Techniques and Tips for Piano Improvisation

Whether you are a learner or a beginner piano player or even if you have reached a certain level of learning the basics of piano, you may encounter some situations when you have piano in front of you and you don’t know what to play? Such situations can turn in to embarrassing scenes. How to avoid them? The answer lies in improvisation techniques that enable you to polish your musical techniques and ability to play even the notes that you are not really familiar with. Improvisation cultivates natural ability of playing and guide you through various ideas of playing over keyboard like a pro.

Techniques for Piano Improvisation:

There can be some tunes, chords and notes that gives you beautiful music with this creative tool and it would work well for most of the situations. Improvisation is based on polishing muscle memory that gives pianists ability of improving melodies by making variations and combinations of chords and notes. You will be able to play piano in your own personalized free manner.

Improvisation Improves your Skills with Use!

Prior Knowledge:

Have Complete Knowledge of Music: Improvisation is all about improving your piano playing skills and in order to play in a personalized manner you should have complete know how of music. Learn about different genres of music in order to progress as a learner.
Learn and familiarize yourself with Instrument: Once you have good knowledge of music, you need to learn about varied scales. Practice them as much as you can and you will find them easier to use for your performance. Learn about chords and notes.

Methods:

There exists a number of different methods for improvisation and you can opt for a method that you feel is the best choice for you. We are sharing some common useful methods for improvisation here.

1. Stay within one Chord for a Melody:

You may use different chords for a melody at pro level but as a beginner learner, you should focus on staying within a chord for a melody for improvising your skills.

Begin with using your left or right hand whichever you are most comfortable with and play a piece slowly within one chord.
Now use your right hand to improvise that melody within a chord.
Now try another chord for the same melody by switching to a different chord.
Continue practicing these steps.

2. Stay within a Key:

Now stay within a key and hit notes for the melody you wish to improvise on.
You can use your own hand to play background notes within the same key and the other one to play the actual melody.
Once you feel that you have mastered within the key, switch to learn more and give your melody some variations.

3. Use Both Hands:

With practice you will be able to get proficient at using one hand at a time for a specific task but at later stage you can improvise by using both hands at once.
Have your fingers within same scale and use both hands at once for a melody.
Fluency will come with time only and soon you will be using both hands simultaneously for playing just like a pro pianist.

Important Tips for Improvisation:

We are sharing some tips here for pianists that would help them in winning the race of improvising their piano skills.

Practice with songs that you know well. It would be better if you know both melody and lyrics and have fun playing the song.
Sing while playing the melody and you will be able to put in more expressions in your piano practice.
Always begin practicing first with your left hand in order to develop good habits of focusing on hear to play technique.
Take simple solo tracks for improvisations. Melodies should be short with interesting phrases. You should have complete control over melody and lines in order to remain in rhythm while having fun playing it.
Do not try to play fast but rather go slow and try to listen as you play the tones.
Play the melodies with 12 keys.
Practice with others in a group so that you can get inspired and motivated. You will also get chance to learn with each other as you practice with other pianists.
Don’t stick yourself with one type of music but work your way to explore many different options including rock, jazz, classical and other styles. Adding new things for practicing would not only be fun but would give you versatility.

Conclusion

No matter what aspects of learning piano is your focus, just love whatever you are learning or wish to learn and you will be able to show great progress over it. Improvisation would give you amazing results provided you remain focused and consistently practice. Piano improvisation would help you in improving your piano skills and habits that would go with you over long run and would give you great progression in learning to play piano effectively.