Piano Lessons: How to Improve Your Improvisation Skills
In my last post, I told you that you could learn to improvise at the piano. I even shared with you some of my own story that explains why a pianist should learn improv.
Now, I’ll be honest with you. There’s only so much you can learn by reading what someone has written about improvising at the piano. You really need to watch and listen, and follow the example of a mentor who has been through it before. That’s why I created my homestudy course with DVDs that demonstrate and explain more fully what you need to do.
But here, I’ll share with you a few of the principles that I teach at greater depth in my course.
(1) Practice, practice, practice!
I’m sure you’ve heard this before! But it’s true of improv just as much as any other skill: You’ll only improve if you practice.
(2) A solid grasp of the basics will help you learn to improvise much more quickly and effectively.
This is because improv is really your own combination of the musical elements you’ve mastered. The basic piano technique skills are like the words of your vocabulary; improv is like having a conversation.
It’s free-flowing, and authentic to what you’re thinking and feeling at the moment. But if you had never learned the words in the first place, you couldn’t express yourself in a conversation, could you? And the more “words” you add to your musical vocabulary, the better able you’ll be to express yourself.
For example: Suppose you wanted to say “The man walked across the road.” Great; you’ve expressed a basic concept. But now suppose instead of the word walked, you used a word like ambled, or sauntered, or plodded, or staggered. These words all mean some form of walked, but they each give the sentence a whole new meaning.
Improv on the piano is like that. The more skills and techniques you know, the more meanings and emotions you’ll be able to put into your improvisation.
(3) So learn your scales! Learn your chords. Learn your theory.
You’ll put it all to work in your improv. (Sorry if you thought improv meant you didn’t have to do all that!)
In my course, I’ll teach you all about how to use chords effectively in improv. I’ll show you how knowing the key of a piece (that is, the scale) can help you improvise a great harmony for an existing melody, or even a pleasing melody itself.
(4) You’ll also want to learn solfege, or the art of sight-singing.
What does singing have to do with improvising at the piano, you ask?
Well, solfege (sight-singing) will help you tremendously in learning to “play by ear.” This ability is an important component of improvisation. You’ll want to be able to “pick up” a tune and improvise around it. In order to do this, you’ll need to know not only how to play chords and chord progressions on the piano, but also how to recognize them when you hear them. You’ll need to learn to recognize chords and the intervals that make up arpeggiated chords. And solfege helps you do this.
(5) Don’t forget to have fun!
Take some of your piano practice time, and shut your music. Just play around with some of your “musical vocabulary.” Let your fingers express what you’re thinking and feeling. And enjoy yourself.
You can learn to improvise. Good luck!
