Behind the Scenes of our Studio Silent Movie Project- an improvisation activity for beginning and intermediate piano students

Our studio recently completed a silent movie project inspired by the brilliant Nicola Cantan over at Colourful Keys and the Vibrant Music Teaching Library. Over the course of 3 weeks, students created and recorded a piano soundtrack for a soundless version of an old Popeye cartoon. After watching the full cartoon, each child was assigned a 2-8 second scene, and we worked together at their lesson and during their home practice to compose music that fit with their scene. In the process, we explored theory concepts, compositional techniques, and built musicianship skills. But shh, don’t tell the kids all of that! As far as they are concerned, we just had a lot of fun!

Why bother with improvisation and composition in a piano lesson?

You might be wondering- why spend lesson time on this type of project? How does improvising and creating help my student get better at piano? Three reasons:

1. More expressive playing
   Creating their own sounds and melodies helps students better understand how to play all styles of music expressively. We learned how making variations to the same notes can dramatically change the feel of the sound. Playing a trill very low and loud on the keyboard sounds like a monster growling. The same two notes very high and slow might be a ghost sneaking up behind you. When students have the chance to make musical choices about dynamics, tempo, and rhythm patterns in their own creation, they are more likely to pay attention to those details in their repertoire assignments later and give a more expressive performance of any piece they learn. 

2. Pre-teach valuable music theory concepts
   Exploring different groupings of notes in this project gives a gentle introduction to advanced theory concepts we’ll revisit more formally in later years. Students who understand the musical building blocks of scales, chords, and intervals are more likely to be confident sight readers, learn their music quickly, and develop the freedom to improvise and create their own music.
   In a traditional piano lesson, these concepts are often taught via worksheets and written exams with little “real world” application. By introducing chords and scales early on through projects like this, students get a feel for the sound and “flavor” of each chord or scale before being formally introduced to the terminology and notation.
   Most of the students working on this project are in the 6-10 year old range and have only had a few years of lessons; we didn’t dive deep into formal theory in this project, but when it’s time to learn about the difference between major, minor, and diminished chords later, we’ve got an easy touchstone to refer back to. “Remember when we did the silent movie project and we found one chord that sounded sad and another one sounded more scary? That sad one is called minor, and here’s how to build it starting from any note on the piano. The scary one is called diminished, and here’s how it’s different than minor.”
   Exploring the sounds and feeling behind each scale, chord and interval early on means students are more likely to internalize and understand the terminology later.

3. Creativity and exploration!
   It’s easy to get bogged down in the technical details of playing piano, or to focus entirely on recreating someone else’s composition by reading sheet music. When I learned as a child, that was the main focus of my music education, and while I wrote a few little songs early on (including the opening number of an epic musical I’d planned that would star my stuffed dog, Osh-Kosh), I quickly gave up on composing when I realized I couldn’t figure out how to add any harmony in the LH or make my songs sound “good”.
   As a teacher, I’m determined not to pass those mistakes on to my students; I want them to experience the freedom of creativity and understand how to put scales and chords and rhythms together to make music.

Our silent movie composition project was a great, beginner friendly way to achieve all three of those aims, and the short duration of each scene in the cartoon made it attainable for even the shyest students in my studio. I loved seeing each child’s eyes light up as we explored together at the piano, and witnessing their pride as they showed me the sounds they’d come up with themselves. And on top of that, the finished project came out pretty freaking awesome if you ask me!

Want to see for yourself? Check out the finished movie below!