Slovenská hudba, Vol. 46, No 2, p.134-142, 2020

The Influence of Professional Experience on the Vocal Improvisational Ability of Vocal and Instrumental Students. An Experimental Study

Do improvisational abilities depend on creative musical thinking, or can they be learnt? This was the principal research question of our experimental workshop conducted with students of musical singing and instrumental students focused only on the performance of classical music. Of eight participants, some already had professional improvisational experience in a rock band. The respondents were asked to perform vocal improvisation by inventing new melodies and rhythms to the well-known pieces Sunny (Bobby Hebb, 1963), Fly Me to the Moon (Bart Howard, 1954), and Imagine (John Lennon, 1971), and to a simple three-chord scheme. The participants found improvising on three chords much more challenging than to popular songs. Moreover, those without professional experience faced considerably greater difficulty. The experiment consisted of two phases, through which we planned to investigate whether the quality of students’ improvisations would improve. They also had the opportunity to practise between the two stages. The instrumental students only showed better results in the second phase. The experiment – carried out using participant observations and evaluated with a scaling method – demonstrated that improvisation can be learnt, but its originality is influenced by the student’s individual ability as well as professional experience.