Improvisation

[tucque]

Hi all,

I've been playing classical piano all my life, but have never been able to improvise or harmonise on the spot.  Anyone out there has faced my situation and managed to overcome it?  It is always quite embarrassing to be able to play Chopin, but be unable to harmonise Happy Birthday on the go.

Thanks.

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

Concerning harmonization you could either learn theory(and you should, I think it is awesome) and or you could harmonize by ear(you should do that too. Again I think it is awesome). Theory will of course help you be familiar with chords and the ear will also make you familiar with chords, conventional or not. I hope this helps.

[ratfly]

I had a similar problem until recently. someone commented that I had spent hours practising classical music and none practising improvising, so how could i be any good at improvisation! I suggest just trying different things out at the piano, and don't be put off if you dont sound so good to start with. I tried 5 mins every day for a few weeks, and I am definitely improving - I improvised recently at a party (something I could never have done 2 months ago), and people were impressed!!

[jamie_liszt]

I have faced the EXACT same problem. I sit down at the piano and I will bash out Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and everyone is like  woah!!, the minute they start saying, oh can you play this piece from this movie etc. I will know how it goes, I can think of the melody but I can't put harmony and chords into it, im hopeless. So I could come up with something easy like a melody with no chords.

Maybe you could do what I have been doing. This all started with my Dad's friend visiting, he came in and I played some of the Ballade No. 1 By Chopin and he's amazed. He starts naming all these well known Australian songs, he said play them but I couldn't, because I am used to learning them from sheet music, not improvising. So he started improvising just with chords, no actual piece, He just shown me some usefull stuff with chords, so I decided to Look more into this on the net, I downloaded David Lucas Burge's Relative and perect pitch ear training supercourse exercises, I started playing hanon + czerny more, practicing my scales more and getting familiar with the key signatures so im free with the piano, if you can't play a scale good and don't know your key signatures well you will suck at improvising because playing scales lets you be free with the instrument, so you can import the scales into the music, a B flat major arpeggio. I also looked at chord charts (search in google) and I found a good site where you select your key and sclae (Csus4) it shows you on a keyboard and plays it.

By familiarising myself with these different scales, keysignatures and chords. By practicing Relative pitch, I can hear each individual tone in a chord now and sing them all, instead of a chord sounding like a big blur and just hearing the top note (which is the melody).

I also understand what im playing more when i sight ready, with the chords. To be a good improviser you MUST learn thoery, cadences, scales, key signatures alot more too.

good luck.

[casparma]

Jamie, personally, how do you think of David Lucas's relative/perfect pitch?   how productive is that exercise to help you become good at relative/perfect pitch given a certain amount of practice time?


btw, how do you download them?  I go to their website and it costs a budget..........can you tell me how?


thanks.......

[jamie_liszt]

He explains really well, i recommend it. I heard results instantly, i can hear the individual tones in a chord. if i staccato the chord its harder to hear, rather then holding the chord.

Goto google and search eMule, download and install it, its a p2p sort of program like kazaa and limewire (no spyware), open eMule and up the top hit search, then in the search field type david lucas burge or perfect pitch or something until you find something, keep in mind you have to set the server to global server and the file type your searching for set to archive (which is zip, rar etc..) by setting the file types to come up, the whole lot will come up in one .rar file, download it (try look for one that blue with more sources. it might take a couple of days (i leave my comp on 24/7 when im downloading these files.He talks about a booklet, you can download this too, type his name but change the file types to documents hope this helps.

[casparma]

thanks Jamie I am downloading it right now.



One last thing, it looks though there are so many CDs.....


What learning routine did you pick before your pitch skill came into effect? just for reference....


Do you use the manual(which contains exercise)? I have just finished downloading the manual, and the pdf quality is so bad.....I wanna print them all but my printer doesnot work...........

[jamie_liszt]

On the first day you might wannt listen to about 3 or 4 masterclasses because he talks about perfect pitch and what it is and what its not, then explains some twang in the F sharp and mellowsound of the e flat, i think masterclass 5 starts with the actual hearing, just follow the instructions he tells you.

[casparma]

I am downloading perfect and relative pitch simultaneously..., but...

which one to start with?


what's the opinion here? which one is likely to be easier?

[jamie_liszt]

Do whatever you want, relative pitch is basically learning chords and intervals, singing each individual tone top to bottom and bottom to top, and figuring out notes from knowing your C major scale, perfect pitch helps you firstly unlock the ear to hear all the notes in chords, then you learn notes, i havnt completed it though so i cant say much, just do any.might be better to do the pp first and unlock the ear and learn the notes, then move onto the intervals(the relavtive pitch one has 5 levels.

good luck