ABSTRACT
Begin your journey into improvisation by experimenting with creating musical phrases. One vital structural element of music is the antecedent-consequent phrase structure. (You may know this better as a “question-answer phrase.”) Two phrases are grouped together, sharing musical ideas and complementing each other in some way. The first phrase, the antecedent, typically ends with a “question”—it is inconclusive and needs a response. The second phrase, the consequent, provides an “answer”—it completes the first phrase in a logical way. Look at and sing through Mendelssohn’s “Romance in G Minor,” below.
