Hickey, Maud & Peter Webster: Creative Thinking in Music

Maud Hickey and Peter Webster Music Educators Journal; Jul 2001, Vol. 88 Issue 1, p19. 

CREATIVE THINKING IN MUSIC

Composition and Improvisation

Rather than focusing on training children to be creative, it might be better for music teachers to nurture children’s inherent ability to think creatively in music.

As the new century begins and we gain more knowledge about creative thinking from both within and outside the field of music education, it seems apparent that encouraging students to apply their growing knowledge of music in creative ways should be at the core of philosophy and practice. In this article, we review some fundamental notions that will help define creative thinking in music and place it at the center of what music educators do. We begin by clarifying the term “creative thinking” and putting it into the perspective of music teaching. This is followed by a section on refining a philosophy of music teaching that includes the encouragement of creative thinking in all music activities.

What Is Creativity?

The term “creativity” can cause confusion because it has many possible meanings. One might hear a teacher say that he or she teaches creatively or that he or she teaches students to be creative, and probably one would agree that creative thinking is a desirable behavior that should be nurtured in music classrooms. But what does creativity mean? One way of understanding it is to examine its meaning from four different perspectives: person, process, product, and place.

The Creative Person. When people are asked to describe a creative person that they know, it is likely that they can think of such a person and easily describe his or her creative traits. Much of the research literature on creative people has been compiled from the study of the most creative people in society, past and present. Some common characteristics of a creative person include risk taking, a sense of humor, attraction to ambiguity, open-mindedness, a capacity for fantasy, and perceptiveness.¹ There are potentially negative traits associated with the creative personality as well. These include aloofness, distractability, compulsiveness, sloppiness, and rebelliousness.²

Not all of the traits associated with creative people are conducive to maintaining quiet, orderly classrooms. In fact, it might be worth noting that the class troublemaker might also be the most creative student. How might a teacher deal with this? First of all, simply being aware of the disruptive student’s creative potential may change a teacher’s behavior toward that student and, hence, that student’s self-image. The self-fulfilled role of troublemaker might therefore change to something more positive and productive if a teacher were able to funnel some of the student’s energy toward more creative music-making tasks and responsibilities. Of course, all children have the potential for creative development, and an awareness of creative personal characteristics will help teachers to encourage positive creative personality traits in all students. Teachers can promote creative traits by giving music tasks or assignments that may require some risk taking or even silly behavior. Teachers should support risk taking and humor in the classroom (when appropriate, of course) and model desirable creative traits for their students.

The Creative Process. The creative process can be described as the thinking that takes place as a person is planning to produce a creative product. Webster’s model of creative thinking in music outlines the complex creative process, which begins with an idea or intention and ends with a creative product.³ Along the way, one must have enabling skills and an enabling environment to support the process. At the heart of the Webster model is a four-step creative thinking process that was first conceived by Graham Wallas.⁴ Wallas proposed four stages of creative thinking – preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification – which are discussed below.

Preparation. In this stage, the creative person begins thinking about and gathering materials or ideas for the creative product. Alternatively, he or she may simply be coming up with a creative problem to work on at this point. In music, the creative thinker begins by asking such questions as “What do I want to compose?” “What instruments should I use?” and “What style shall I incorporate into my composition?”

Incubation. The incubation stage often occurs when a person steps away from the creative problem, as this stage is an important time for the brain to do its work. Even when there is no active thought given to creative plans, ideas are being mixed about and assimilated in the subconscious during this stage. In terms of music teaching, this important “think time” should be encouraged, and teachers should provide opportunities for students to be away from their creative tasks at times, as well as plenty of time to revisit and revise projects that require creative thinking.

Illumination. Often described as the “aha!” effect, the illumination stage is that stage in which a great idea suddenly comes to mind. This may happen while an individual is working on a creative project or while he or she is away from the project. In music, this might be the moment when the perfect melody suddenly pops into mind. Music students should keep manuscript journals or computer scrapbooks in order to keep track of the illuminating and often surprising musical ideas that appear.

Verification. In the final stage of creative thinking, one brings the ideas together and tries out the creative product. For a composer, this may mean putting the final touches on the manuscript and hearing a full run-through of a composition for the first time, whether it is played by a full orchestra, a room full of students using classroom instruments, or a synthesizer. The creator should then be given opportunities to continue editing the work until he or she is fully satisfied. After initially verifying a creative idea, the creator might reenter the beginning, or preparation, stage and work through the four thinking stages again to continue revising the creative product. Young students often reach the verification stage prematurely and may not want to go back and think about revision or continued work on a project. It is important for the music teacher to encourage and facilitate more careful and thoughtful approaches to creative musical growth in the classroom.

Research studies of creative thinking in music have shown consistently that, when confronted with creative tasks, most creative children feel comfortable exploring many options of sounds before closure.⁵ Opportunities for sound exploration, manipulation, organization through composition, and even time for simple playing around with sounds should be made available in the classroom in order to nurture creative musical thinking processes. Activities that involve brainstorming solutions to musical problems (such as creating several endings for the beginning of a musical phrase) and do not require one single right answer should also be offered to stimulate musical creative-thinking processes.

The Creative Product. Perhaps the most widely used, basic definition of a creative product is something that is both original (unique) and valuable or pleasing. It is important to note that the terms “original” and “valuable” are relative to the social context and group from which a product emerges. A musical composition or improvisation is creative when compared to what others have created in that specific time and place, whether it is the world of classical composers of the twentieth century, a third-grade classroom in a Chicago suburban school, or the streets of Calcutta in the eighth century. When a student produces a creative musical product that is unique among his or her classmates – either in that classroom for that one period of the day, or for that age-group over several years – listeners can recognize the creative wonder of that product. Teachers should encourage students to try original or unique musical ideas when they are working on creative products.

Originality without intent or value, however, does not necessarily make a product creative. Often a child’s musical composition or improvisation may sound original only because of his or her unintentional or random musical explorations. The creator of a musical product must have an intent or plan. By encouraging reflective thoughts from the student composer and offering opportunities for revision, teachers can help develop intentionality in a student. A unique composition must also be valued or aesthetically pleasing in order to be considered creative. Is the composition pleasurable to the listener? Is it aesthetically pleasing or interesting?

The combination of original musical ideas arranged in such a way that they are also interesting or pleasing to the listener makes a musical composition or improvisation creative. Teachers can use this as a way to guide their feedback to their students’ musical creations. Finally, it is helpful to remember that a creative musical product is best produced in situations where there are no right or wrong answers. Therefore, teachers should allow ample opportunities for students to create with as few external pressures or parameters as possible.⁶

The Creative Place. The fourth perspective from which to examine creativity is “place,” and it is perhaps the one in which teachers have the most control. “Place” for teachers is, of course, their own music classrooms. A classroom that encourages rather than squelches creative thinking is one that is psychologically safe, contains many rich sound sources for frequent and engaged exploration, and promotes an atmosphere of risk taking (allowing for failure). During the preschool years, children should be provided with an environment rich in musical materials and should be exposed to a variety of musical songs and styles. As students become older, they begin to desire the “how” of creative composition. They need to know how to build a chord, how to combine timbres to create a certain musical effect, and so forth. During this time, the “place” must still be rich in exploration and arrays of sounds, and the teacher’s guidance with tools for composition and improvisation becomes more crucial.⁷

Understanding the four “Ps” of creativity is a good starting point for building one’s awareness of developing creative activities for the music classroom. More fundamental, however, is utilizing creative thinking as a pervasive component of a music-teaching philosophy. In this section, we discuss how one might approach creative thinking as a fundamental aspect of all music teaching.

Thinking in Sound. An essential principle of music teaching and learning is related to thinking in sound. Creative thinking in sound can occur when a teacher asks students to imagine sound as a key to all music activities. What is so exciting about this very simple idea is that, in creating experiences for students that encourage thinking in sound, teachers ask them to exercise cognitive abilities that are central to music as art. By imagining different sounds or sound structures and remembering them over time as they are applied to listening, performing, composing, or improvising, students experience music personally.

Music teachers should not miss an opportunity to encourage students to imagine sound. By asking students to improvise or compose in a general music class or to listen to music in a new way during a high school music class, a teacher can begin to see evidence of students’ divergent and convergent thinking in sound. Posing questions in rehearsal such as, “What would it sound like if the tubas played the melody rather than the flutes?” or “Can you imagine this played in the style of a rock band?” engages students at a much higher level of musical thinking. Listening in a new way could be encouraged, for example, by asking students to become more aware of sounds around them or “found” sounds as having musical possibilities. This kind of creative musical thinking is not possible through teacher-centered activities, which rarely elicit a personal music product.

Aesthetic Decision Making. Asking students to imagine and manipulate sounds in both divergent and convergent ways should naturally lead to aesthetic decision making. What is meant here is the kind of decision-making process that is involved as one considers, for instance, how to frame a harmonic accompaniment in the context of a newly composed melody, how to extend an improvisation by using a motive heard earlier by a fellow improviser, whether to start a ritard at measure fifteen or in the middle of the next measure, or what to think regarding a complex passage in the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique during a second or third listening in order to determine just how its orchestral color is achieved. These kinds of decision-making processes need to be experienced many times and practiced with the expert guidance of music educators.

Music students of all levels and in all settings are infrequently asked to make aesthetic judgments or contribute their opinions about such judgments. In the press of time, it seems most expedient for teachers to focus less on student involvement in this part of music making and more on telling students how to play, listen, compose, and improvise. The ironic truth is that if at least some time were devoted to asking students to think in sound and make aesthetic decisions, the resultant learning about music would be so much more powerful that far less time would be required in subsequent rehearsals and classes to reach musical goals.

An additional payoff for aesthetic decision making is the opportunity it affords for teaching music affect. Of all the instructional problems in music teaching, perhaps the most challenging and least researched is the ability to teach how music cognitively engages the intellect and the emotions in such profound ways. By embedding aesthetic decision making into the body of regular teaching strategies, especially within the context of creative activity, teachers can maximize the opportunities to help students discover feeling in music. By creating their own music or musical interpretation, students can sense the power and meaning in music that are beyond the notes themselves.

Merging Skill Building with Creative Activities. In refining a philosophy of music education with creative thinking in music as a core element, teachers should combine skill building with creative thinking. For example, when teaching a group of fourth-grade trumpet students, it might be tempting to reserve any creative exploration of sound until the students have learned music fundamentals. As a result, weeks of instructional time may pass before any request is made to compose a simple melody with newly learned notes or to prepare two different interpretations of a piece of music in the instruction book. A full semester might pass before consideration is given to asking students to work in small groups to improvise a short passage over a given harmonic chord structure. Years might pass before students are asked to listen to different recordings of a trumpet performance and to discuss what they are hearing from multiple perspectives.

It seems far more logical to embed creative thinking activities as part of skill building. The literature clearly shows that if learning is to be effective, it must be experienced actively and in context.⁸ Building skills such as playing notes accurately, in tune, with proper technique, and with good tone quality is central to good instrumental music education. But to have no way of regularly applying those skills in personal music making that involves composition, improvisation, and active listening is similar to teaching sailing from a textbook and videotape without ever learning to tack with the wind in one’s face. (The Resources for Exploring Creative Thinking sidebar lists some sources for improving creative thought processes through imagining and brainstorming techniques. Although not all of the exercises are written for music education, they can be easily adapted to a music classroom.)

The implications that come from merging creative thinking activities into regular instruction are quite profound. A major shift in thinking about what music teaching is and how it should be structured may be necessary for some. For example, the notion that creative activities will be reserved for the month of February or June because that is when it is scheduled in the curriculum will need to be changed. Perhaps more time will need to be devoted to performing fewer musical works in favor of developing a deeper, more profound understanding of the works chosen. It could also mean that public performances or parent-conference nights are made richer by students’ music performances.

Assessment. If teachers work to embed these ideas into their philosophy of music teaching and into their curriculum structures, it stands to reason that changes are required in how students are evaluated. Much debate exists about authentic assessment and the move away from standardized paper-and-pencil tests. What emerges from these discussions is an awareness that there is no one best way to evaluate the complex processes of music learning. Certainly this is true for considering how best to evaluate creative thinking activities.

Traditionally, music educators have viewed the products of music making as an important indicator of success. For example, ratings at festivals on the quality of group performance are considered a logical indicator of quality. Similarly, individual performance ratings at solo and ensemble events indicate individual success. Paper-and-pencil examination of musical knowledge is another way for teachers to understand students’ grasp of knowledge. These sorts of evaluation mechanisms are important and can function meaningfully within a philosophy that endorses creative thinking in music.

What these more traditional approaches do not measure well, however, is progress toward goals implied by thinking in sound, aesthetic decision making, and the merger of skills with creative application. Perhaps a better way to capture the more complex approach that is suggested here is to explore the evaluation of process together with product and to do so with a wide variety of assessment tools.

Student-maintained folders of tasks that result from creative, project-centered learning are useful for documenting growth in creative-thinking tasks. These portfolios of achievement need not be large and unmanageable, but focused and embedded in instruction. In a fourth-grade trumpet class, for example, each student’s traditional method book could be merged with a simple blank manuscript notebook. As lessons develop from the first day of class, small compositions can be written in the notebook based on the notes learned. Students can write short comments reflecting on how these compositions have changed from month to month. It takes little imagination to see how this might be extended to include improvisation tasks and reflections on focused listening. Teachers can use these documents as part of a scheme to evaluate progress with student and parent involvement. Rating scales in the form of rubrics can be useful in such a context to evaluate progress both in terms of process and product.⁹

The evaluation scheme that one chooses to use for this kind of teaching should be flexible, and it should capture what is valued in the philosophy. Creative-thinking activities may be challenging to measure, but their measurement is certainly not impossible. The key is to include them as an integral part of the teaching process.

We are all born with the ability to think, act, and live creatively. Releasing creativity can occur in venues such as music composition and improvisation as well as listening, movement, and performance. Nurturing creative thinking in sound should be a core tenet of one’s personal music-teaching philosophy. Keeping the four “Ps” in mind – person, process, product, and place – teachers can encourage, stimulate, and release much more musical creative thinking in their classrooms.

¹ Gary A. Davis, Creativity is Forever, 4th ed. (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1998).

² Ibid.

³ Peter Webster, “Creativity as Creative Thinking,” Music Educators Journal 76, no. 9 (May 1990): 22-28.

⁴ Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1926).

⁵ Gladys Moorhead and Donald Pond, Music of Young Children (Santa Barbara, CA: Pillsbury Foundation, 1942); John Kratus, “A Time Analysis of the Compositional Processes Used by Children, Ages Seven to Eleven,” Journal of Research in Music Education 37, no. 1 (1989): 5-20; John Kratus, “Characterization of the Compositional Strategies Used by Children to Compose a Melody,” Canadian Journal of Research in Music Education 33 (1991): 95-103; Lisa C. DeLorenzo, “A Field Study of Sixth-Grade Students’ Creative Music Problem-Solving Processes”, Journal of Research in Music Education 37, no. 3 (1989): 188-200; Ray Levi, “Investigating the Creativity Process: The Role of Regular Music Composition Experiences for the Elementary Child,” Journal of Creative Behavior 25, no. 2 (1991): 123-36.

⁶ For an excellent discussion concerning parameters involved in creative thinking, see Jackie Wiggins, “Teacher Control and Creativity,” Music Educators Journal 85, no. 6 (March, 1999): 30-35, 44.

⁷ Howard Gardner, Art, Mind, and Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

⁸ D. C. Phillips and J. F. Soltis, Perspectives on Learning, 3rd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998).

⁹ For articles on developing assessment rubrics for music, see Maud Hickey, “Assessment Rubrics for Music Composition,” Music Educators Journal 85, no. 4 (January 1999): 26-33; and Maud Hickey and Rachel Whitcomb, “Writing Rubrics for the Music Classroom,” Music Educators Journal 85, no. 6 (May 1999): 26-32.

Eberle, Bob. Scamper: Games for Imagination Development. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press, 1996.

Paynter, John. Sound and Structure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Von Oech, Roger. A Kick in the Seat of the Pants: Using Your Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior to Be More Creative. New York: Harper Collins, 1986.

Von Oech, Roger. A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative. New York: Warner Books, 1998.

Maud Hickey is assistant professor of music education and technology in the School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Peter Webster is professor of music education and technology at the same institution.

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