Students frequently have difficulty mastering sight-singing and dictation of atonal materials due to their unfamiliarity. Thus, one of the goals of a course in atonal ear training is to familiarize students with pitch collections and rhythms that might be encountered in twentieth-century compositions. An effective way to accomplish this goal is to teach students to improvise using atonal materials, so that students can get first hand experience as post-tonal composers. Further, the real-time nature of improvisation, in contrast to composition, requires that the student master the materials and techniques under study to such an extent that they are available at a moment’s notice.
This presentation will discuss and demonstrate an improvisation-based approach to teaching post-tonal ear training that was developed and implemented during the 1999–2000 school year. The presentation will begin with a brief discussion of the nature of post-tonal improvisation. Aspects of the atonal ear-training curriculum will then be evaluated for their suitability for improvisation. Next, a set of exercises for gently easing students into improvisation will be presented, along with references to works on improvisation pedagogy. More advanced exercises will then be explained. The presentation will end with recordings of sample improvisations by undergraduates enrolled in the presenter’s classes.