Improvisational 'tid bits?'

[stelle]

Hi Everyone!
I'm Estelle from Australia!

I play a lot by ear and I love to just sit and play whatever comes to mind! BUT i do need help with ideas for Chord Progression, arpeggios, ways to create suspense, runs, fillers--ANYTHING (really)

Just wondering if anyone would would like to share any little 'knick nacks' of their own improvisations, with 'How to do's' Like.....

Moving from C major chord to A minor:
My left hand plays: C,G then B,E then A
My right hand (melody) might play:C,D,E,G(Left:C,G) then D,E(Left:B,E) then C(Left:A)
(this can be transposed to any key)

Any input, simple or complex, great or small would help a lot!!

Thanks!

Estelle  

[pianoamore1]

There are many approaches you could take... and your enthusiasm, which it seems you have, will lead you to more. Since you asked for a "tid bit," here's one: consider the use of the pentatonic scale (a five note scale).

C major pentatonic scale is C D E G A

A minor pentatonic scale is A C D E G

(notice - same notes!)

Play around with the order of these tones, creating patterns such as:

(CDE, DEG, EGA, GAC... etc... and reverse)

Word of the day is "pentatonic!"

Have fun!

- Dave

[ted]

Hi Estelle,
         It is good that you desire to improvise because you are just the right age to develop it. It is a completely spontaneous, creative process, and as such every individual will ultimately find his or her own path. It has to be said that the best help you could have is a fluently improvising teacher, but unfortunately such are extremely rare.

How you start doing it doesn't matter a lot as long as you do actually start. To this end it is necessary to abandon judgement and inhibition and allow yourself the freedom to enjoy whatever sounds you play. Improvisation isn't like learning a Chopin study or solving a differential equation. You are left to define and execute your own responses and forms from the ground up. That is what makes it so difficult for traditionally taught pianists.

Now in order to start I suggest you get rhythm, flow and phrase going without being too concerned about harmonic progressions, precise note patterns and so on. You see, the trouble is that thinking about these things will kill your flow – nothing surer.

The way my teacher, the New Zealand composer Llewelyn Jones got me started was as follows. It is “one way”, not “the way”; there is no “the way”.

Assuming you have good knowledge of the usual keys and scales, operate like this:

Play any notes in either hand after the manner of a baroque invention, one part in each hand – under the restriction that everything is in one scale (exactly which key doesn't matter and is best varied for interest). Don't worry about the sound because the scale restriction means that everything will sound “all right” in the conventional sense anyway. And no restriction on rhythm whatever - syncopate as much as you wish.

The thing is to develop perpetual rhythmic fluency first, regardless of notes. Once that becomes easy, then you begin the ever expanding process of sticking in phrasal imitation, counterpoint, trading motifs between hands and hundreds of other tricks of your own.

After a while you then extend the range beyond one scale, perhaps going around the key circle and inserting little modulations. After that you might try bringing in a third melodic stream via double notes in either hand – like juggling three balls instead of two.

There is no end to the ways you can go, but the whole point of my drift is that you start contrary to learning convention and get the ability to keep rhythm and flow going first. Specific note relations and other intellectual ideas follow this and come later, they don't precede it – that's the whole trick.

Of course I'm just giving baroque as a working example because that's the one I started with all those years ago. There are as many ways of evolving as there are pianists.

[stelle]

Hi Dave,

Thanks a lot! i love the pentatonic scale, and i do improvise around it already (just a little) but after reading your post i will delve into it a little deeper and experiment with different chord progressions, major and minor! i love playing it in F#!

Thanks again!

[stelle]

Thanks Ted,

Ive read your other posts on different topics and they're always useful!

The problem i find with myself is my flow and rhythm, yes they do sound nice, but after a while (i dont know if you'd call it my 'style') becomes a little repetitive...

I play arpeggios in my left hand mostly and my right hand plays any sort of melody which differs every time, its hard to explain but it feels like i've hit a brick wall where i don't know what else to be creative with, if that makes sense, although there's a whole world of music in front of me...

My style is kind of a cross between classical and newage, though newage i find just borrows from certain aspects of classical and 'majorizes' on it in that song, particularly the left hand...

Again, its hard to explain, but i hope you've made some sense of what ive written

Could you explain a little more about "Bringing in a third melodic melody?"

Thanks Ted,

Estelle.

[ted]

Could you explain a little more about "Bringing in a third melodic melody

Certainly, with the usual proviso that what I do or think might bear little or no resemblance to “common practice” or in fact, anything that musicians do.

I like the effect of more than one thing going on at once. I guess many pianists do, hence the constant preoccupation with counterpoint, cross rhythms and the like. There is something exciting about it and I find it imparts real life to my improvisations in a way that homogeneity and square-toed coincidence cannot. To this end, I found I had to develop some way of consciously getting it into my improvisations. Trying to imitate formal baroque fugues and inventions does no harm but I did not want to waste years growing an ability which is a rough mental parallel of multiplying two big numbers in my head. In any case I needed some sort of ongoing approach general enough to encompass sounds quite outside the range of baroque counterpoint – in particular asynchronous playing incompatible with musical notation.

Therefore I started from the opposite end of the learning curve and worked from the realisation that whatever the density of musical events, they have to be played with the fingers. Once I could improvise reasonably interesting two part inventions, not necessarily synchronous and mostly not notatable, I began inserting other notes via two finger combinations – i.e. double notes. After a while these generate parallel musical events which are independently audible.

Sometimes the oddest comments by the unlikeliest people are profoundly true and stick in the mind. My talented friend Matthew Collett, of Pianoworld, at one of his wonderful Fazioli parties, in connection with some point or other to do with hand displacement (exactly what has faded into irrelevance) made the statement that when we play, when we create sound, we are always perpetrating an illusion, we are never making statements about musical facts, we are making real magic which casts a spell on the listening mind and deludes it into transcending itself, into hearing things which are not objectively present.

This goes straight to the heart of improvisation. And here is where I part company with all orthodoxy, because I assert that intention and effect are most often entirely different. Listen to a recording of your improvisation; any improviser listening to his or her recording knows what I mean - “Did I really play this ! How on earth did I think of that ?” It is another obstacle to the learner of improvisation, this admission of the power of irrationality. It doesn't come easily to the Western mind schooled in cause and effect.

Pardon that digression, but it is relevant. To return to multiple parallel events, begin by inserting double notes in either hand or both hands, into your initially two part inventions. Use them in as many finger combinations as you can imagine until the whole vocabulary becomes part of permanent haptic memory. After a few months, maybe longer, a wonderful thing starts to happen. You will find multiple strand counterpoint forming automatically through your fingers as sure as if they had little minds of their own. It will strike you when you listen to your recordings.

Now once you have established that fluency, it is possible to push your mental arithmetic to imitate baroque fugues and the like – if you really want to. I must admit that I do not. I find the spectacle of a young person, in particular, immersing their own aesthetic in music of the past, whether baroque fugues, stride, ragtime or some other bygone form, rather sad. Personally I have a horror of living someone else's dream in music, but if that is the way which gives you enjoyment then go for it – the above procedure will secure it for you.