The most common question about music I get asked is “How do you play stuff no one’s ever played before?”
I’m not here to tell you about music theory or composition. No, I’m talking about improv. That means sitting down at a piano and playing whatever comes out. It’s a skill that takes time and practice. But once you master the basics, I can just about promise it’ll be the most fun you’ll have while practicing. As long as you don’t give up, you’ll be improvising in front of a crowd in no time.
I didn’t start improvising until five or six years into my playing. It took years more to get to a place where I felt comfortable doing it in front of other people. It took a whole lot of trial and error. I wasn’t sure what I was doing most of the time.
It doesn’t need to be that way. There’s no mandated trajectory for learning improv—or anything, for that matter. In this article, I’ll tell you how to get started with piano improv, what tools to use, and what I would have done to start improvising around the same time I started learning the instrument.
(While future references to “improv” should be taken to refer to piano improv, at least as far my own experience goes, most everything I’ll say here applies for all instruments.)
Learn Pieces
While you may want to spend all your time improvising once you master the basics, try and avoid this pitfall. Devoting all your time to improv might seem like a good idea, but it’ll result in slow progress and burnout.
In the past, I’ve made the mistake of thinking that since I knew how to improvise, my long and hard journey with classical music was at an end. I thought I could practice improv exclusively to get the most fun out of my time at the piano. As it so happened, the opposite was true. When I wasn’t playing anything else, I found that improvising made me bored, where before it had been one of my favorite things to do.
Whether you’re a beginner who’s never tried improvising before or you’re already highly experienced, I’d encourage you to keep learning pieces written by experts. If you’re just starting out on the piano, learn a few pieces before even trying to improvise. Which brings me along to…
Acquire Inspiration
These days, thanks to Spotify and Apple Music, not to mention free alternatives like YouTube, it’s easier than ever to find and listen to any song you desire. Listen to a range of music to see what you like. If your goal is to improvise on the piano, listen to piano pieces. Ever tried jazz? Ragtime? Do you prefer upbeat or downcast tunes? Fast rhythms or slow? Your improvisations are likely to reflect what you listen to the most.
Of course, the best way to get inspiration—the method that’ll translate most directly to nuanced improvisation—is getting those pieces in your hands. Try to learn a range of different kinds of songs. Challenge yourself with new keys and harmonies. This will get the gears turning in your head. As you learn new pieces, ask yourself how you might change this or that. Experiment with variations.
You know when you get a song in your head but you don't remember the words, so you start making up lyrics to match the melody? That’s how songwriters start out. That’s how you can start. Work to make existing pieces your own. The greats knew what they were doing. Work with them to gain a better understanding of how keys, progressions, and harmonies function as part of a larger musical narrative. This takes time, but the more you understand why they did what they did (or do what they do), the better you’ll be.
If you’re really not sure where to start in terms of improv, you can try learning a basic jazz progression. There are tons of them out there. Learning the basics of jazz is a great way to get started improvising—improv is one of the defining features of the genre. It’s a genre for the musical innovator.
Identify the different kinds of improv…
…and figure out which works best for you. What do I mean by “kinds” of improv? Here are a few examples:
- A highly structured approach would involve learning basic chord progressions you like (for example, 1-6-2-5 or 1-6-4-5) and constantly adhering to those progressions, i.e. repeating them over and over again. This does take a basic understanding of music theory, which I’ll write about another day. (If you want to get started with music theory now, here are some resources to get started.) If you find this kind of structured approach appealing, you might also like to try and maintain consistency in other ways. An example is having an established “chorus” to return to throughout your improvisation or a set series of harmonies to alternate between. You can almost treat your improvisations as compositions or ready-made pieces, where you are just filling in the blanks.
- Alternatively, you can do what I did for a long time: just wing it. Arguably, though, this takes more experience since it relies on some understanding of what makes a melody good. For the most part, what I do now is somewhere in between the more structured approach described above and “just winging it”: I try to establish certain consistencies in my playing, but for the most part I allow what I do to go way off the beaten path. Find a medium—or extreme—that works for you.
- A final note: Some people I’ve talked to find that they always hear the next “musical idea” in their mind when improvising. Personally, I’ve never subscribed to the idea that you need to have a plan. While it can be nice to have an idea of the structure of what you're playing, there’s no reason that you need to know what’s about to happen. Improv is musical spontaneity, and structure is a tool in your toolbox rather than a necessity.
For beginners, I’d recommend finding a basic chord progression you can get behind. 1-4-5-1 is great if you’re just starting out. You don’t always have to be using a progression—in fact, variation is key—but it’s a great tool to be able to pull out when you don’t know what else to do. A sign that a progression is working for you is if, after some time, you start reverting to it automatically. The Major 1-6-2-5 I mentioned earlier is a great step up if you feel comfortable with 1, 4, and 5.
Have Fun with it
As I already alluded to, I had no idea what I was doing for years. And while it’s certainly nice to have a goal to work towards, there’s something to the spontaneity of improv that just can’t be achieved through extreme focus on constant improvement. You certainly don’t want to be obsessed with the results of your labor. More than with any other way of playing music, improv is about the process. If you’re not having fun learning, chances are you'll never have fun with it.
There are other reasons why you might not be enjoying the process at a given moment, though. If you find you’re short on inspiration or are struggling to have fun doing what was once highly enjoyable, you may need to take a break. Skip a few sessions, but keep playing or at least listening to music. Once you get back to the piano, you’re likely to have tons of ideas to work with.
The piano is an instrument of vast potential, and improv is an art of endless opportunity. It’s honestly hard to run out of gas if you’re “doing it right.” But when you practice constantly, you’re very likely to find yourself without inspiration at some point. It’s perfectly normal to need to take a step back. Don’t worry—your skills won’t fly away.
As an art form, improv is hard to define. It’s not easy to teach. On one hand, you’re not supposed to know what you’re doing when you’re doing improv. On the other hand, there are tools you can use to give yourself a leg up. I promise that if you stick with it, all your hard work will pay off. So go for it.