I'm just wondering if my hope of eventually becoming a reasonable improviser would be delayed a little if I spread my time across these practices in the coming year? I'm hoping to tackle the Rockschool Grade 6 in June next year and I have a number of scales and tunes to learn (as well as some sightreading and improv sections). Tell me Jerry, in your experience, should someone who wants to learn to improvise (in a pop/modern/jazz style) concentrate solely on improv as much as possible, or should time be split evenly across improv, scales, learning sheet music and sight-reading? !!! But enthusiastic about the piano as I am, I couldn't see myself achieving "pretty darn good" in the space of a year. I went from everything sounding the same, to "pretty darn good" in about a year and was playing cocktail parties soon after.That's wonderful.
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I think his course is a good way to "free up" that part of anyone who thinks improvisation and composition are for other people. I think many amateur players who sightread/memorize all their pieces will have more problems with it than someone who plays predominantly by ear.īy the way, Edward Weiss has an interesting course on improvisation at - he focuses on New Age music, but his main point is that we shouldn't be afraid to improvise. It's something everyone can do and I always encourage people to try it, but without a solid theoretical (and technical) foundation it becomes very hard. Obviously, my improvisations are nowhere near as complex as Keith's (or most anyone else's) but I enjoy playing them and as I keep improving my understanding of how music works, I expect my improvisations to improve.
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But that's also the kick that this free improv thing provides. Playing by ear, composing, and improvising are really all the same thing so it was a natural thing to do.Įxcept it's a little scarier because you can't go "back" to fix mistakes, you can only keep going forward while you're playing. Then I got introduced to Keith Jarrett's work and started to apply the Piano Magic play-by-ear principles to improvising. Composing became a lot simpler - and better! - for me then. Then I found the Piano Magic course and after a couple of weeks playing, the piano suddenly made sense. Before that I wrote a whole bunch of songs on the guitar but that was always trial-and-error too. The first year I really struggled with these method books and I never really knew what I was doing. I have been making music for a long time now but piano only for about 2 years. I hadn't thought of doing improvisation like that until I got Keith Jarrett's Tokyo Solo DVD. I honestly didn't think I had it in me so I only mean this posting as some form of encouragment to anyone who has had similar doubts. The experience is so liberating!!Īnyway, these are just the experiences of an intermediate player who is still overjoyed at the discovery that I too can be a little creative. And each time I just walk up to the piano, paw at a few keys for a while, after a minute something catches my attention which I try to turn into a left-hand pattern and then just try to enjoy the rest. Over the following few weeks, doing about 30 mins of free improv a day, I made the left hand patterns slightly trickier, changed the time signiture, and change keys every now and then. Those first few notes could barely have been called music but after 3-5 mins I could feel my brain putting up less resistence to this new exercise. Keith Jarrett on "Piano Jazz" and it was all the encouragement I needed to take that first step and force a VERY simple left hand pattern to accompany some EXTREMELY simple right hand patterns 2 bars of Dmin and 2 bars of Gmaj (ii-V in the key of C).
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What an inspiration!! I'm a little dubious of just how off-the-cuff Köln Part IIc is, but it is so inspiring to witness ideas being born and evolving into themes right throughout the album.
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Then I bought Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert.
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So much patience was needed but those songs gave me something of an idea of how to achieve that modern flowing pop piano sound. I have reasonable hand independence but my brain can still be tricked into sending the message to the wrong hand.Įarlier this summer I bought the book "Play piano with Ben Folds" and I went to war. I've been following the Rockschool piano grades which have brought me to Grade 5. Free-improvisation is a practice that I never thought I could learn but I've been so pleasantly surprised by the last couple of weeks that I'd like to share with others how I got started in the hope that this post offers a little encouragement to others.įirst of all, my main interest is modern piano like Ben Folds, Keith Jarrett and some ragtime (I love Eubie's Classical Rag).