Last week’s Music Maker project for secondary schoolchildren in the MacPhail Centre at Ullapool High marked the latest stage in a scheme to give aspiring young musicians in the Highlands and Islands a firm grounding in improvisation and composition, using jazz and folk models.

Music Maker has been running since 1999 and there are two more sessions to come, the next in June.

The teaching is done by twin brothers Tom and Phil Bancroft, both of whom are important contributors to the UK jazz scene as performers (Tom is a drummer, Phil a saxophonist) and composers. The Music Maker project takes place in conjunction with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, but the brothers have also established a company, Caber Enterprises, to develop their ground-breaking methods of teaching music and in-service training initiatives. (Tom also runs the Caber Music record label.) Improvisation and invention is part of the national curriculum, but one which many teachers feel insecure in tackling. The Bancrofts are developing a sophisticated teaching pack for nursery and primary use. Their approach is holistic, aimed at developing a system which will guide youngsters from nursery level through to the 11-18 age group.

The brothers grew up in a home where music was encouraged. Their parents are both eminent medical practitioners, and Tom and Phil are qualified doctors. Their interest in psychology is reflected in the conceptual basis underpinning the practical aspect of their methods.

They work with ideas such as “early creativity”, “supporting creativity” and “metacognition” in explaining their approach, and are concerned with the psychological processes which lie behind the decision-making they encourage from their music students.

On a practical level, their system of teaching works with very simple building blocks designed to give immediate confidence and to overcome some of the inherent fears which can hold back the creative process, at whatever level of experience.

“The philosophy we work on is based in dealing with the fundamentals at the right time,” Tom explains. “Our basic approach is to build by having students go through a process of choosing small things in order to make bigger things. The focus is very much on the process.

“What we are trying to do is to organise their musical thinking and to demystify both composition and improvisation. If the basic building blocks are clear, they can do whatever they want to with them.”

The approach is adaptable to almost any level of ability, aptitude or experience. Last week’s group of students, drawn from various parts of the region, including Ullapool, Forres, Appin and Skye, already had a reasonable element of competence on their instruments, but a much younger group in the first of the Music Maker sessions in 1999 also made a lot of progress.

The key to the Bancrofts’ system lies in allowing the participants to invent for themselves within the discipline of an established structure, whatever their level of ability.

They employ simple concepts and easy verbal methods in the first instance, building musical structures through choosing from pre-defined elements, beginning with words, then moving on to pitches selected from a scale, and through to quite advanced improvisation in which the students are taught to work in phrases, using their acquired knowledge in an almost unconscious fashion.

At each level of advancement, the student is faced with an easily understood choice and one which will provide a satisfactory outcome.

“We work on a principle of supporting their creativity,” Phil confirms. “We know that the structures we are using will let them produce a tune or whatever, even if they don’t quite believe it. They are able to find their own creativity through the structures and the help we give them, and the structures help to make their decision-making easier.”

Last week’s session with 12 school pupils and two adults (both teachers, although neither of music) demonstrated clearly the efficacy of these ideas, both in composition and improvisation. The students worked hard on their music and were getting to grips with the ideas involved. At every step they were encouraged to find solutions themselves, rather than being told what to do.

The group worked on compositions written by two of the younger students, developing arrangements to play behind the melody and experimenting with different chord tones, rhythm patterns and improvisations. The way in which the compositions blossomed before their eyes was more than satisfactory evidence of the methodology’s success.

For details of the next Music Maker courses contact the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, 13 Somerset Place, Glasgow G3 7TJ, tel 0141 332 8311; e-mail info@nyos.co.uk