This week was another fun lesson in the world of all things music and we finally started to focus on more of the games that they play on Whose Line Is It Anyway, but more about that in a little while.

We started the lesson by doing the warm up of zip zap zop, with even more new rules – one was to skip one or two people in a row and there was another one but i cant remember the other ones. We then did another warm up and this time it was doing the blues song that we did last week and we did a round of the “Autumn Blues” ad the “Fast Food Blues”.

The main theme for this week was to get used to using lyrics and songs together. To do this we learnt the dynamics of the Whose Line Is It Anyway game – the Hoe Down. Until we did this lesson, i honestly thought that the improvisers pretty much made it up as they go I didn’t realise there was a sneaky little way and format to actually doing it.

Phil taught us that the best way to go about doing the Hoe Down is to come up with the last words of every line first so that we had a basis of the rhymes we were going to use and then improvise the lyrics in between on the spot. So for example if some one told me to do a verse for a hoe down on the topic of reading i would do  think of the structure of the song, something like this

blank blank blank blank blank blank Look
blank blank blank blank blank blank Book
blank blank blank blank blank blank Freed,
blank blank blank blank blank blank Read!

I just made that up right now and I will now improvise the lyrics where the blanks are in the verse.

I enjoy reading, went to the library to have a look, 
For something new and exciting to have for a book,
The librarian recommended Fifty Shades of Freed, 
It was such a boring bad written, excruciating read! 

We did these a few times and they were so fun to do – its crazy to think that its only week three and we are doing improvised songs already! That’s why i love this course its just so fun and pushes your creativity!

The next thing we did was actually focus on the song and improvising both lyrics and melodies to music. We followed a format that songs such as Somewhere Over the Rainbow, King of the Road and Any Dream Will Do follow. They don’t have a chorus but have a line that is repeated in every verse and then halfway through the song there is something similar to a bridge that is not a bridge that is a different breakdown to a song to connote a different change of a feeling. So for example with Any Dream will do The verses are like

I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain, 
To see for certain what I thought I knew, 
Far Far Away, someone was weeping,
But the world was sleeping
Any Dream Will Do

(Then its another verse similar to the one above ending “any dream will do”, Then it goes into this which acts like a bridge so to speak, where the music changes)

A crash of drums, a flash of light, 
my golden coat, flew out of sight,
The colours faded into darkness,
I was left alone

This format we did in the style of the song we did in the next exercise – the first two people would do a four line verse starting or ending with the same line. The third person in the group would do a bridge like theme talking about an emotion or something to change the state of the song and then the final person would make it in the original format summing up everything that had previously been said. It was a fin lesson and felt that I learnt a hell of  alot.

Case Study – Wayne Brady & Jeff B Davis

When I was thinking of the Hoedown on Whose Line Is It Anyway there are many improvisers I thought of but Wayne Brady was one name in particular that came to mind as I always remember seeing him performing in this game as well as a lot of the musical improv games.

I really enjoy watching Wayne do the musical improv games as he is so talented and they are always fun rhymes that he comes out with. His words that he comes up at the end of his lines on the hoedown are always funny and thats why it makes him fun to watch. He is a really enthusiastic musical improviser and he is so fun to watch and also an inspiration. He really gets into the spirit of the Hoedown, does a little dance and really does use long words to make the hoedown even more fun and challenging to watch.

Another improviser that I find highly inspiring when it comes to musical improv is Jeff B Davis. I only came across Jeff when he performed as part of the Whose Line Is It Anyway Live Lineup in 2016 and since then i have become a great fan of his work.

The one thing that I really like about Jeff is that he is one of those improvisers that thinks out of the box. He did a lot of musical improv when I saw him live and I adored the way that he would always come up with something that was completely random and out of the blue but worked so well. I find him a huge inspiration as he thinks in a different way to others and really like the way that he is unique in his way.

This isn’t relevant to the style of music improv that we are focussing on this week but the one thing I really like is when Jeff and Wayne do musical scenes together as they really bounce off each other and create some amazing musical improv together as this video proves.