Self Reflecting on My Approach for Delivering Community Based Improvisatory Music Events
My professional practice as a musician is facilitated by the work I conduct as a composer, performer and pedagogical teacher. Informed by wider research and academic studies relating to improvisation, I will review my current pedagogical practice as a means of acquiring new approaches for my monthly musical improvisation event. This essay aims to analyse my current practises through reflective writing and autoethnography. The reflective writing and first-hand quantitative and qualitative data will also act as a vehicle for finding congruent and discursive perspectives within the practise of improvisation, allowing me to reflect on my own work and synthesise its professional context and social value.
Literature Review: Improvisation Pedagogy
Education philosophers have observed a lack of social engagement within teacher-proof, direct instruction pedagogy and the inherent flaws prevalent in this style of dissemination. It is evidenced that students do not gain an engaged and informed understanding when teachers are reading from scripted curriculum (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014, pg. 131). Harris and Crozier (2000, pp. 27-33) explain that an empathic relationship established with positive rapport and appraisal engages students most effectively and this interaction between teacher and student requires an element of improvisation in a sense, dealing with the students’ needs as they appear, or changing the direction of study to increase student motivation.
The role of teacher is crucial in teaching improvisation as students might not have the capacity to reflect critically on their own practice. The teacher can posit the student’s work within their pedagogical framework, offering immediate feedback and setting clear, achievable goals (Doerschuk, 1984, pg. 52). Shevoc’s research (2018) contradicts Doerschuk’s research, providing evidence that suggests students are more confident in their improvisations when they are in a criticism free environment. Shevoc states that meta-feedback from the performance environment is more beneficial than peer-criticism, although it should be noted that his research pool were all undergraduate students who have had extensive musical training and not musical novices who might not be armed with tools to critically self-reflect on their practice. On evaluating a student’s practice, Custodero (2010) explains it is necessary for the teacher to listen to their students’ playing in an effort to understand why they are making their decisions in the improvisation process. Wall (2018, pg. 132) explores this notion further, suggesting that “without teacher direction, young improvisers can make pedagogical and music making decisions relevant to their interests”. Wall believes that the teacher should position themselves as a “collaborative leader” (Sawyer 2007), operating as a peer rather than a boss, and through joint-attention learning, allow students to develop an understanding of their voice.
Csikszentmihalyi’s research identifies the parameters of the self-actualization process within leisure activities and establishes the concept of flow (Driver, Brown & Peterson, 1991). Hytönen-Ng’s work (2016) accumulates qualitative research on this phenomenon, documenting the emotional responses of participants who have experienced this phenomenon through improvisation and addresses other factors which have an impact on achieving this state of psychological conditioning (motivation, emotionalism, professionalism, collectivism, spirituality, audience, context). These ideas seem to be congruent with Maslow’s research into peak experience, stating the ideal psychological state is to become “more whole and unified, more unique and idiosyncratic, more alive and spontaneous, more perfectly expressive and uninhibited, more effortless and powerful, more daring and courageous (leaving fears and doubts behind), more ego-transcending and self-forgetful” (Maslow, 1954, pg. 164). Csikszentmihalyi establishes the conditions of the flow experience as so:
Goals are clear - One knows at every moment what one wants to do
Feedback is immediate - One knows at every moment how well one is doing
Skills match challenges - The opportunities for action in the environment are in balance with the person’s ability to act
Concentration is deep - Attention is focused on the task at hand
Problems are forgotten - Irrelevant stimuli are excluded from consciousness
Control is possible - In principle, success is in one’s hands
The sense of time is altered - Usually it seems to pass much faster
The experience becomes autotelic - It is worth having for its own sake
(Csikszentmihalyi, 2014, pp. 129-151)
This framework becomes an effective means of planning interactions and lessons with students when it is abstracted from a performance environment and implemented into the classroom. The conditions of flow clearly outline areas of focus to frame pedagogical teaching and has the potential to develop a student’s musicianship through systematic lesson structure. It is worth noting that Harris & Crozier’s definition of motivation (2000, pg. 27) correlates with conditions 1, 4 and 8 of Csikszentmihalyi’s conditions of flow. There is also evidence to suggest that “high procrastination is associated with lack of self-determined motivation and low incidence of flow state” (Lee, 2005, online). In context of statistics gathered by the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music, it is clear that motivation and flow are important to the learning process, with 46% of 275 children and 42% of 500 adults identifying lack of interest as the main reason for ceasing their musical practice (East, 2014, online). Freer and Evans (2018) propose that a student’s self-determination is conditional, providing that their psychological needs are supported within their education. It is how the student’s needs are supported which offers a more valuable explanation as to why students continue to study music. This position is further supported by Coatsworth, Palen, Sharp & Ferrer-Wreder (2006), who explain that mentoring from a teacher gives students the opportunity to develop their personality within the art of music making, allowing for the possibility of self-actualisation through self-defining activities.
Literature Review: The Benefits of Improvisation
Improvisation is “often collapsed into a three-component, information-processing model of human behaviour which has ready psychological analogies: input (sense organs), processing and decision-making (central nervous system), and motor output (muscle systems and glands)” (Jeff Pressing in, Sloboda, 2005, pg. 130). Sensory astuteness, interaction and responsive creativity are all aspects of improvisation and when we apply Gardner's Multiple Intelligence framework (Gardner, 1983) to our understanding of what improvisation is, we can begin to categorize what effect improvisation has on our developing intelligence. Improvisation can be taught through musical engagement and we can use performance to comprehend what benefits there are to practising improvisation and how this informs us intellectually. Participants gain valuable skills in recognising patterns, pitch, rhythm, style and musical expression aurally when engaging in music making. Music practice also stimulates intrapersonal and interpersonal growth, as music forces us to abstract and express our inner feelings and emotions, whilst simultaneously listening critically to others, working cooperatively and collaboratively. There is also kinaesthetic intelligence gained through playing your instrument, helping to coordinate your body and mind.
Engaging in collaborative music practice allows the participant to find a voice and gives them agency within social interaction. This musical engagement also has the potential to positively engage the attention of people on the autistic spectrum via task engagement and facilitates joint attention learning (Brezis, Noy & Levit-Binnun, 2017) (Wigram, 2004, pp. 81-91). Music improvisation has the ability to positively affect our mental and physical health. Data and statistics collected from the Office for National Statistics state that “the main challenges for young people include loneliness, having someone to rely on and a lack of sense of belonging to their neighbourhood” (Jones & Randall, 2018, online). Research into musical improvisation and health (MacDonald & Wilson, 2014, online) proves that improvisation practice has the ability to benefit people with common ailments including stress, anxiety and depression, although research conducted by Lynch and Wilson (2018) proves that the emotional responses and episodic memory of depressed listeners differ from non-depressed listeners and needs further research.
Divergent thinking is the ability to ‘brainstorm’, allowing our thought processes to generate creative and original solutions. Thinking critically and having divergent thought are often regarded as valuable personality traits and practising musical improvisation allows the participant to sharpen this particular skill (Webster, 1990). Research suggests that our ability to successfully improvise music is informed by our divergent thinking practise, problem-solving in real time and responding with creative and innovative ideas (Beaty, Smeekens, Silvia, Hodges & Kane, 2013, pp. 262-268). This study also suggests a correlation between the participant’s cumulative practice and their ability to express divergent thought, demonstrating the importance of practice in general. Snowden & Clements’ research suggests that “the benefits of improvisation for divergent thinking are not specific to the domain or modality of the improvisation task” (2015, pp. 128-138), demonstrating music’s value as a tool for developing non-musical skills.
Autoethnographic Research
By definition, composition can be considered “the constructive organizing element in music, governing the presentation, development, and interrelationship of ideas” (Owens, in Kernfeld, 1994, pp. 396-400). After years of using the same formula for composing, I quickly began to feel disconnected from the process of playing and writing music, feeling as though I was constantly re-iterating the same performance at each gig with no space for expression within the architecture of my practise. Toop (2016, pg. 1) describes the compositional process as a means of creating a “settled situation”, creating orderly outcomes from the unpredictability of everyday life; “humans must learn to improvise, to cope with random events, failures, chaos, disaster and accident in order to survive”.
Benson (2003, pg. 55) states that most musicians’ first experiences of improvising come from the compositional process itself, creating forms, chord progressions and melodies as material for development. Navigating this process with band members, I would review and revise musical ideas created from ensemble ‘jams’, as a means of creating something of a fixed product we were satisfied with. Through my reverence for hip hop, I started to explore recordings of jazz music and came to the understanding that jazz and hip hop (not exclusively) have the potential for radical and spontaneous composition, facilitating the conversation of idiomatic language between players and audience in real-time (Berliner, 1994, pg. 458). I came to the realisation that the practise of improvisation could be abstracted from jazz’s idiomatic context and combined with my own compositional interests, providing the right framework was utilised with musicians who were technically proficient. Improvisation became the impetus for my practice, and the more I reflected on my playing, the more meaning and significance I attached to this artistic expression.
Schutz’s (1980) study regarding the phenomenology of the reflective process might offer some insight as to why these memories of mine have so much weight. I have already attached so much value to the practice of improvisation over my time as a performer and composer and I am constantly striving to better my playing through engaging with more musicians and focusing my knowledge of improvisation; “as more time passes, the more multi-layered the meaning becomes” (Hytönen-Ng, 2016, pg. 26). This perspective is congruent with my own thoughts on practice and one can see the correlation between Schutz’s study and Toop’s (2016, pg. 3) thoughts on self-examination; “Improvisers choose to be in their situation but improvisation without some degree of obligatory self-examination can become very content with itself and subsequently less vital”.
Hytönen-Ng (2016, pg. 46) believes that musicians best perform when technical incompetence is overcome with practice. When a musician is competent enough to overcome the technical constraints of their practice, they then have the capacity to access more ‘organic ideas’ through reflecting on pre-existing knowledge gained through rudimentary practice. Hytönen-Ng also implies through reflective practice, one develops an emotional reserve of potential creativity which can be utilised in performance once the technical aspect of playing is overcome. Emotion can be utilised through reflection during performance to inform a player’s expression, allowing the musician to impart their own personality onto the music.
On acknowledging my personal motivations in music, I deemed it necessary to find other musicians who had similar aspirations and drive in order to facilitate the kind of music I wanted to perform. From my personal experience, musical improvisation requires a level of empathy in the performer that facilitates dialogue and communication, and this is achieved through communal practice and developing a democratic framework by which we can operate within. Shared goals between musicians alleviate the social stress of performative interplay which can affect the interactions between musicians. Walls (in Sawyer, 2007) asserts that peer relationships provide the most effective form of feedback. By aligning our working relationship within this framework, we could focus on serving our musical intentions and be open to constructive criticism as opposed to playing stubbornly or selfishly; “collectivism is more important than individualism: music is a joint creation in which musicians should be aware of each other’s ideas and initiatives” (Hytönen-Ng, 2016, pp. 70-72). This process also embeds semantic meaning within the performance, allowing the musicians to express togetherness physically, mentally and spiritually, which informs an audience's appraisal of the work observed.
Coatsworth, Palen, Sharp & Ferrer-Wreder (2006) believe the practice of improvisation facilitates self-development. Through constant reinvention, musicians gain a more thorough understanding of the material they present and with revision, find new perspectives to approach the material in which they present. Again, this relies on the emotional input of each band member and the internal relationships developed in the project. John Stevens (in Toop, 2016, pg. 21) describes this process as the art of giving, which in and of itself is the reward in which improvisers aim to develop for the performance environment; “the closer the relationship the greater the spiritual warmth it generates, and if the musicians manage to give wholly to each other and to the situation they’re in then the sound of the music takes care of itself. Good and bad become simply a question of how much the musicians are giving - that’s the music’s form”. This position is further explored by Hytönen-Ng, who states that in order to achieve this optimal state of performance, a level of trust has to be developed between musicians, achievable through shared experiences and a familiarity with their musical work. This develops a musician’s sense of trust, support and relaxation in the performance environment (Hytönen-Ng, 2016, pg. 66). Again, this stresses the importance of collectivity within musical practise. Although the above contributory factors all develop personal growth of the musician, there needs to be a collectivity that the individual is immersed in to reap the rewards of this practise methodology. “Collectivity and the effacement of individualism is clearly significant” (ibid, 2016, pg. 63).
The concept of collectivity and community is important to my work, which extends further than the relationship between the musicians and the music we play. My music has an element of functionality, serving as a catalyst for audience participation. The music I write for Space Dolphin is focused on engaging the audience in the process of improvisation, allowing MC’s to participate with the band, giving them social and political agency to a room which values this interaction. The music is also designed to feature other soloist musicians who want to participate with the band and our audience has come to expect this from our typical musical nights. Vea Williams (in Berliner, 1994, pg. 459) believes that understanding the presentation of musical work and how an audience psychologically perceives this is important in establishing a professional rapport between artistry and audience, ensuring audience retention. Solis and Nettl (2009, pp. 25-26) discuss the concept of perceptual agency in jazz performance, focusing an audience's attention towards different performers in the musical setting by allowing soloists to take the foreground of the performance. By allowing the role of soloist to move between each member of the performance, you are giving the audience the opportunity to localise themselves and the soloist in the physical domain, forcing their perception from one area of the stage setting to another. This requires the musicians to also locate themselves temporally and spatially with regards to the musical material presented which is an important skill any improviser must work towards. “The better one knows the tune, the less conscious attention needs to be focused on the basics of the tune, and the more attention can be freed up for taking improvisational risks and aurally scanning other parts of the band for moments of improvisational opportunity” (ibis, 2009, pp. 25-26).
The performances we provide are usually commissioned through the patronage of the venue we perform at which allows us to produce our events at no cost for the audience. This allows anyone to attend our event without the financial pressure of buying tickets. We also choose venues which are synonymous with the values and aesthetics we place upon our music as a means of attracting an audience that will already have an interest in the field of music we create. The nights we provide also involve a level of multi-disciplinary art practice, as we usually provide a platform for artists to create reactionary art during the event. This allows the artist to auction or raffle at the end of the night to recoup their expenses and share their work to a larger audience demographic, creating more interest in our events. Our events usually showcase other performers and musicians to our audience as a means of expanding their audience reach and introducing our practise to new audiences as a means of growing interest in our concept. Berliner (1994, pp. 455-456) acknowledges that all of these contributory factors have an effect on the dynamic of the audience, which in turn, has an effect on the pressures and reward of the performance.
The creative community is of paramount importance to my artistic process. Eno states that artistic genius and innovation are always situated in the epicentre of a larger social community he calls ‘scenius’ (Eno, 2016, online). This statement demonstrates the importance of viewing your work not as an isolated product within itself, but as a product of the socio-political influences that will ultimately affect your work. Kivy also acknowledges that genius “is a ‘dispositional’ property, and, ordinarily, one knows that the disposition is present by its being 'expressed' - Musical geniuses are able to express their genius in great musical works only in the proper social and political environment, with the requisite institutions in place" (Kivy, 2001, pp. 178-179). I have found over time that an audience will be more invested in my projects if they are allowed to take possession of the work and this is most easily achieved via audience participation in music making. By being flexible with our approach to musical composition, we can allow for improvisation to be the nexus between audience and band, with our compositions being the adaptable text for spontaneous composition (Solis & Nettl, 2009, pp. 99-100). One methodology we have adopted in our performances which allows communal ownership is utilising the idiomatic traits of free jazz. Hodson (2007, pg. 117) describes the difference between conventional jazz and free jazz as so; whereas traditional jazz relies on convention and a history which the musician should be familiar with, free jazz places emphasis not on a standardized work for transformation, but rather the source material in which the musicians generate in real-time. “In other words, a free-jazz performance is a self-altering process: the musical materials improvised by each musician re-enter the system, potentially serving as input to which the other performers may respond” (ibis, 2007). This process allows any musician to be able to engage and contribute in the process of music making, making the product immediately accessible.
Collecting First-Hand Qualitative and Quantitative Data on Improvisation with Surveys
After conducting my initial research into performance practices and pedagogical methodology, I decided to conduct a survey interviewing musicians and MC’s who had engaged in performances at the More Than Soul events and students that attend Leeds College of Music. The aim of the survey was to collate data which expressed the performers’ attitudes and experiences of improvising socially. The questions chosen for the survey referenced concepts collected from my initial literature review regarding flow, motivation, practise methodology and how the participants receive criticism and feedback. The survey was distributed to 100 participants who were all musicians and the data was collected anonymously as opposed to confidentially in order to obfuscate the identity of all individuals and to encourage honest feedback.
To begin the survey, 100 respondents were asked what motivates them to practise improvisation. 51% of respondents identified creative expression and freedom as their motivation for practising improvisation. 23% of the respondents practised improvisation in order to better their musical understanding and better their technical mastery of their instrument. 21% of respondents identified improvisation as an activity of leisure and 5% of the respondents did not know what motivated them to practise. This statistical information shows that 95% of all participants have a developed understanding of their musical motivations with regards to Harris & Crozier’s (2000, pg. 28) model of appraising levels of motivation in students.
The respondents were then asked if practising improvisation motivated them to perform with other musicians. 87% of respondents agreed with this statement whilst 13% disagreed. Despite the fact this data suggests that the social aspect of ensemble performance is an important motivational factor for the practising musician, when asked how they learn and practise improvisation, 80% of participants disclosed that they practise solo whilst only 20% had access to ensemble environments to practise in. Participants were then asked if jam sessions or open mic events help them meet other people in the local community and help to develop professional relationships. 78% of respondents acknowledged that open jam environments have clearly benefited them musically and socially. The other 22% of respondents had no interest in typical jam nights and found them not to be socially beneficial.
The respondents were then asked if they felt their musicianship improved from improvising collectively with other musicians. 94% of respondents agreed with this statement whilst 6% disagreed. Interestingly, the respondents were then asked if they had ever experienced flow whilst improvising and the data retrieved was exactly the same, with 94% agreeing and 6% disagreeing. This validates Hytönen-Ng’s assertion that “for musicians, flow is pre-eminently a communal phenomenon that cannot really be achieved alone” (2016, pp. 63-76) and highlights the need for more events in which musicians can access the resource of ensemble performance to better their musicianship.
When the participants were asked how they received feedback after improvising, 21% of respondents acquired feedback on their improvisations from the musicians that they play with directly, with a further 33% of respondents finding feedback within the audience post-performance. Only 9% of all respondents identified their teacher as a source of constructive criticism, whereas 23% of respondents received feedback from self-analysis, using videos and audio recordings as means of evaluating their own creative process. 14% of the respondents could not identify a source for feedback regarding musical improvisations. These statistics are not congruent with Shevoc’s (2018) assertions on musical feedback, with 54% of all participants using their peers from performance environments as a means of gathering feedback.
When the participants were asked if they identified with any of Csikszentmihalyi’s (2014) conditions of flow, they answered as so, which you can see in the figure above. Once compiled in a table format, you can begin to see which conditions are experienced most regularly by participants whilst improvising.
Conclusion
The research in this report aimed to identify the physical and psychological benefits to practising improvisation as part of a musicians’ routine. It is evidenced that improvisation has the capacity to develop a students’ multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983), and develop sensory organs, central nervous system and muscle systems (Sloboda, 2005). Musical improvisation also has the capacity to help people with psychological ailments (MacDonald & Wilson, 2014, online) and Lynch and Wilson’s (2018) research identified this area of psychology as a topic for further research. Improvisation also teaches us to think divergently and problem solve in real-time to navigate a performance. Academic research and 1st hand survey data suggests improvisation as an activity also acts as a great tool for giving participants social agency and opportunities to have meaningful conversations through emulation, joint attention tasks and musical response. Musicians who study the practise of improvisation attach great sentimental and emotional value to their practice, this is in part due to the fact that music is considered to be a self-defining activity and professional musicians should strive to reach self-actualisation through practising their skill sets. Through the emotional attachment musicians develop within their practice, improvisers can impart their own personality within the music through self-examination.
The paper also aims to identify the most suitable teaching styles to be implemented into improvisation workshop sessions prior to my music event More Than Soul. Harris and Crozier (2000, pp. 27-33) explain that a teacher needs to be flexible with their approach to their lessons and this methodology suits my event as I will not know the students who arrive at these workshops and the students might change monthly. Wall (2018) agrees with Sawyer (2007) that students who are practising improvisation best learn from their peers as opposed to teacher-like figures, and so the teacher should act as a “collaborative leader”. This gives me a way to effectively establish rapport with prospective students as my survey data concluded that 54% of respondents appreciate peer criticism and only 9% look for criticism in a teacher. Group dynamics and peer relationships all inform the immediate feedback a musician can rely on during the improvisational process. In order to accurately appraise one’s own work in a performance environment, a level of trust, and confidence must be developed in order to properly interpret communal feedback in real-time during the performance process.
The psychological phenomenon of flow can be effectively induced when its conditions are incorporated into leisurely activities (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). These conditions can also be applied into an educational environment and can be used as a framework to develop lesson plans with the intention of focusing the attention of the student within the task at hand. The lessons will aim to teach students how to induce the state of Flow as detailed by Csikszentmihalyi and Hytöneng-Ng, focusing on giving the students the ability to gather feedback from their improvisation sessions and understand the goals of the task. My first-hand survey research identified these two conditions as the least experienced so my work will try to address this.
Bibliography
Bailey, D. (1992) On The Edge: Improvisation in Music - A Liberating Thing. [Online Source] Available from: <www.youtube.com> [Accessed 13/11/2018].
Beaty, R. Smeekens, B. Silvia, P. Hodges, D. & Kane, M. (2013) A first look at the role of domain-general cognitive and creative abilities in jazz improvisation. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, Vol 23(4).
Benson, B. (2003) The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, U.K.
Berliner, P. (1994) Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. The University of Chicago Press. U.S.A.
Brezis, R. Noy, L. & Levit-Binnun, N. (2017) Patterns of Joint Improvisation in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Spectrum Disorder. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1790.
Coatsworth, J. Palen, L. Sharp, E. & Ferrer-Wreder, L. (2006) Self-Defining Activities, Expressive Identity, and Adolescent Wellness. Applied Developmental Science, Volume 10, Issue 3. Routledge. Oxfordshire, U.K.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993) The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. New York, U.S.A.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014) Applications of Flow in Human Development and Education: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Springer. California, U.S.A.
Doerschuk, B. (1984) The Literature of Improvisation. Keyboard 10 (Oct.).
Driver, B. Brown, P. & Peterson, G. (1991) Benefits of Leisure. State College, PA: Venture Pub. Chicago, U.S.A.
East, L. (2014) Making Music: Teaching, Learning & Playing in the U.K. [Online Source] Available from: <www.abrsm.org> [Accessed 12/12/2018].
Eigenfeldt, A. Bown, O. Pasquier, P. & Martin, A. (2013) Towards a Taxonomy of Musical Metacreation: Reflections on the First Musical Metacreation Weekend. [Online Source] Available from: <https://www.aaai.org> [Accessed 16/11/2018].
Eno, B. (2016) Brian Eno on Basic Income. [Online Source] Available from: <www.youtube.com> [Accessed 28/09/2018].
Freer, E. & Evans, P. (2018) Psychological Needs Satisfaction and Value in Students’ Intentions to Study Music in High School. Psychology of Music. 46 (6). Sage. London, U.K.
Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Harpercollins Publishers.
Harris, P. & Crozier, R. (2000) The Music Teacher’s Companion: A Practical Guide. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (Publishing) Limited. London, U.K.
Hodson, R. (2007) Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz. Routledge. Oxfordshire, U.K.
Hytönen-Ng, E. (2016) Experiencing ‘Flow’ in Jazz Performance. Routledge. Oxfordshire, U.K.
Jones, R. & Randall, C. (2018) Measuring National Well-being: Quality of Life in the UK, 2018. [Online Source] Available from: <www.ons.gov.co.uk> [Accessed 23/07/2018].
Kivy, P. (2001) The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press.
Lee, E. (2005) The Relationship of Motivation and Flow Experience to Academic Procrastination in University Students. The Journal of Genetic Psychology. April. [Online Source] Available from: <www.researchgate.net> [Accessed 02/01/2019].
MacDonald, R. & Wilson, G. (2014) Musical Improvisation and Health: A Review. [Online Source] Available from: <https://psywb.springeropen.com> [Accessed 23/07/2018].
Maslow, A. (1954) Motivation and Personality. Harper and Row. New York, U.S.A.
Owens, T. in. Kernfeld, B. (1994) The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. St. Martin’s Press. New York, U.S.A.
Pietra, C. & Campbell, P. (1995) An Ethnography of Improvisation: Training in a Music Methods Course. Journal of Research in Music Education. 43(2). [Online Source] Available from: <www.jstor.org> [Accessed 11/12/2018].
Pressing, J. In. Sloboda, J. (2005) Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation and Composition. Oxford University Edition. Oxfordshire, U.K.
Sawyer, K. (2004) Creative Teaching: Collaborative Discussion as Disciplined Improvisation. [Online Source] Available from: <https://ir.stonybrook.edu> [Accessed 23/07/2018].
Sawyer, K. (2007) Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. Basic Books. New York, U.S.A.
Schutz, A. (1980) The Phenomenology of the Social World. Heinemann Educational. London, U.K.
Shevoc, D. (2018) The Experience of Confident Music Improvisation. Research Studies in Music Education, 40 (1).
Snowden, P. & Clements, L. (2015) Improvisation Facilitates Divergent Thinking and Creativity: Realizing a Benefit of Primary School Arts Education. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Vol. 9. No. 2.
Solis, G. & Nettl, B. (2009) Musical Improvisation: Art, Education and Society. University of Illinois Press. Chicago, U.S.A.
Toop, D. (2016) Into The Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom. Bloomsbury. London, U.K.
Wall, M. (2018) Improvising to Learn. Music Educators Journal, 76 (9), Sage Publishing. London, U.K.
Webster, P. (1990) Creative Thinking in Music: Introduction. Music Educators Journal, 76 (9), Sage Publishing. London, U.K.
Wigram, T. (2004) Improvisation: Methods and Techniques for Music Therapy Clinicians, Educators and Students. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. London, U.K.
