I have a friend who can improvise variations on any theme for the piano and it seems like great fun to do. It's also good if you have too many recitals (I've had once a month for the last three months and I'll be having them once a month until April), and when people ask you to play and you need something to hold their attention span. Sometimes it's really hilarious too, he did "Do you know the muffin man?" a few days back. Sometimes one person will make up a story while he improvises a "sound-track" on the piano, it's pretty fun.
Anyway, I've tried improvising variations, but I just can't do it. It all comes out like banging when I try. Can anyone here do this really well and tell me how you learned?
Should I work on improvising in general?

I should think that the ability to improvize it at the core of the art of composing music (think of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert).

So for both social and artistic reasons, you certainly will grow a lot when you improvize with great pleasure.

It is of course my two euros.

As you know, there are ten kinds of people : those who naturally improvize with virtuosity and those who cannot improvize.

I would go for it.

Regards.

Everyone can improvise, but most people are too scared to give it a proper shot.

If you can think up a tune and know some theory, you can improvise. If you really want to do it and throw everything you've got at it, you'll probably end up pretty good.

People are put off by how poor they are at first, but they are simply being unrealistic, it takes a long time to get good at, just like anything else.

I understand what you're saying F#, I just didn't know whether improvisation was something like perfect pitch that you either have of you don't.

I can improvise a melody well enough, but I can't harmonize it.

Haven't you studied harmony and counterpoint at all ?

Only VERY basic harmony and sadly, no counterpoint, so no improvising fugues for me.

Valarking,

I think you should not associate immediately counterpoint to fugues.

There are several kinds (species)of counterpoint.

You'll find that each kind makes you more and more able to improvize naturally.
First with notes of equal value (point counter point), then notes of different values.

It is really the basis of composition and improvization.

Resources that might help you

composition

16th century counterpoint

If you take to this skill, you might make your friend jalous of your virtuosity with variations(not this year though )

I've only recently started improvising a fair bit with old standards and jazz and improvising a bit with a more classical-type piece from my own head. I always held back from improvising for fear of anticipated bad combinations. I've found much to my surprise that I rarely hit clunkers and think my instincts are much better than I'd have reckoned. Improvising is really one of the most exhilarating experiences I've had at the piano. I'll never have the technique of a Rubinstein that'll do justice to many of the classics, but whole improvisation is like discovering something of beauty no one has ever yet seen. Bottom line, I consider becoming comfortable and adept at this to be more promising to me than the unlikely possibility of developing exceptional technique that would push the boundaries of interpretation of classical pieces.

Hello Chickgrand,

You seem to have a happy experience with improvisation.

Can I ask you a few question of a very down to earth nature ?

Do you look at your fingers when you improvize ?

What exactly do you do when you improvize ?

Do you start with a melody or chords ?

Does improvising make you play better the pieces that you love (like Satie) ?

I hope I am not too nosy.

Regards.

I start with a concept in my mind and use left hand rhythm to explore and extend its range, as the foundation with the tempo and key choices of chords establishing the frame for melody. Then I do whatever works with the right hand melody, chords, arpeggios, whatever, creating tension, ebbing into resolution within that rhythmic frame of the right and allowing myself to explore inherently logical avenues of development. I've played a fairly broad variety of music in many genres over the years and become well acquainted with how the many keys differ and have even learned from appreciating interesting mistakes that I catalog in my mind for exploration (it was exploration of one of these that got me off on the tangent from practice into improvisation the very first time.) Kind of hard to describe because it's not really so much a conscious process. If it were a very analytical cerebral process, I don't think I could do it. I do think about the key choice quite consciously as I go (I do tend to think of keys having unique nature or "color" and I do have very good pitch recognition--my high school music teacher said I was the best she'd ever seen for recognizing specific pitch), but also the interval of notes in the chord and think about patterns of voices and accent. (I'm not all that analytical playing straight from a score for that matter--just focused on the notes and dynamics, but here again, I focus much on patterns of voices and pay careful attention to which notes are louder and softer and perhaps even before or after beat by a fraction). I very seldom ever look at my hands when I'm playing. I've become comfortable with the shaping of my hands for combinations and distances and very comfortable with knowing distances for jumps and navigating strictly by touch around the blacks. I've endlessly explored variations of attack and finally have that sublimated beneath conscious thought (along with pedalling)--except when I analyze a particular measure where perhaps I'm trying to zero in on a particular tone or resonant structure where I may experiment extensively.

I do think improvising helps my playing from a score at least indirectly. It forces one to go through the process of making choices for intervals leading to tension and resolution and choices for accent for internal voices with a view of how they relate to the overall harmonic progression. It makes me look a bit more keenly at a classical score to pick out the series of themes that create consonant and disonant voices. I think making those choices in improvising helps me grasp the available and obvious choices for voicing in someone else's compositions more readily so that I more quickly find the path to making my performance more musical and not merely mechanical. I would say that is where my playing has changed over this last couple of years. Before I took my long sabbatical from piano 20+ years ago after only a brief and even then not very serious effort, my playing was quite mechanical and while accurate for pitch and time, but without any grasp of creating real lines with consciously-graded tonal definition.

Certainly, obtaining a piano with a dramatically wider dynamic range has helped. It's primary predecessor was simply too much just soft or loud, with little variation resulting from differing attack and certainly never capable of the tone I hear in my head and strive for, under any circumstances. I've learned now with a very good instrument with an extremely predictable touch/tone response how to further refine that with a lot of variability in use of the una corda pedal and sustain pedal (and even that rarely needed sostenuto) and combinations of all.

The available notes are the colors on the palette. The variations in touch and pedaling are ways to change tint and shading. Rhythm evokes the dimension of the canvas. The melody establishes the order and dabs of color that create patterns that evoke imaginings. I suppose that's as concise of a way to describe how I view it.

Not a nosy question at all. I'd be very interested in hearing your own perspective on these questions and that of others here.

I went through and read the links on counterpoint you posted above. It seems such a technical and ruled approach, and not very intuitive for someone who has only studied informally as I have. While I can understand how a thorough familiarity with the ruled approach (with rules emerging with very good reasons from historical experience) can give pleasing results more quickly to composition, the sheer number of rules seems almost overwhelming were one to take such an analytical approach to improvisation. I think if I study counterpoint for many years, I will find it lends a richness to my experience I will appreciate later. So much work to do!

Regards to you too, Benedict. I've enjoyed your frequent posts here in the Pianist Corner.

P.S. I have a friend who is a classical guitarist and violinist of some note. Whenever he's visiting, he often plays wonderfully complex little pieces on the piano. Everytime I say, "That's beautiful! What is it?", his response is always the same--"I just made it up now".

Just my two cents on improvisation: Let go of the fear. Believe that there is no "wrong" note -- just notes that sound good and notes that sound not so good. Don't be afraid, just play them all. Do, and you'll eventually get it; do not, and you'll never get it.

For piano beginners, I think something like "Piano for Quitter/Piano for Life" or "Piano in the Flash" sort of instructional videos can help. I watched the "Piano for Quitter/Piano for Life" sample lessons and they look like the sort of lessons that will get a newbie boot-strapped very quickly to play chords that make sense -- a lot about stacking notes and playing them in different ways to vary the chords/arpegios, mostly visualization and positional, very little on formal music theory. Looks like the sort of stuff to boot-strap fun improvisation. (I haven't seen the whole series, but it looks promising -- anyone actually tried it?)

Chickgrand,

Thanks for your answer. I find it very impressive.

To answer your question about me and the art of improvisation, I have decided to stick to sightreading till I can really sightplay WTC1.

Might take a while.

I started improvising with a fake book, making up bass lines and harmonies.

The only advice I can give is to just sit down at the piano and play. Experiment with what sounds good and what doesn't, and learn from it. Theory can't hurt either, knowing what chords fit well with others.

another thing that makes improvising really easy, is to start with the pentatonic scale (i.e. black keys only).
On that scale, anything you play will sound good.
Other than that, like others said already. You'll learn the most by experience. Hit some chords or play melodies, and you'll see which ones you like or not.

:D
Ya, I've found this out already, it's like improvising for dummies, I can pretty much do anything from slow improvisation to Liszt-esque cadenzas with the pentatonic scale, mainly because I only have to remember what 5 notes sound like and how they go together.

I can improvise...both jazz and classical. Luckily for me, I was taught to do that. It ain't easy, but u have to keep trying till u get used to expressing yr thoughts straight out on the piano, without altering the 'intended' sound. Harmony/counterpt aside...We were taught to memorize playing certain chord progressions, certain types of scales, esp. blue scales for jazz, certain types of decorations in certain rhythms and lastly different styles of acc. Then u have to keep praticing with these little memorized schools of notes/chords until u get the hang of it. And after that, u can just about improvise anything in any form. That's how it works for me.

When are you going to learn how to spell?

Chickgrand,

Last night I dreamt I was improvizing in the style of Bach.
I was in the lobby of a concert hall in New-York and I was improvizing and even playing some rythms on a table. People were queuing for tickets (not for me ).

I felt a bit like John Lewis, the pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet (my all time jazz hero).

I woke up such a happy man.

I tried my new skill on the piano and was disappointed that it was not so beautiful as what I was improvizing in my dream.

So I gave up and started the Inventions.

Surprise : for the first time in my life I was reading the two hands (voices) separately.

Maybe one day, I will improvize like in my dream.

There is nothing more rewarding than improvizing the music of your dreams.

MJQ and Lewis are one of my favorites, too. My former long-term live-in said MJQ sounded like "60's TV detective story schlock". So I dumped her. Well, maybe not for that reason alone...

I've only had one dream of playing like that, but I truly do wish I'd made notes on waking. I could hear it so clearly on waking and it really was quite good and so well developed. I could actually hear the whole thing in my mind from start to finish in those moments after waking. But all too soon forgotten. I have some recurring dreams, so there's still some hope. Perhaps the subconscious memory will bring it to my fingers at the piano someday. Question is--will I be able to recognize it?

It was such beautiful music I was playing. A bit like Benedetto Marcello's oboe concerto or Bach's aria on G string with the kind of detachment that John Lewis had.

I don't mind if I am only able to play Bach's partita or Rameau or Couperin (or Mozart's sonatas) if it comes as naturally one day as in that dream. I could say all my dreams have been fulfilled.

I think the dream comes from the concentration I put on the Inventions : they do contain the essence of counterpoint that will be developed in the Sinfonias and the WTC (and the Art of the fugue).

I wouldn't worry about trying to keep the music you made in your dream. It certainly is a part of a whole process of growth and maturation. First, you dream and then, it happens in one form or another.

I would not be surprised if music was a metaphor of our needs of transcendance as well as just music.

Would you agree ?

Regards.

Happily, variations come very easy for me. I just sit down, look at the music and play. Each time, a different variation. Maybe if I could just play the written notes....

:D

I often feel the same. My unintentional variations, however often lovely, are never part of the plan. I think Benedict's focus on good sight-playing (and I think that's a great phrase, versus the alternative sight-reading) may be my next ordered and disciplined exercise. However, I did play with some intentional and spontaneous variations amid "Reverie" today that I thought worked quite well. The very essence and structure of the actual piece lends itself well to a diverting interlude.

I think playing music is transcendence. I can rise from deepest darkest despair of the state of the world to a beingness with a sense that beauty is eternal in life, however isolated in space and time. It's a triumphant feeling to not let beauty elude your too-rapidly vanishing time.

chickgrand - your contributions are priceless

Chickgrand,
There is a dialectic between sightreading and sight playing.

Every day, I start with the Inventions and I notice that the first one (in C) which I have memorized for years starts great till I discover I am memory playing.
So I have to go to one I can't memory play and I come back to reality : sightreading is really the core of everything (if you want to avoid involontary variations of course).

In the course of time, I have had to do a kind of Copernic revolution from playing the music as I knew it to reading the notes and letting my bodymind do the learning.

Last night (between 2 and 4 am !), I discovered that my fingers "saw" the keyboard for the first time. They could find the right key, not because they calculated its position in a relative way (comparing to where they were) but in an absolute way (going directly to the right key).

Then the playing of the inventions sounded like sightplaying.

Sightreading is a very humbling process. But I consider being able to play the WTC or Mozart's sonata at my own rythm and just feel the music that is there a really transcendental experience.

How long will it take ?

Who is in a hurry ?

In Kafka's parable of "Before the law" (in the thread about transcental experiences), there is a guard that is preventing K to enter the gate of the law.

I find that sightreading (which naturally evolves into sightplaying) suppresses the guard.
The law becomes my old WTC and I just walk inside the law at my own pace.

How is that for a sad story that turns into a dream coming true day after day ?

If you want to develop your sightplaying, consider that at first, your strength in memory playing and improvizing might be weaknesses because it will be difficult to play at the tempo that your sightreading demands for each particular piece.

If you want to train, never play the same piece twice in a row. Just do not pay much attention to the result (the music). just consider yourself happy that your fingers find the way.

I have found that reading Abby Whiteside's books have helped incredibly. The strange thing is that she does not speak about sightreading.
But there is a whole vision that takes away the emphasis on the fingers and that made me understand that the rythm that my body gave before I started was the real musical key.
I hope it is not too confusing.

I'd be interested in your experience if you read that book in relationship with developing the zen of sightreading/playing.

I have the intuition that when my sightreading is completely fluent, memory playing will naturally develop.
But I find that for me, memory playing has been the obstacle that, because it was developed prematurely, has closed the gate for many years.

I do appreciate this conversation like the one we had one about you know what subject that did puzzle me at the time

Regards.

I think this is my weaker skill right now so I've been wanting to work on it. I memorize (both score memory and finger memory quite easily enough) but I, too, think this can be an impediment to developing greater skill at playing from sight-reading. This might not be the case if I did not have to spend so much time learning a piece. I have it memorized long before my technique becomes fluid and refer mostly to dynamics markings quite quickly. If I were moving on to new pieces more quickly, my sight-reading would improve faster. I do sometimes pull out something I've never played just to force myself to practice that skill. I have a huge book of Chopin I may use for this. It would be a good way to figure out what I like among the many pieces it contains. Maybe I'll even deign to go buy some Bach. I agree that improved reading will probably improve memorization, so sight-reading-playing really is the skill to give priority to for quicker overall improvement. I think I will make a goal of doing at least 30 minutes per day of sight-playing fresh material.

One of my good friends is one of the most incredible sight-players I have ever seen. I envy her that incredible skill. Even complex music she has never before played sounds beautifully accurate and musical when she plays. She's very nearly machine perfect. If I had to choose memory skills or sight-reading skills, I'd choose her sight-reading skills to open more repertoire to myself more quickly.

I did truly enjoy my moments of improvosation on "Reverie" today. I rather mixed a very languid and legato softer version of the early theme with little ornamental fragments of that slightly more strident middle theme, sort of like the mood of a lazy daydreamer with little birds harping at him to awaken. It worked quite nicely and just flowed easily. I've done a little jazz improvisation, but had never done an improvisation variation on a classical piece. The happy result made my afternoon practice a pleasing success. I think I'll devote a little more intentional time that direction, too.

Bon Noir et Bon Matin.

Abientot.

What good black do you mean ?
I do drink black coffee in the morning.
And we sometimes ask a waiter for "Un noir, s'il vous plait".
Is that what you meant ?

Improvising in classical style must feel really good.
It means you have internalised the whole language (harmonically and polyphonically). I am very impressed.

This morning, I made an awful discovery : sightplaying the first two inventions that I know, I discovered I was half playing from memory and therefore was sometimes out of sync with the score.

But when I sightread one invention I do not really know (F minor), I was in sync and it went better than ever.

I wish I had not spent so many years memorizing before mastering sightreading and sightplaying.

If I were you, I would sightplay the great masterpieces of piano litterature as a delight.
On my piano (an upright), I would have :
All Bach (of course, but I understand you are not attracted that much to him)
Mozart's sonatas
Beethoven sonatas and Diabelli variations
Schubert (everything)
Chopin (everything)
Satie(everything)

This would be to start with.
And when I would have played things like I were a great museum of music by myself, I would sightread some of the masterpieces of jazz :
Fats waller
Errol Gardner
Duke Ellington
Thelonious Monk
John Lewis

It may sound strange to sightread jazz, but it certainly would be a good training for me and making these written notes sing and dance would certainly be very exhilarating.

You are light years ahead of me.

But if I find a way that helps making sightreading and sightplaying a pleasurable skill, I will consider myself a lucky person.

Good black and good morning to you too.