I noticed a bunch of them can play really complicated things with sheet music, but then if you tell them to vamp on a I vi II V progression in A for example, they look at you like you are speaking gibberish. Especially if you tell them to play around with that progression and improvise over it.

Is this a result of bad teaching? Seems like there are a bunch of pianists who are completely lost without sheet music.

I think that doing what you describe is part of being a well-rounded musician. There is a difference between being a well-rounded pianist and a well-rounded musician. Ideally we strive to be both!

not necessarily bad teaching, just very narrow teaching. Classical pianists right now are unfortunately being trained to spit back virtuoso pieces with mechanical perfection. They all possess good technique, but the problem is that they're not executing it properly. When I listen to music, I don't want to hear just a bunch of notes, I want to hear emotional output -- something that lets me know that the performer has an understanding for the work. But when you get pounced upon every time you have a single finger slip or put one ritard in the "wrong" place, it becomes easy to fall back on robotic playing.

it is this regimented style, and the feeling of anti-creativity it creates, that keeps students from being able to improvise, and it is the style of teaching that emphasizes complete and total accuracy that desensitizes some people to simpler things like vamping a chord progression, or memorizing pieces. It's not just in music either, it's in all fields of study, things are becoming more and more mechanical, and results are calculated more and more by straight numbers rather than a true assessment of output.

I can improvise a little bit over chord progressions, but nothing very special or varied. It's rather simplistic. But it's fun to do.

i don't know about music students, since i wasn't one, but only recently (well, about a year) i started to more methodically do simple chord progressions--and therefore no longer need to be embarrassed if someone asks me to play Happy Birthday. in all keys too! so proud of myself hehehe.

but anyway, i've been curious about this too. i should ask some teachers and students about this.

The thing that always bugs me about improvising on chord progressions is not spitting out the chords and making up melodies that go well with the chords (though that's not always the simplest thing in the world...), it's the voice leading. I'm uncomfortable playing only in root position =P

On the whole, there is a slightly depressing trend toward mechanical playing, but there are plenty of teachers at certain universities and conservatories that have students with real feeling to convey. Plus a couple of them improvise in concert: one of them during a degree-fulfilling recital! It is not an entirely lost art.

Beside, with a big enough repertoire, limber enough fingers, and a quick enough mind, it's easy to screw around with themes and bits and pieces from different works in your current or past rep - it's even funnier to watch if you don't quite remember how it goes! And thus the seeds of improvisation are sown.

not just PLAYING! a friend of mine just received his masters degree in education, and he told me that elementary-school kids are being taught to write ESSAYS using a method called "steal-and-spit" -- STEALING the question, and pieces of information from various sources, and then SPITTING them back out in your own "original" essay. It's disgusting how de-emphasized critical thinking and creativity have become in modern education.

I'm glad you see this happening! More and more people I've spoken with lately are beginning to realize the how profoundly wrong the fundamental principles of any school are. Sit down and shut up, no, I'm right and you're wrong, all that matters are numbers on a report card, just get the grade, just get the diploma, just get the degree, just get the job... agh, my distaste for materialism as a way of life is coming out of the woodwork. Quick, someone turn on the TV to inundate me with commercialism!

In all seriousness, if schools allowed children to be children, to really experiment and not be afraid to make mistakes, to be on more equal terms with the teacher, they would learn the things that they really do need to know. Experimental and critical thinking comes from experiential learning and uncritical teaching.

But we digress... or do we? Is this where the thread wants to go?

To me it all comes down to them being taught how to regurgitate music rather than create it. We need to create new music to move forward.

I don't think that's true; it's just that they weren't taught improv, simple as that. About a year ago, I asked a professor about improving, and he said he only knows a little, because he took the one required course in improv. He said, "Well, I was the product of the system." He bemoans his lack of improv ability.

The "issue", if one even call it that, is that it's just not emphasized. However, as I was taking evening division classes at Juilliard, the teacher said that recently you start to see students at audition (recording and live) playing their own compositions and improvs. And she said it's happening more and more in recent years. So I was surprised how this thread completely contradicts her experience--which is why I mentioned I need to ask a few more teachers and students to get more first hand experience, even though now I realized I've asked two of them already.

It's pretty simple, really. Learning chord progressions is VERY easy. Takes a little time, that's all. Improv is obviously harder and more involved, and perhaps should be emphasized just a little bit more if this thread is a decent indicator.

one thing i find interesting is that instruments like the guitar focus a lot on improvisation, and actually encourages "bad" technique. If you look at people like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton. They have horrible guitar technique, complete opposite of "classical" yet it is because of this "bad" technique, that the guitar sounds the way it does today. If you look up guitar lessons on youtube, it's usually about improvising using the pentatonic scale, etc. If you look up piano, it's mostly people playing music from 300 years ago.

I wonder why Piano hasn't been as progressive as guitar?

The piano didn't exist 300 years ago. Your youtube search would bring up mostly 19th and 20th century music, some of which even uses pentatonic scales. (Classical piano music has included pentatonic scales for over 100 years.)

well... part of it is because i think the "golden age" of piano was over 150 years ago (though the term is apparently used for early-to-mid 20th century for all the great pianists for the era) and for guitars... the "golden age" i suppose is only a couple decades removed, maybe it's still ongoing.

in america, for a few decades at least, jazz was all the rage. it's still going, just not nearly as strong now, even compared to a couple decades ago.

I realise by your inverted commas that you don't necessarily mean bad technique.

Blues/rock guitar playing and improvisation is simply different to classical guitar. In simple terms, improvising on blues/rock guitar is mostly about imitating and learning 'licks' (short phrases) and gradually building on those to the point where you put them together in your own way.

In the UK at least, piano students that follow the usual ABRSM syllabus (i.e., just about all of them) are not taught to improvise. Nor does the theory syllabus teach much of the harmonic understanding that would enable a student to work out how to do it even if not taught.

It's just not part of the 'classical' piano system. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know, but it's certainly not fair to criticise piano students for it.

I have no particular desire to be able to do that. This is the sort of pianist I enjoy being.

Although it would be nice if the ordinary avenues of learning provided more opportunity to learn that way I suppose.

Hmmm....sounds like me....I'm taking AP music theory, though, so I should have a better understanding next year....

I understand if you are playing piano for enjoyment only. However, I personally feel that if you are going to go for a piano degree at a music school, you should strive to be an actual musician, and not just a "player" and I would think the schools would want to make sure each students is as well rounded as possible.

it just seems to not be the case, unless someone is going to school for jazz piano.

It depends what you want to do. Why be as well rounded musician as possible if you don't enjoy all those avenues. I have no interest in tonal improvisation, so I don't pursue it. Maybe it makes me a less rounded musician, but I have no desire for tonal improvisation to feature in either my life or my career after I've left university so it doesn't matter. I'd much rather spend the time getting as good as I can at the things I enjoy.

As others before have said, I think it is just a result of what students are being taught, not bad teaching.

I can say for myself as a graduate student that I know I have to perform pieces from the classical repertoire for auditions and a recital. Therefore, it is in my best interest to use my practice time wisely in learning those pieces. This, combined with learning accompanying music, I honestly feel guilty if I practice anything besides the mountains of music that I absolutely have to learn.

Here is something I love though- a piano professor at my undergraduate school began to learn jazz chords/improvisation when I was in my final year. I was curious about this, because I would hear him practicing in his office, and so I asked him about it. He told me that he always wanted to learn that style of music, but when he was younger he never had the time. He had gone to the Moscow Conservatory and spent all his time practicing. Now, he finally felt like he had time to learn something besides classical, so he wanted to challenge himself. Being a musician is a lifelong process and I admire and respect his desire to keep challenging himself.