In the video, Guess the Mystery Piece by Creatively Exploring its Chords, Susan demonstrates creative improvisation and composition activities, based on a famous piece's chord progression. She demonstrates a melody she composed, to go along with the progression, then plays her entire original variation in its completed arrangement.

Various types of improvisation and composition activities are often quite fun and instructive. They provide welcome practice at reading chord symbols, so crucial for pop and jazz. They provide experience working with chords in a progression, one of the more important building blocks of music.

Want to build a little learning module around these activities? With the PDFs you find in the Beethoven to Jazz area in hand, here are the activities from the video. Then, be creative! Think of these simply as some ideas to get you started.

• Using the chord progression, improvise melodies, using the G major 5-finger pattern.
• Using the chord progression, improvise melodies, using all the notes from the entire G major scale.
• If you prefer, you may fill in a melody you decide upon in advance (the treble staff is left blank for this purpose).
• Using the simpler arrangement of Susan's piece, create your own, more complex arrangement (improvised or notated, as you prefer).
• Play, or assign to a student, the full arrangement of this contemporary piece, along with the original composer's classical work as a companion piece.
  
• Using the full arrangement of Susan's piece, create your own improvisation (or composition) based on it.
  
  • You may change the melody to another melody.
    
  • You may ornament the melody to make it fancier, or simpler.
  • You may like to experiment with the arrangement. For example, use blocked chords and/or different rhythm patterns.

For all notated music and materials, see our downloads area.