What is a good piano improvization book?

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same

[jeremyjchilds]

Improvisation in which style??

[jeremyjchilds]

I've been waiting for your reply for a long time...why are you so unavai.....  oh....

[-unavailable-]

Oh sorry I wasnt able to reply very soon. Whatever style.

[Bob]

I think improv is much more personal and that makes it difficult to write out as a book.

I have seen materials for classical and jazz, much more for jazz -- Haerle, Aebersold, Coker, Mantooth.

I wish there was more about it though.  I'm interested and look around occassionally.  I think having some kind of structure to learn along can be very helpful rather than creating anything yourself (big task).

Improv emphasizes more creativity and "applied" knowledge of music theory -- scales, chord progression, etc.  I don't think traditional classical lessons emphasize that much.

[jeremyjchilds]

Oh sorry I wasnt able to reply very soon. Whatever style.

Polka style?

[bizgirl]

I agree with Bob about improv being personal.  A solid understanding of chords and scales is the first step, but I really think you either have it, or you don't.

I went to an improv workshop once (taught by Gail Smith) and bought her book "Complete Guide of Modulations for the Pianist."  This is basically 200+ pages of left hand patterns that you can use in different situations.  Example: let's say you have a whole note G in your LH and in the next measure you have an A.  In this book, you could find a bunch of different ways to move up a whole step in 4 beats.  You could also find patterns to do the same thing in for 3 beats, or more.  I hope I've described it well. 
Unfortunately, I lent the book to a friend about a week after I got it, because she needed to write an arrangement to accompany someone.  It has now been two years and I still have not gotten it back.  So, I don't have much experience in actually using the book, but it seems like it should work well.  I hope this at least helped a little.

[-unavailable-]

Thanks

[Bob]

I think you can take ideas from jazz and apply them to classical.  Take a melody and chord progression and voice it out yourself.  Take the chord progression alone and create your own melody.

It's about being flexible with the rules.  Some things reamin fixed.  Some are up to the performer.

It's more like a language.  Lots of "vocabulary" learning can go into it.  I never really thought about it much, but then someone explained how much improv can also be "planned."  More like speaking when you know what point you want to convey, but don't know exactly how you will say it and you have a full command of words and phrases at your disposal -- which turns out good sometimes and bad others.  The classical "prepared" way would be like reciting a speech in that analogy.

[hyperlink]

try this one:

Mel Bay's Complete Book of Improvisation, Fills & Chord Progressions
by Gail Smith

https://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0786618418/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-0607619-5896608#reader-page

[jeremyjchilds]

I think you can take ideas from jazz and apply them to classical.  Take a melody and chord progression and voice it out yourself.  Take the chord progression alone and create your own melody.

It's about being flexible with the rules.  Some things reamin fixed.  Some are up to the performer.

It's more like a language.  Lots of "vocabulary" learning can go into it.  I never really thought about it much, but then someone explained how much improv can also be "planned."  More like speaking when you know what point you want to convey, but don't know exactly how you will say it and you have a full command of words and phrases at your disposal -- which turns out good sometimes and bad others.  The classical "prepared" way would be like reciting a speech in that analogy.

Well said Bob

[bernhard]

For an intriguing take on improvisation, try

David Sudnow’s – “Ways of the hand” (MIT Press).

Sudnow is an ethnomethodologist (he studied with Harold Garfinkel  - who was also Carlos Castaneda’s mentor at UCLA) with a serious interest in the piano and jazz improvisation. This book is a “phenomenological” account on how he went from total ignorance to fluency (he now teaches improvisation). Be warned though, his prose is convoluted and hypnotic (but ultimately rewarding – and some deep insights are on offer too). Here is a sample:

They had become quite familiar to me. But it is one thing to recognise familiar sounds you are making and another to be able to aim for particular sounds to happen. A different sort of directionality of purpose and potential for action is involved in each case.

[…]

I began to have an experience with the keyboard that would seem essential to the making of music. It was not until the start of my third year of play that I found myself “going for the sounds” […] I was aiming for sounding spots.”

[…]it was not, as if I had learned about the keyboard so that looking down I could tell what a regarded note would sound like. I do not have that skill, nor do many musicians. I could tell what a note would sound like because it was a next sound, because my hand was so engaged with the keyboard that it was given a set of sounding places in its own configuration and potentialities.”

[…]

“There is a concordant system of pitched-shaped movements grossly and only suggestively portrayed at this level, between, simplifying matters, the vertical movements of the head and the horizontal spread of the fingers on the terrain. To go for the sound, to find what a next sound will be like, is to be somehow synchronously directed along these various dimensions. The thematic presence of a melodic course, of sounds, is given in a sustained togetherness of such aiming at the keyboard.”

[…]
“To go for a sound is to go for a sound within a course.”


For general improvisation that starts form scratch, try:


Colin Aston: How to play by ear correctly, how to improvise and compose music (Published by Aston & Beveridge – 39 Church Way, Longdon, Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK). This is an excellent book with a huge amount of progressive exercises – If you do the exercises you will get there!

You can also try:

Laura Campbell – “Sketching at the Keyboard” (Stainer and Bell). This will give you the basics. Once you mastered them you can try her more advanced: “Sketches for improvisation” and “Sketches for further harmony and improvisation”. These are excellent introductory books.

For classical improvisation try:

Gerre Hancock – Improvising – How to master the art (Oxford University Press)

Hancock was a student of Nadia Boulanger and this book is an excellent workbook, giving several ideas an exercises in most of the classical forms (Canon, fugue, sonatas etc.).

If you read French (I am not sure if a translation exists, it may), you can try the “Bible”: Marcel Dupre  - Cours complete d’improvisation a l’orgue (Alphonse Leduc) in 2 volumes.

Don’t be put off by the fact that both these books were originally written for the organ. Everything in them is perfectly transferable to the piano.

For Jazz Improvisation, try:

Charles Beale – “Jazz Piano from Scratch” (ABRSM) – an excellent beginner’s guide to jazz, covering everything including improvisation. In my opinion this is the best book of its sort (maybe the only one!) is that it assumes you know nothing. Also Beale did a great job in teaching what is ultimately unteachable and writing about what is ultimately impossible to write about.

These other books are more advanced, and assume you know the stuff on Beale’s book above:

Mark Levine – “The Jazz piano book” (Sher music)

Bill Dobbins – “The contemporary jazz pianist: A comprehensive approach to keyboard improvisation” (2 vols. GAMT Music press)

Tim Richards – “Improvising Blues piano” (Schott)

Lewis Riley – “Starting to improvise jazz piano” (Boosey & Hawkes)

Also have a look at these two threads:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,5306.msg50454.html#msg50454
(books on improvisation)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,5421.msg51828.html#msg51828
(Inner state for improvisation – how to do it like cziffra – excellent advice from Ted)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Derek]

Improvisation, for me, was one of those things where you just gotta let the pieces to the puzzle fall into place over time.

My reccommendation is to start simple. Choose some key you like playing in and make up a short, repeatable riff with your right hand. Memorize this riff. Rinse, wash, repeat. Record yourself, too...you'll begin to build a simple keyboard vocabulary this way. It's a great way to start.

If you want more help/encouragement feel free to email me! rather, personal message me on this website. my email appears to be hidden.

[stevie]

to me there are 3 elements that come together to make a great improviser, and every great improviser there ever was and is has every quality in abundance.

1 - a very large and flexible 'vocabulary' of harmonies, chords, technical figurations and pianistic sonorities, and more..

2 - a GREAT ear, having everything in the 1st element means nothing without having the ear to choose what to use and when, ideally this ear should immediatly recognise a musical impulse of the creative imagination and readily be able to execute it.

3 - the all important CREATIVE SPARK. now those 2 elements i have listed previously, they would make a competent pianist to be sure, but they would be completely dull and uninteresting to listen to without that special quality that has made the great improvisers so unique and great.
this quality is largely impossible to learn, its just a 'talent' that you either have or dont.

you can use intellect in combination with this creative spark to do unusual and unpredictable things, but no kind of intellect can make up for a lack of the creative spark, the intellect can only add to and make the creative imagination more interesting.

hope i make some sense...

[stevie]

ah, id like to add that its a great misconception that improvising is an easy thing, and doesnt require you to learn pieces..

one of the most important things that made these great improvisers great was the improvisational equivelant of a repertoire.

every piece and exercise any pianist learns becomes part of their improvisational vocabulary, and so any great improviser needs a big repertoire in one way or another!

[Derek]

Let our aspiring improviser friend be reminded that you do not need a great ear to start out with. If your ear is able to tell what it likes, and what it doesn't like,  the ability to discern greater detail with your ear will come with time.

Just start simple, and enjoy every sound you make.

[stevie]

yes, true, and proper ear training is essential.

its alot quicker, isnt it, to actually go on an ear training course?

recognising most importantly intervals and the 'scale degree' quality.