Guidelines for Collaborative Composition

In this study, the authors collaboratively composed a jazz piece and documented their experiences and shared learning about the process. Their insights, while tailored to a those studying composition in higher education, can also be valuable for the K-12 setting.

The authors believe that collaborative composition can assist as a viable solution to one of the most common issues faced by composers: writer’s block. Furthermore, the authors recognized that their collective capacity and zone of proximal development was greater together then as independent agents. I particularly enjoyed that they recognized that composition as a sole endeavor gives the composer a great deal of freedom, but that the relinquishment of that freedom was worth the collective capacity of a team.

Overcoming self-doubt was one area in which the collaborative approach to composition showed itself to be useful to the authors. They found that the process of sharing ideas, and finding enthusiastic validation for certain musical ideas that may have otherwise ended up being discarded. This process in turn contributed to what they described as creative momentum as they found themselves in a state of flow as defined by Csíkszentmihályi.

They found themselves working in a continuous cycle of listening and responding (signifying), and compromising. They coined this cycle as the “Jazz Improvisers Collaborative Cycle” (JICC).

This process included a great deal of trial and error as they bounced ideas off one another in real time. But this process also found its way into a process whereby they assigined one another with the same task: Write a harmonic accompaniment using these pitches. They worked independently and each shared their solutions, and through the process of the JICC, they were able to come to a consensus.

Possibly the most intriguing (and yet obvious) finding is that they found a hybrid compositional voice.

Two (or more) heads are better than one when it comes to creating as a process. Although the context of the study was done in a college setting for Jazz, I believe we can transfer the findings and takeaways in a K-12 instrumental music setting, especially in grades 6 - 12.

I chose this study for its application for the CREATING process in our Core Music Standards. This is often overlooked in band and ensemble classes, yet we are still called to teach this!

I believe this study provides reassurance to educators that the collaborative model for creating music can work and highlights the educational benefits of this approach.

Assigning students to create a 30-second collaborative composition is a great way to reinforce musical concepts as an in-class exercise. This is about process over product!