But happiness doesn’t come through things.  We don’t achieve happiness through anything we can do or have.  Happiness is a result of something much bigger. The wonderful thing about happiness is that it isn’t something we need to earn, purchase, accomplish, or find.  Happiness comes through something we can simply choose to have–joy.

Joy is an attitude.  Joy is a lifestyle.  Joy is something we can choose.  Joy doesn’t result from anything and isn’t a response. Joy is an action.  Joy is something we embody.

George Willis Clarke wrote this lyric in the later part of the 19th century.

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart…
Where?   

Joy comes from deep inside of us–deep down in our hearts.  Joy comes from deep in side of us–deep in our hearts. We can live lives of joy when we recognize and remember our source of joy–the love of Jesus.  And that love–that joy–makes us happy.

And I’m so happy, so very happy.
I have the love of Jesus in my heart…

Don’t look for happiness in things.  Don’t look for happiness as a response.

Find your joy by choosing your joy.  Live a life of joy remembering that Jesus loves you and you’ll find that happiness we all desire.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
(Philippians 4:4 ESV)

How can one get started right away? One of the best ways to beginis simple question and answer phrases. These phrases help us come up with simple ideas and we can easily begin to improvise. Many students are surprised how fast they can go from freezing up and not knowing what to play to being able to easily improvise simple musical phrases. This is a great starting place that can lead to many other types of improvisation.

The simplicity of that first idea is very important.  Let’s take an opening idea of a song we all know.  Let’s take the tones:  1 – 1 – 5 – 5 – 6 – 6 – 5 such as in the song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.   This is a simple melody that asks a question.  We want to answer that question with the familiar 4 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 2 – 2 – 1, but I don’t want that answer.  There are countless other answers we could try.  These simple questions and answers are our first step in learning to improvise.

It is important to celebrate our first attempts and keep trying over and over again. One thing that can help us is to understand why the first part of the phrase seems to be a question and needing an answer while the second part of the phrase seems to answer and gives us more of an ending–something final.  In a musical scale, each note can play a specific role.  With these questions and answers I will highlight the 1 and the 5.  The 1 is what we call the “tonic.”  This is the root of the key we are in.  When we end on this note, our ear easily understands that the phrase is completed.  Not all phrases need to begin and end on tonic, but for this exercise, this is a great way to start and create some great sounding phrases.  When we end a statement or phrase with a note other than 1, it gives us an unfinished feeling.  That unfinished feeling is what we’re referring to as a question.   Any note other than 1 can lead us to that question feeling, but the 5 has a special role in this.  The 5 is what we call the “dominant” and it helps to define the key we are in and leads us to the tonic.  A question phrase can end on any note other than 1, but in these first attempts, choosing 5 will guarantee you some great sounding phrases.

Now that you have improvised your first answer phrase, try to make several different answer phrases.  There are many variations that can work great.  You can try some other songs as well.  In a song like The  Farmer in the Dell or Happy Birthday to You rhythm can help us create some great sounding answers.  Imitate the rhythms in the first phrase while creating an answer that is different than the traditional phrase that follows.

As you get more and more comfortable, start to involve harmonies and chords to make this exercise fun and creative.  When answering becomes too easy, try creating questions to the existing answer phrases in melodies and eventually begin to create question and answer phrases of your own.

It is important to not write these question and answers down before playing them. In this exercise, we want to develop the ability to create and express an appropriate question and/or answer on the spot without writing and thinking.  Simply expressing ourselves. This will help us develop melody writing skills as well, but we’ll get much more out of this if we don’t write it down before we play.

Questions and answers are one of the easiest ways to be introduced to improvisation. A musician doesn’t have to be very experienced to be able to do these simple phrases and it helps us develop basic improvisation skills early on.

Give it a try and start improvising!

While lack of time is probably a very common reason, I believe an even more common excuse why improvisation is not taught is the teacher’s own comfort level with improvisation. As teachers, we teach what we’ve been taught. If we haven’t been taught improvisation well in our own studies, we feel unequipped to adequately teach the skill to our students. In turn, we pass on the baton missing these skills from generation to generation.

But isn’t improvisation a more modern technique–perhaps something reserved for jazz and pop music? Many people think of it in this way, but in reality, improvisation has played a major role in music throughout the centuries.  Many people would be surprised to learn that the concept we have today that music must be played exactly as the composer’s written score says is really more of a 20th century thing. Improvisation was an important part of music history especially through the Baroque and Classical eras of music.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe there is a distinct value in learning music the way the composer intended.  If we are to properly improvise on material written in the Baroque era, we must learn the proper way to play this style. This can best be accomplished by carefully learning a piece exactly as the composer’s written score says. Especially with many of today’s fine editions, we can learn the sometimes subtle differences between eras and performance styles by reading and playing what is printed on the page. Learning a style is important whether we play classical or jazz music.  Learning a score well enables us to do this.

While learning a score properly is a very important thing, this does not take away any of the importance of learning to improvise. Think about this in terms of language.  To master a language, I need to be able to read it and I need to be able to speak it. Learning to read music and playing from a score is a very important part of communication, but being able to express myself and carry on a conversation is just as important.  In music, improvisation is this expressing and conversational part of communication.

Improvisation helps us express the vocabulary we are building by reading. Improvisation helps us to understand music by helping us to recognize our vocabulary and even build on this. Improvisation unleashes creativity and helps us unleash our own voice in communication.

So, how can the music teacher and music student get started with improvisation. One of the first things is to eliminate any fears we have.  One of the greatest fears most musicians have with improvisation is that fear of being “wrong.”  If we’ve never been unleashed to be creative in this way, fear of wrong is a common response.  What do I do? Where do I start? What if it doesn’t sound right? What if…?

The first thing I tell any improvisation student is the simple fact that in improvisation there really is no “wrong.”  There are many things that are better and of course we want to strive for what works best, but the only possible thing that we could even call “wrong” is an answer of no response–not trying, freezing up–the fear of even starting.

Another fear I try to eliminate is style.  For a student beginning improvisation, I want to take away any rules that will stifle creativity.  Eventually, we’ll want to learn some rules.  If my goal is to improvise an appropriate cadenza for classical era concerto, I certainly need to know the style of that era.  This is just as important in contemporary styles as well. But, for the student getting started with improvisation, we don’t worry about style.  I want them to express their own voice.

We start with a simple idea.  Simplicity is so important. The idea may be melodic or rhythmic.  It may not contain more than a few notes, but it is our first step and we need to celebrate that step. Sometimes a student thinks that couldn’t be all there is to improvisation.  They want to make it more. They start criticizing their first effort.  My goal as a teacher is to help them recognize that their first improvisation–their first step is so important and is something that we need to celebrate.  First steps lead to second, third, and fourth steps.  With each step–with each new try–we learn something more about communicating with our own voice through music. With each subsequent step, we can be challenged to improve and do things better, but most importantly, with each new step we are expressing ourselves–conversing with musical notes.

So, what is your next step in improvisation?  What is your next step in being able to communicate with music?

We first tried this around Christmas. Here is a short sample of a recording Lucas and I made last weekend. Lucas is 12 and in 7th grade.

The city of Bath has been welcoming visitors for centuries. The three hot springs mad it a sacred spot in ancient Roman times. The city was very prosperous in in the Medieval period and built with stately Georgian architecture and laid out in stately avenues. In the 18th century, a vast complex of baths from the Roman era were re-discovered and Bath became a luxury resort community. With this heritage of luxury and prosperity, it is one of the most beautiful spots on the British Isles.

This is where Folliot Pierpoint was born. After studying at Cambridge University, he returned to his hometown. It was the beauty all around him that inspired him to write a hymn of thanksgiving to God.

For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to thee we raise

This our grateful hymn of praise.
For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon and stars of light,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above,
Pleasures pure and undefiled,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For each perfect gift of thine,
To our race so freely given,
Graces human and divine,
Flowers of earth and buds of heaven,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For thy Church which evermore
Lifteth holy hands above,
Offering up on every shore
Her pure sacrifice of love,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.
Folliot Sanford Pierpoint (1835-1917)

Each stanza thanks God for a different kind of beauty and concludes with the words, “Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.”
Hebrews 13:15 reads, “Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.”

What are you thankful for? Look around you? What is beautiful that you can thank God for? Who is near you or in your life that you can thank God for?

Think about what you are thankful for and then express it to God. Perhaps you can even add to Pierpoints stanzas of thanksgiving. And then, as Pierpoint himself did, conclude your expressions of thanksgiving with that allusion Hebrews 13:15:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

There was a pastor who served in some of the leading Methodist churches in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania known as the “Sunshine

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?  Is the glass half empty or half full? The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having “hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view.”

The hymn that Graeff is best known for begins with a simple question and answers that question with the answer that can give us all hope and confidence about the future.

Does Jesus care?

Yes, He cares… I know my Savior cares.

It is simple faith–simple truth–simple hope–but key to confidence for our future.

Jesus does care.  1 Peter 5:6-7 reads:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.

God cares!  God cares so much for each of us that He sent His only Son (Jesus), that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  (John 3:16)

Jesus cares!  Jesus cares so much that though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant…He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  (Phil 2:5-8)

Go out and share the sunshine.  Go out and be happy and joyful knowing that, “Oh Yes, He cares, I know He cares!”

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained
Too deeply for mirth or song,
As the burdens press, and the cares distress,
And the way grows weary and long?

Refrain:
Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares,
His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares.

Does Jesus care when my way is dark
With a nameless dread and fear?
As the daylight fades into deep night shades,
Does He care enough to be near?

Does Jesus care when I’ve tried and failed
To resist some temptation strong;
When for my deep grief there is no relief,
Though my tears flow all the night long?

Does Jesus care when I’ve said “goodbye”
To the dearest on earth to me,
And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks—
Is it aught to Him? Does He see?

Frank E. Graeff (1901)

Have a very blessed Christmas! Here are some links to a few Christmas music videos.

http://www.fischermusic.com/keysofinspiration/?p=287

http://www.fischermusic.com/keysofinspiration/?p=266

http://www.fischermusic.com/keysofinspiration/?p=257

http://www.fischermusic.com/keysofinspiration/?p=243