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Blog #4: Final Project

This lesson is built for a 10th-12th grade band classroom with a 50 minute class period. This lesson would serve as an introduction to the topic of jazz improvisation in a jazz-focused unit. While the lesson exposes students to the topic for the first time, its also meant to be a precursor to activities that apply its concepts through physical practice and application by students on their own instruments.

This lesson focuses on the musician Gary Burton, a renowned vibraphonist in the industry and a course instructor/author for Berklee Online. The article that I chose offers his insight and expertise in jazz music, and gives practice strategies for the material that he covers. While it seems like an article that is just there to dole out lots of information, their is an attached video that aligns with the article and breaks down the material and provides more insight in a different medium. This allows the viewer to better process the information than if the article was a stand-alone source.

The importance of having the students read this article from Gary Burton is to immerse themselves in new vocabulary straight away while having time to properly process it through the lesson activities. Jazz as a form of music can be hard to grasp onto conceptually due to its structure and terminology. This article is meant to ease the understanding of it while providing insight from a reputable source. While this lesson provides a good baseline for jazz theory and application, it can lead into a lesson pertaining more to jazz history and its cultural impact, which gives students time to process each different aspect of the topic (like chunking lessons in a sense).

The text complexity of the article is meant for a slightly lower level grade level with an average of 9.0 and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 8.3. The qualitative components of the article are rather straight forward with the information approach, and purpose is pretty heavily implied and noted. Language in the article is a little tricky in terms of vocabulary, but manageable otherwise. While the article is relatively easily for my class in this scenario to comprehend, it serves as a good way to introduce a concept that most of them may be unfamiliar with. For the reader and task, the students would learn about some baseline elements of jazz theory and use that information to inform their own musicianship when playing their instrument.

By engaging in this lesson, students will be able to comprehend baseline jazz theory concepts through individual and group activities. Students will then be able to take their new understanding and apply it to their instrumental technique in a variety of given examples and for future use.

When it came to choosing pre-reading strategies, I really wanted the vocabulary aspect to be at the forefront. In order to do this, I wanted to do a superficial glance over or "skim" of the article so the students could have a chance to isolate words right off the bat. It was intended to be a quick activity since it was supposed to be pre-reading and not a during reading exercise, so I thought this would work as a good compromise. Once this was done, I thought a small group breakout would be a good idea for tying up loose ends and allowing students to bounce ideas of each other. Especially when diving into a relatively new topic where uncertainty can be common, having a group activity like this in the beginning can be very helpful for comprehension. This also helps to kickstart the during reading portion of my lesson.

For starters, I wanted the students to transition from the group setting to an individual one by constructing their own K-W-L chart on a piece of paper (I'd provide a model template) and then reading the article while filling out the chart on their own for about 15 minutes. In addition, I'd also want students to highlight musical concepts that are familiar to them once reading the article closely unlike before.

After reading is completed, I wanted to have the class reconvene together as a whole (for the first time) and have each group share their top 3 vocab terms from their T-charts. This would be a collaborative effort so we could create a class summary of our T-charts. We'd then do a similar activity with each person's K-W-L charts in order to create a class summary for that as well. However, we'd only take 1 note from each section in each person's chart for time purposes and narrowing our list.

After this lesson, my following class would shift a focus to both the application of what we covered in a rehearsal setting, and to jazz history and its cultural identity/impact over time. The charts and article would both serve as a resources for students to refer back to, and I could post the T-charts on the wall as well to present them. While its only the first step into the topic, its an important one that needs to be approached with the utmost care if students hope to comprehend its concepts adequately.

In conclusion, this is a lesson that I'd like to model when introducing new topics during a unit to my students in the future. It would work to ease my students into topics that are dense with new vocabulary and concepts, and give them multiple ways to engage with them as well. The key takeaways for my students would be in not just realizing new musical ideas from the idiom of jazz music, but also how previously known concepts intersect with the genre in more ways than one. It would serve as a way to spark their interest and get them excited to explore the topic more as we continued to cover it in future lessons and class periods.

Works Cited

Berklee Online - “Jazz Improv Tips & Tricks With Gary Burton: Starting Out With Improvisation” (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU4knusCntY

Gary Burton - “Jazz Scales You Need to Know for Improvisation” (2016) https://online.berklee.edu/takenote/jazz-improvisation-10-scales/

Heather Lattimer - “Focusing the Reader” (2010)

Heather Lattimer - “Supporting Comprehension” (2010)

Rebecca Alber - “Six Scaffolding Strategies to Use with Your Students” (2011)

Robert J. Marzano - “Academic Vocabulary Building Activities” (2005)

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Blog Post #3: Disciplinary Text Set

For this scenario, I'll be teaching a group of high school band students (10th-12th grade) about jazz improvisation. As for the purpose of my texts and how they work together, they each will aim to help students apply aspects of improvisation to their practice through differing mediums and points of view. While some play along with an aural idea in a video or podcast, others make students comprehend a text and then responding verbally and/or apply the concept to their playing/practice in rehearsal.

The first 2 texts I decided to use work hand in hand with one another. The first is an article from 2016 titled "Jazz Scales You Need to Know for Improvisation" by Gary Burton from Berklee Online, and a connected video titled "Jazz Improv Tips & Tricks with Gary Burton: Starting Out With Improvisation." These resources provide similar input from the same author, but their medium difference allows for multiple forms of information processing. These are supposed to serve as an entry point into the subject, so its more useful to put them both together in the beginning of this unit.

After analyzing the sources on https://storytoolz.com/readability, the text complexity is slightly under grade level for my class with an average of 9.0 and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 8.3. This isn't necessarily bad however, as it's an introductory source to the topic.

As for words in the sources that we could potentially focus on, here are some that are the most notable and prevalent to the topic:

Scale

Aural

Dominant

Diminished

For the next 2 texts, I chose to follow up the introduction of the concept by shifting to how it can be applied in practice. To do this, I used Brent Vaartstra's 2016 article "Jazz Improvisation Crash Course: 3 Steps to Master Jazz Improvisation" and Learn Jazz Standards' 2022 YouTube video "5 Jazz Practice Hacks to Improve Faster." While both help with what I previously mentioned, they also give practice advice and tips that are beneficial for any musicians, not just those focusing on jazz-related material. Both are holistic in that scope, so I felt that were a good fit for this part of my text set.

After analyzing the sources on https://storytoolz.com/readability, the text complexity graded out at an average grade level of 9.7 and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 7.9. While these are at a lower reading level, they provide useful information within the sequence of this text set, and (as previously mentioned) are covering a topic that is relatively new to most of my students in this scenario.

As for words in the sources that we could potentially focus on, here are some that are the most notable and prevalent to the topic:

Goal-Oriented

Action Plan

Master Goal

Technique

For the last 2 texts, I chose to shift gears from practice application to history pertaining to jazz music and the cultural impact it's had and continues to have. To do this, I used Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz's 2000 article "Jazz In America: Philosophy" and Chordify's 2021 chord chart for James Brown's 1964 song "I Got You (I Feel Good)." These sources provide background on jazz historically while also giving an example of a notable jazz work that can be practiced and possibly integrated into future performances as a repertoire piece for the ensemble. The placement of these came after the sources discussing practice application due to my desire to break up the informational segments pertaining to jazz exclusively. Leaving this portion in the middle would've made the sequence feel dragged out to my students, and would've made it more prone to student disengagement in class activities as a result. Because of this, I think its best fit is at the end of my text set sequence.

After analyzing the sources on https://storytoolz.com/readability, the text complexity graded out at an average grade level of 13.9 and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 11.6. While the average reading level is slightly higher than the grade levels of my students in this scenario, these sources provide useful information within the context of the text set. In addition, I read through these sources, and I'm confident that I could simplify and adjust their wording/terminology to a reading level that is appropriate for 10th-12th grade students.

As for words in the sources that we could potentially focus on, here are some that are the most notable and prevalent to the topic:

Culture

Heritage

Intangibles

Diversity

Works Cited (Text Set)

Berklee Online - “Jazz Improv Tips & Tricks With Gary Burton: Starting Out With Improvisation” (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU4knusCntY

Brent Vaartstra - “Jazz Improvisation Crash Course: 3 Steps to Master Jazz Improvisation” (2023) https://www.learnjazzstandards.com/blog/learning-jazz/jazz-advice/jazz-improvisation-made-simple/

Chordify - “James Brown: I Got You (I Feel Good) Chords” (2021) https://chordify.net/chords/james-brown-songs/i-got-you-i-feel-good-3-chords

Gary Burton - “Jazz Scales You Need to Know for Improvisation” (2016) https://online.berklee.edu/takenote/jazz-improvisation-10-scales/

Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz - “Jazz In America: Philosophy” (2000) https://www.jazzinamerica.org/Overview/Philosophy

Learn Jazz Standards - “5 Jazz Practice Hacks to Improve Faster” (2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8QXts-OZfM

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Blog Post #2: Where I am and Where I Want to Go

Within the content area of my degree (music education), I chose to focus on the topic of chordal analysis. Due to my past work in jazz ensembles and music theory classes, I have a pretty good grasp on this concept, but there are some more advanced concepts in it that I sometimes mix up. While its useful to understand chordal analysis, I'd like to know how it can be valuable for students in a choral setting. I understand the tangible reasoning for why its helpful for instrumentalists, but not so much for vocalists. I think this can be attributed to the fact that most choral music in educational settings tends to be more classically focused. As a result, a lot of the music doesn't pertain to popular music terminology and its hyper focus on chord progressions and song form. Jazz music is a subset of popular music and has more recent roots, so it has a stronger connection to its terms. That's why in instrumental settings, its easy to see why students would be more likely to understand chordal analysis since they work with lead sheets and chord charts that require knowledge of chordal analysis for them to decipher. As for this topic, I already know about common progressions like vi-ii-V-I and I-IV-V, the circle of fifths, and proper voice leading techniques for a 2-4 part score. What I really want to know more about is how I can transfer that knowledge to my accompanying of songs on the piano for my choir. If you aren't a trained pianist, accompanying can be difficult, but I feel like knowing a progression for a song as an alternative would simplify things and make the score easier for me to follow as I play. While playing the accompaniment as written is preferred, sometimes mistakes are made and things don't go as planned in performance, so it'd be nice for me to have a backup plan if and when all else fails.

Works Cited

https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/AnalyzingChords.html

https://qa.pas.org/docs/default-source/soundenhancedpdfs/achieving-music-literacy.pdf?sfvrsn=3724d4a5_2

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/chapter/roman-numerals/

https://www.earmaster.com/music-theory-online/ch05/chapter-5-5.html

[gebergerc545]

Blog Post #1: Welcome to My Professional Blog

Hello everyone!

My name is Grayson Berger, and I'm going into my senior year this fall at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Outside of school, I work as a member of the entertainment team for the Milwaukee Brewers. In my free time, I like to play sports, play video games, play guitar, and sing. I'm majoring in Music Education, and am on track to earn my bachelor's degree at the end of the Spring 2025 semester. With this degree, I hope to find a job as a high school choral director in southeastern Wisconsin. On the side, I want to be able to write my own original songs and do some gigging as a freelance musician.

https://www.nationalartsstandards.org/