improvisation and playing by ear

[demented cow]

I (and maybe others) would be grateful for suggestions on the following problem:
When I improvise, I tend to rely on (combinations of) a fairly limited set of harmonies and figurations, and the melodies I make up are pretty limited (often with small intervals, kind of 'feeling my way'). My improvising starts to get a bit repetitive after half an hour or so. My biggest problem is that I can't translate all the ideas in my head into piano playing. For instance, when improvising I sometimes think the piece I am creating is calling out to be morphed it into X (where X is some particular melody from a symphony, pop song or whatever, or a melody I just made up mentally), but I can't play the melody on the piano immediately. There ensues a boring passage with me trying to work out the notes of the melody by trial and error, usually with some bad notes.
This would improve if I were better at playing by ear, i.e. if I could play on the piano whatever I have in my head (assuming of course it is not so technically difficult that it would require practise; I'm just talking about simple melody and harmony, not playing Chopin-Godowsky on the spot by ear).
Any tips on how to get better in this area?
Thanks,
The Cow

[thierry13]

Get music theory/analysis and auditive formation classes.

[hyrst]

Aural training, especially in intervals, works wonders.  You become better able to hear the direction of the chord changes and the direciton of the melody.  There is a fantastic training tool at this website: https://www.teoria.com/exercises/int-ear.htm

[netzow]

Very useful tool hryst thank you! I haven't had any ear training stuff since my old teacher moved.

[Derek]

I (and maybe others) would be grateful for suggestions on the following problem:
When I improvise, I tend to rely on (combinations of) a fairly limited set of harmonies and figurations, and the melodies I make up are pretty limited (often with small intervals, kind of 'feeling my way'). My improvising starts to get a bit repetitive after half an hour or so. My biggest problem is that I can't translate all the ideas in my head into piano playing. For instance, when improvising I sometimes think the piece I am creating is calling out to be morphed it into X (where X is some particular melody from a symphony, pop song or whatever, or a melody I just made up mentally), but I can't play the melody on the piano immediately. There ensues a boring passage with me trying to work out the notes of the melody by trial and error, usually with some bad notes.
This would improve if I were better at playing by ear, i.e. if I could play on the piano whatever I have in my head (assuming of course it is not so technically difficult that it would require practise; I'm just talking about simple melody and harmony, not playing Chopin-Godowsky on the spot by ear).
Any tips on how to get better in this area?
Thanks,
The Cow

A good way to improve your improv skills is to start building a larger physical vocabulary.  The more scales, chords, figurations that you know, the easier it will be for the ideas in your mind to translate directly into played music.    I don't mean having a difficult physical vocabulary, just a large one. Think of how many shapes there are even in simple piano music!

What you're doing seems just fine---but try lashing out a bit more. Be more random, more adventurous. Instead of playing that normal sounding scale, try "chopping it up" rhythmically or melodically. There's no right or wrong way of doing this, but just do something different.    Your first efforts at this may feel random, so definitely record yourself.  Sometimes something random will sound good. By recording yourself you will be able to hear what you did that was cool and pick it out again.  In this way, you will gradually gain a vocabulary of musical "words and phrases" which will form the basis for better improv or ear playing skills.  I can now play back nearly any melody I hear after hearing it once. (definitely not chopin or godowsky though haha)

Good luck! feel free to pm me if you have more questions, I love giving people tips on improv!

[opus10no2]

Indeed, be random and when you do something that sounds nice, repeat it enough to implant in in your subconcious, then use it from time to time as part of your vocabulary.

Another important thing to do it to remember that the melodies, harmonies, and pianistic figurations that form the musical fabric of the pieces you choose to add to your repertoire can also be fiddled with and improvised upon, this ingrains a kind of flexibility and a more complete command of the piano.

[demented cow]

Ok, thanks for the help.
-Hyst, thanks for the reference to www.teoria.com/exercises/int-ear.htm
I can work those intervals out mostly, but I need to practise getting it faster. My strategy is at the moment is either to go through the scales in my head till I get to the right degree of the scale or to think of pieces that I play that have the same intervals in them. In improvising there isn't enough time to go through those rituals on every note, so the next step is to practise the ability to identify intervals immediately. The website will thus be useful.
-Derek, in one sense I already do what you recommend: I already vary the basic patterns a lot,  but on reflection a part of the problem I underestimated is that I stay in the comfort zone, not risking things like mixing scales or trying bold reharmonisations.

[lostinidlewonder]

My improvisation skills developed as I learnt different styles of piano experienced through memorising many pieces. I found controlling improvisation with traditional jazz styles is the way to go to start off with. Find particular things you are comfortable with, I spent a lot of time with 12/16 bar blues patterns, learning Lh fill ins by only using guitar chord tabs, playing lots of famous piano pieces from movies and shows from the 90s (1890's) onwards.

However I also dabbled with "random" playing. Where you simply play with no preconcieved idea. Automatically moving your fingers and simply listening to sound. I have done this for years as nightime relaxation and you slowly do develop the ability to simply listen and change sound just by thinking it, forgetting about the hands. It is a very surreal plane to work in, supremely relaxing because its impossible to hit a wrong note, but also it is a musical garbage dump full of nonsense but sometimes now and again however amazing things pop up, total gems which can scare and amaze yourself. Sometimes you don't even think, you are just an observer outside of your body to the sound you are producing.

Still I have found that playing this this realm is effected by what music you have experienced, what general patterns you do now very wel. I find studying chord progession is essential, so a solid understanding of the structure of music will help you a lot, as others have already said, study theory. But theory will still not help you if you do not know how to apply it to your playing.

[ted]

The only thing I can add is to suggest you record yourself and listen to it a day or two afterwards. The reason for the delay, at least in my case, is that during improvisation I am in a very special mental state. Lostinidlewonder describes it very well. I too get the subjective impression that I am a conduit being used by an outside force and that my hands are being told what to do by a third party. In such a state, quite ordinary things take on a mystical significance and any conscious musical value judgements made at the time or soon after are unreliable.

Many times I have recorded half an hour of improvisation and been on the point of stopping and erasing the tape because I thought I was playing rubbish. "That was very bad", I think to myself. Then the next day I listen to it in the calm light of reality and think, "That's really very good. Why was I going to erase it. I must have been mad." It can happen the other way around, but much less often as I get older. This could be because I have genuinely improved or, conversely, perhaps I am becoming satisfied with less and I am simply able to transport myself with second-rate material !

I am too close to the event to decide that.

[bradley sowash]

It sounds like you'd be a good candidate for a book I wrote with Scott Houston, the PBS-TV "Piano Guy."  It's geared to someone with a basic idea of chords and rudimentary reading who wants to learn how to got to the "next step."