Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Improvisation - taking the plunge

Well, yesterday I was working with my sister (a singer songwriter who plays guitar - I play piano) on two of her original compositions. One, a beautiful ballad she wants played simply on the piano, with mainly block chords. I found myself reduced to tears at the end of it.
The second tune, a swinging samba. We got to the "solo" part, and I'm not sure what happened, but I went into auto-pilot. As if, everything I have been listening to, everything I have been studying (or trying to make sense of) kicked in. I played the solo. Me. And it was so worthy! We kept going and going until it felt just right to come to the ending. She turned to me and said "have you been practicing that?" and I said, no, it just happened. We played it again and it was different the second time, just as good.

So much for searching for the one book that would teach me how to improvise on the piano. I guess listening to Bill Evans and Chick Corea are starting to somehow permeate my fingers, ears and brain. I wish I knew what happened.

So glad it happened.

Anybody else out here like me?

Dude, that's awesome. There's a great study by charles limb on how the brain works when we're improvising and it's exactly like what you're describing. I'd like to hear that solo though. I get like that when I'm really into it, but normally when I improvise, my brain is on because I don't want my biases to kick in, especially in a gig that I have more than one solo.