upon which I feel supported and grounded.” Their love, he says, empowers him to be an active, engaged, and passionate educator who believes deeply in the transformative power of music.