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A Starting Guide To Piano Improvisation

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Jens Riedner
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312 views4 pages

A Starting Guide To Piano Improvisation

Uploaded by

Jens Riedner
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to improvise on piano


By improvising on the piano you don’t play after piano notes as in
sheet music, but after your own ideas. You could instead use your

knowledge about scales and chords, but freely, without a given plan

or directions. In this guide you will get some easy tips on how to
begin improvising.

Play only on the white keys


This may be the easiest way to start improvising on the piano: only play on

the white keys is rather effortless and it can sound great too. The white keys
all belong to the C Major Scale, alternately the A Minor Scale (they are

relative keys), and therefore you can use all the white keys without any

dissonance.

Major: If you start from a C key with both your hands you will play in Major

(try also to end with C and emphasize this note) ...

Minor: ... and if you start on an A key it will sound Minor. Try to end the

improvisation with A and during the improvisation emphasize this tone.

Dorian: There is also a third way, if you start on a D key you will play in the

Dorian Mode and if you combine this with the chord progression Dm7 – G7 –

Cmaj7 you could make it sound like a jazz improvisation.

Pentatonic: Let us also mention a fourth way. By playing all the white keys

except F and B (which makes it the C Pentatonic Major Scale), you could bring

the sound of a pop song to the piano. Try to play chords like C, Em, F, G and

Am with your left hand and then create melodies from the white keys C, D, E,

G, A with your right hand. As a suggestion, you could mostly combine C, D, E

(tones) with C, F, G (chords) and G, A (tones) with Em, Am (chords).

Blues improvising
The style of blues is to a high degree made upon improvising and there are

some easy ways to start. Among the first things is to get familiar with the 12-

bar blues. After you have studied the fundamentals of 12-bar blues you could

also bring some licks into your repertoire and one way is to create your own

blues licks from the blues scales.

Solo over chords


A very common concept in the area of improvising is to play a solo over
chords. The most obvious way to do this is in form of improvising is to
combine a scale with chords in the same key, for example, playing the C

Major Scale over chords belonging to the same scale.

Superimpose scales
After a while you may be searching for new ways to express yourself and in

that case the next step could be to superimpose scales. This is done by using

scales over chords that don't obviously fits together. One approach is to move
a pentatonic scale a whole step, for example from C to D. Try to play the G

Pentatonic Scale over the chords F, C and Dm. You will notice that it sounds a

little different, but pretty good.

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