I love this so much, and you could absolutely translate this technique to other instruments - as a voice teacher, I’m thinking about how you could test your scat singing with this technique, start with one note and one voice sound, then maybe add a different vocal sound at a time as well as adding notes one at a time. Definitely borrowing this for a fun lesson plan in the future ❤ Thank you for the inspiration!
Yes!! In fact, a great technique with any instrument is to remove the instrument entirely! I was made to sing my improv instead of play the piano in a lesson once and it completely removes your ability to rely upon the same old vocabulary you've built up. Only at that moment, you're TRULY using your ear!
Title is inaccurate. The concepts taught in this video apply to ALL instruments not just piano. I’m gonna go give this a shot on my bass when I get home later.
Kind of! So, there absolutely are preexisting things that I'm acutely aware of as I go through the process, which do allow me to anticipate things like rhythm and phrasing even if I'm only playing one note. However, knowing the key itself doesn't actually matter. It obviously DOES matter in the grand scheme of what notes will or won't sound good, but there's an interesting thing you can do- If we continue to use our ears to ADD notes to our "scale" until it is filled out into an actual, complete scale, it is extremely likely that the resulting scale will be the correct one for the key the tune is in. This will have happened because our ears will reject the notes that sound "bad" and switch them out for ones that sound better. The important part here is that it doesn't HAVE to come from preexisting knowledge. We can get there using our ears alone! This goes much deeper when we start considering ALL the chords in a progression, of course. Just a starting point!
@@Better-Piano thank you for reply!! So nice. What about the form? I mean, you stay aware of which bar, which section of the tune you're in, don't you?
Thanks Charles - you did a great job of giving us courage to try by breaking it down to very manageable steps. (PS. So relieved when you said to drop the blues scale - it's not in my classical repertoire 😅
@@Better-Piano I loved the way you voiced the chords especially when you played "the Path Of The Wind" progression. That harmonization was incredibly BEAUTIFUL! But since that video was from so long ago you didn't have the midi set up. I would LOVE to see a new video with the midi set up, and maybe you could make another improv video to show how to did more conplex improv like what you did in that video. I looked all over youtube and the internet trying to find a name for that improv but at no success.
Hey Charles, I live in upstate New York near the canadaigua area in Clifton Springs, New York. You said that you grew up there and I am self taught from my brother, a excellent pianist, RU-vid channels, and you. I was wondering if you know any good places near me where I can take jazz piano lessons. Thanks so much!
Eventually, yes. In the beginning? Don't even worry about the key! You can easily use your ear to pick out what notes sound good and what ones don't. AND, I'll bet if you continue that process until you have a full scale, you'll realize that you've just built the correct scale for the key without even realizing it! It's the importance of using your ear before your head!
Absolutely! What kind of follow up video would you envision seeing next in this series? Similar approach with a different backing track in a different key? Open to ideas!
@Better-Piano Oh, now you got me 😂 I love to sit down and practice these things, so some more details such as taking chord changes into account, what scales to use when (I have some knowledge of scales and modes, but not really WHEN to use them). A next video couldbe like "next step" to how to play like you at 9:30 -ish. I love your videos and have some more ideas if you're looking for it 😄 Much love from Denmark 🇩🇰
I have so many friends that are SUPER into coffee and they're always like "bro you just haven't had good coffee" and then they make me some and it still sucks. 😂All that to say I drink an unhealthy amount of C4
This is exactly how my piano teacher taught me how to improv a long time ago. It’s super simple and helped me learn what it meant to really play by feel
There are lots of things you can do! Full disclosure, I've built my own Intro to Improvisation course, which you get access to as a Better Piano member. BUT, you absolutely don't have to do anything that costs money just to get you started! There are TONS of resources scattered around the internet that you can access for free that can help you get an idea of how that process works. A quick RU-vid search will yield a bunch! Then, if you do happen to be looking for something that goes a little deeper and has an entire community attached to it, feel free to check out the Better Piano membership! betterpiano.com/
I practicly only improvise. I literally don't do anything else on the piano, I just sit there and improvise chords and melody and I don't understand people who say improvising is hard because - no offense, it's not! Athough I would also recommend playing to backing tracks, because feeling your own groove can be really hard and it's easy to only play the chords you feel comfortable with.(I am really guilty of this)
No one should take offense to that, because you're absolutely right! The thing that holds most people up is the fear of sounding bad. They just never start in the first place. But as you've proven to yourself, you'll start to figure things out bit by bit if you just START!
Yeah I think it's not that improvising is HARD I think just people are afraid of sounding bad as Charles said but also I think while wanting to avoid sounding bad there is a tendency for people to want to understand HOW to do it before they try and so they spend a significant amount of time "studying" it via RU-vid videos and when they find that they're inundated with theory and arent suddenly given the magical answer to being a pro they assume that it is some monumental task to begin doing it. Ironically if we spent half as much time getting through the "sounding bad" stage as we did trying to watch videos to learn how to improvise we'd be so much better. The best piece of advice I give to people wanting to know how to improv is: "just freaking do it. And if you think what you just played sounds bad in the context in which you played it then don't play it again"
It was the same for me about a year ago! As a kid, I had piano lessons with a teacher (didn't like it very much tho), then I restarted by myself and now I love it! Wish you fun!
I love this new channel of yours! Great videos! I am really thinking I'm going to join your community. Sounds like a good investment and something I'd like to be a part of
The first time I actually learn to improvise is when I write music digitally. I don't have any synth/keyboard/electric piano to connect to my computer, so I'm forced to just. Write anything I can write, then just click play at the end. It always works so much better than anything I played live. What I did was just, listen to the rest of the track, then just wrote whatever I had in my mind that sound fit with the rest of the track. I even misclicked at so many notes, but I didn't give a single damn until I played it at the end. Turns out improvising is indeed a lot easier than I thought. Can it sound better? Absolutely yes, practice is definitely needed. But still, it's way better than anything I played live on the piano. Then, it improved my confidence, which then improved my improvisation on live piano. Pretty neat!
Yes!! This is such a cool approach, and you have the exact right mindset. It's funny, the times when I've messed around with programming notes digitally, I actually felt this insane sense of total freedom. When I play the piano, I have a language and a vocabulary that I tend towards just out of habit and experience. All that goes away when I have to input notes digitally in a whole new way. It totally removes those tendencies I had before and allows me to think truly from a blank slate!
You need to analyze the theme to children's show Numberblocks. It is absolutely wild. Only 8 measures long and I count them 13/8, 12/8, 4/4, 4/4, 8/8, 8/8, 6/8, 9/8. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CyngSr5svDI.htmlsi=oOocJDxQin2nVkZB
Hello there ! I have a gift for you (spoiler : an old Joe Hisaishi's movie music) and I bet you didn't know about it : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2voh6TMwaZY.html
Improvising is NOT that hard! You CAN do it, and you can start with almost NOTHING! Go grab the backing track I used here: resources.betterpiano.com/improvise-now
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for oh my gosh, it’s amazing how simple it is and yet how long it’s taken me to learn these fundamental principles. THANK YOUUUUU
And that last tip of adding notes outside the scale that just “sound nice” was just the cherry on top. Incredible how transformative the music felt once you added just a few more notes there. It really turned chords into magic
I love piano shorthand like this! The more complicated chords have eluded me. I can figure them out theoretically, but need to be able to play them quickly. This is genius. Thank you so much!
This feels like a door has finally been opened!! Thank you. It helps me see how musicians can code a piece into its harmonic structure by ear and then reproduce that. And it gives me confidence that I can learn to do the same. I find music to be very comforting so I am grateful for your sharing how to learn these things on your channel.
