Piano improvisation: The rules give us freedom

"Learn everything, then forget it all." - Charlie Parker

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there." - Miles Davis

"It has been said that the best improvised music sounds composed, and that the best composed music sounds improvised." -- www.apassion4jazz.net

Would you like to learn to play a song on the piano?  I am trying to understand something about piano improvisation.  We can work on these together.

The first thing to understand is that music is built on  mathematics. Let’s take the major scale of C.  Think of the note C as 1, D as 2, E as 3, and so on.  So what we learned in school as Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do can also be thought of as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1.  Now let’s try to understand what a chord is.  A triad chord can be thought of as 1-3-5, or three notes that skip one note in between.  In the key of C, the C chord would be 1-3-5, or C-E-G.  The next chord over top of D would be 2-4-6, or D-F-A. The third chord would be 3-5-7, or E-G-B, and so on.  Now let’s have a look at these triads as you would see them on staff paper.

You will notice that the first, fourth, and fifth chords are major, the second, third, and sixth chords are minor, and the seventh chord is diminished.  Now let's see how these chords would look for both major and minor keys.

Would you like to learn how to play a song on piano very quickly?  Look at the first chord in the major scale.  That’s a C chord.  Play that on the piano.  It looks like this:

Now be clever and find the G note, then play the G chord:

With those two chords, you should now be able to play this easy song.  Just play the chords you learned and sing along.  The chords are written over top:

Oh, you're playing piano now?  Good for you.  Everyone should be able to play something.

Now let me get back to my issue.  I am working on improvisation.  This means knowing what to play over certain chords in a song. Here is an interesting link about improvising over chords.  When I’m playing a C chord or the Am chord, I can safely play the notes C, D, E, G, A.  With F or Dm, I can play F, G, A, C, D.  When I’m playing G or Em, I can play G, A, B, D, E.  With G7, I can play G, A, B, C, D, E, F.  On any of the triads in the scale, I can play the corresponding modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aolian, or Locrian).

Now, it is one thing to understand all this theory for improvisation, but it is another thing to make it happen. In theory if you understand the “rules” and are not afraid to experiment, you will eventually find that you can have freedom to explore and improvise within those boundaries.  When we see and hear someone who has great freedom in improvisation, it is very likely because they understand in some way the mathematics of the game.  Check out this page for more on jazz improvisation methods:  http://www.apassion4jazz.net/improv2.html.

When you get practiced up, see what you can do with this.  Have fun!

Here's another good link for you!  http://www.jazzstandards.com/index.html