Improvisation in music is probably one of the most mystifying of the many skills which can be developed by a pro musician.  People who can do it at a high level make it look effortless, leaving all the square cats not in-the-know exclaiming, “They did that without reading music, and they made it up as they went…and it was good?  IMPOSSIBRU!”  Likewise, many musicians (especially those who begin with a regimented course of study) are reduced to being no better than blundering fourth graders when asked to improvise a passage of music, briefly mumbling that they don’t know how to improvise before sitting down and churning out some Paganini.

Here's the second half of my two-part series on things I learned going to school for music.  If you're just starting out on the journey, or if you'd like some reminders of your majoring in music basics, these are the blog posts for you!

Check out the first part here if you missed it.

           The end of summer draws neigh.  While I’m sitting here continuing to try and figure out this “real life” thing (I’ve stumbled upon the cure for the common cold, though that’s not related to my field, so I tossed the paperwork), many of my potential readers are preparing to go back to school.  Though I have both physically and emotionally finished with my undergraduate years of music school, I can’t help but think about my first year at Rowan University as a jazz education major and how different those experiences were from all my other years there.