Research considerations- Pre production tasks

What difficulties does a classical musician face when improvising and how can these be addressed?

Understanding what difficulties the intended audience face and how might these be addressed, forms the justification for this project. The first logical research area involves understanding what skills are needed for effective improvisation. What are the key aspects of the theory of improvisation and how is this applied practically? In order to answer this, guides on improvisation by professional pianists and books on jazz theory will be studied in order to detail what skills are needed. Once this knowledge has been determined, it provides a suitable framework to measure a classical education against. By researching current classical education methods, the following questions can be raised: What are the characteristics of a classical training? What elements of a classical training are missing in order to develop the ability to improvise? Are there aspects of a classical training that relate to improvisation? This is intended to highlight specific areas of development that would be required for a classically trained pianist to improvise. As the project is a self development learning guide, there is a need to research relevant aspects of pedagogy. What methodologies can be used to aid learning within the context of a self development method? What is an appropriate format for the guide? What are the needs of the audience? Researching how people learn will therefore be contextualised according to the essential concepts of improvisation that have been identified and the requirements of the user. Musicology will be studied to analyse what role psychology plays in improvisation. “A free improviser always starts from some state of consciousness in which there is some residual influence of previous events”. (Clarke,Dibben,Pitts 2010 P49)