Learn to improvise on the piano

now what?

Last year I couldn’t, and now I can!

I’m not entirely sure how I learned it, I think a combination of just playing a lot of songs and then being too lazy to read music and starting to fake it a lot of the time.

And now I can improvise, just like that! Woah.

All I do is this. Basically, pick a key and a chord progression in that key. Play that chord progression in whatever way you want (arpeggiate it, octaves, whatever) and then pick a key/mode for your right hand and doodle along. And that’s all I do. But your hands have to know your keys (I’m still only good with the easy ones, key of C, G, F, D, A etc.) pretty well, which I got from playing piano for an hour or more pretty much every day.

I think the secret really is just making sure you play A LOT, and play along to songs as you are listening to them on your stereo.

On the downside, my sight reading skills have gone down the toilet. :-(

Well, I consider this done.

Putting this on hold for a month; focus next 28 days is physical and psychospiritual health.

Keeper, keeper, keeper. Improvising is self-expression for me. And is actually valuable to others. A housemate and his girlfriend enjoy when I do it and leave the door open.

I now have a digital piano in my room!! x-D I’ve been desperately needing it for over two years.

Yamaha YDP 223 for an amazing deal through Craigslist.

I think right now I’m going to focus on relearning some of my favorite songs, so I can play beautiful music quickly, and always have something beautiful to come to the piano with even while struggling with improv. Also, I’m going to focus on using it help learn my choir pieces. Once I feel satisfied with those things, I might focus more on improvising.

Need a piano first… very soon O_O

Well, I played ‘Great Balls of Fire’ in rehearsals for our house band, and I’m happy to report that all along it was the piano which was stopping me doing slides! On the baby grand at school I can do them perfectly well, even if I need to toughen up the tops of my fingers a bit (there was blood everywhere by the end of the song- GBOF has a slide almost every line).

I also jammed with a girl at SlumGothic, the local art club, and I can almost figure modern songs out by listening to them!!!

I can now play ‘I Don’t Love You’ by My Chem and ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ by Keane.

For all these reasons, I now consider this goal accomplished! Thank you to all the people who have given me cheers on this!

I have been playing the piano for years. I passed Grade 8 with Distinction. However, my improv skills, especially for jazz, are minimal. Is this because I have been trained classically? Also, does anyone have any tips on how to do good slides? When I do them, not only do they sound terrible, but they cut my fingers up. Any advice?

I’m postponing this goal until next month. I gotta use all the spare time I have for my “workout daily for 30 days” goal, since it takes me an hour and 40 min or so per day to go to the gym, roundtrip.

So I’ll be back to piano-ing in February or so.

I’ve been playing the piano since I was five. I started out playing by ear and begging my parents for a piano…and even begging the neighbors if I could play THEIR piano.
I learned to read music and now I can’t really play anything without it. I want to learn to read chord charts and to play from fake books. I also want to learn to play great-sounding arrangements from bare-bones sheet music. Jazz it up, play alternate styles, use substitution chords, and sound professional.
There are lots of books out there, and I found some DVDs available online, but they are REALLY expensive! Especially for someone with my budget.
First, I need to find something to get me started.
I may also call the area colleges to see if I could talk to a piano teacher and see what they might recommend.