How to improvise freely?

[stillofthenight]

Besides theory, what are the most important things to get down on the piano in order to be able to improv freely. I would like to be able to improvise melodies and chords as similar to the style of Chopin's nocturnes as I can (of course I will never be as good as him though).

Should I learn the standard position of all scales and then modify the fingerings for certain improv passages I come up with to be able to play precisely?

Chopin's Nocturnes do not always use the standard fingering positions as you would encounter when first learning scales.

There seems to be so many twists and turns with playing piano...that learning the "standard" seems like it can be bypassed and that nothing applies to it when you factor in everything that goes on in professional compositions.

-----
I am originally an electric guitar player and just learned by listening and just forming fingerings of my own that felt comfortable to me. I would get down the "view of the shape" such as pentatonic and perhaps modify the fingers a bit to be able to play what I wanted to with as much comfort. I just tend to view everything as intervals to matter what instrument I play. So I feel like rules can be broken..

[awesom_o]

I would recommend you develop a virtuoso technique and learn as much as you possibly can about music theory.

[bronnestam]

My teacher showed me an improvisation exercise which I enjoyed thoroughly. I did not think I could improvise AT ALL. But she made a bass accompaniment in the D minor key (I think it was) and then she told me to improvise with my right hand. First I was allowed to play just one key and try out some rythms, and then she "added" another key for me, and then another, and then another. It was great fun and after a while I found that I was not that bad at improvising after all.

[ted]

This question has been asked so many times over the thirteen years I have been on forums and I have had more personal requests for help with it than I can remember.

The main trouble is that in learning to improvise, to spontaneously create sounds deeply fulfilling to your own psyche for a lifetime, you have to do it in a way which runs contrary to all the precepts of Western serial education, how most of us were taught to learn in school. I suppose it also depends on what you mean by improvisation in the first place. At its most satisfying level, it is much more than the employment of aural and mental arithmetic to imitate compositional forms of the past. That is very clever, to be sure, but improvisation at its most transporting is nothing to do with that; it is not a sort of poor man's substitute for composition. Neither are its forms structured like those of classical and jazz. Improvisation is concerned much more with "how" than "what", more with instruction than data, more with dynamic process than a priori static form, more like an organism than a cathedral. It is not hidebound by those sounds produced by music which can be notated, in fact that property, especially in regard to rhythm, sets it apart at the outset.

Do you want to spontaneously produce imitation Chopin, or do you want to express what stillofthenight, and only stillofthenight can conceive, indeed what he (or she? ) is compelled to create ? These two objectives differ fundamentally, it seems to me,  in how you might approach them.

[ted]

I would recommend you develop a virtuoso technique and learn as much as you possibly can about music theory.

Do you really think so ? About theory I mean. I find your Chopin playing, your clarity of expression and execution, the musical potential in your own little piece, compel me to take you very seriously. Yet excepting those guidelines I have created for my own music, I see all theory as vacuous nonsense, perfectly useless, as with Czerny's opinions in that other discussion. This is one of the great delights of music and art, as opposed to the sciences, enjoying the imperative fecundity of embracing radical difference of creative outlook and growing from it. You cannot do that with mathematics and science.

[awesom_o]

I think music theory is pretty useful.

Once you understand the rules well, breaking them becomes easier!

I like working with traditional harmony quite a bit. I suppose if that isn't needed or wanted by a person, that they could get by without it.

Personally, I really like being able to slip in and out of previous centuries at the piano.

How can the piano become a time machine if we don't know our theory?

[ted]

Fair enough, I think we differ there in our objectives. I have never particularly desired to sound like anybody else, past or present, in my improvisation. In fact that was one of the reasons I stopped written composition to concentrate on improvisation. Although I knew no theory, I tended to unconsciously reproduce the effects of it through listening to a lot of music and thinking about it, resulting in sounds which, while not wrong, didn't quite reflect who I really was.

The big driver of improvisation, however, wasn't so much harmonic aspects anyway, but the immense liberation from notated, synchronous rhythm. Rhythm and phrase are much more important to my sort of spontaneous playing than harmony or chords. Without taking the analogy too far, I think I could be the musical equivalent of a naive painter.

But yes, theory is as valid an improvisational option as any other for the original poster.

I agree that in general, the more technique the better, provided physical action doesn't become a substitute for music during spontaneous flow.

[stillofthenight]

I heard that composers such as Chopin were improvisers. Is that true? They just improv and then notate it for reference?

 I bet he obviously had such an extremely strong control of the keyboard. He just knew where every chord, interval, and sound was in an instant? That is what I want and need to get down...just being able to know where everything is.

I find that the more I "try" to improvise and do my own thing , the better I am able to remember shapes and the sounds and where they are located. For me to actually want play a piece note for note, it would really have to be a truly inspiring piece that I cannot get enough of on a genuine and emotional level. I really am not much a fan of only being able to recite the same thing over and over again...it just gets boring.

I doubt Chopin put much effort into the way many people practice today, the "standard" that is taught all over.

[ted]

I think pretty much the same as you about these things; thousands wouldn't of course. Improvisation can be used to generate ideas, which over time crystallise into stable pieces. Some people write them out, some don't. I suspect that most creative processes of this sort are actually quite ordinary and mundane for the people doing it. But legend, anecdote, romance and Hollywood have fabricated a public illusion that music always appears out of the blue in a fit of inspiration and angst else it's no good. Coupled with this is the curious desire creators seem to harbour to preserve a certain degree of enigma.

From what you have said I think your improvisational process is headed in the right direction. It takes a long time though, to develop personal fluency even to one's own satisfaction; about ten years in my case. And it has no end; the task is never complete. It isn't like learning pieces.

[gregh]

I heard that composers such as Chopin were improvisers. Is that true? They just improv and then notate it for reference?

It would surprise me if that wasn't true. Improv has always been a part of music, and some of those famous dead white guys, like Beethoven and Mozart, were good at it. Improvisation isn't big in "classical" music these days--even the cadenzas are written out--but there was more of it then.

I don't think you can often just go from an idea in the head to writing it out on paper. Unless you're Beethoven, you have to try things and play around, see how they sound and what does and doesn't work.

I bet he obviously had such an extremely strong control of the keyboard. He just knew where every chord, interval, and sound was in an instant? That is what I want and need to get down...just being able to know where everything is.

I figure that's the big role that theory plays. You don't think theory when you improvise, but you've practiced so much that you know your scales and chords, chord progressions and substitutions, and the idiomatic phrases of your style, well enough that they come out without having to think about it.