Melodic embellishment is the one aspect of piano improvisation that lends itself to your sounding “pro” very quickly, considering how little effort is needed on your part. What you do need is to resolve to have some fun with a few very easy concepts. Impressive results tend to manifest faster than you might expect.
There are many aspects of piano improvisation that can serve as great approaches to effectively embellishing a melody. There is one technique that I particularly like for beginners that is conducive to great sounding melodic embellishments. What is it? Well, it involves the use of the blues scale. It should be pointed out and emphasized here that knowing the blues scale as most people do is one thing. However, using it to create tasteful piano fills is another.
There is the common tendency for beginning piano improvisers to overuse the blues scale and thus sound rather “robotic.” But this will improve with experience and maturity. In addition, this “learning curve” can be reduced dramatically when utilizing the blues scale in a fashion that is proven to be effective right from the beginning. This is a topic that is a favorite of mine so I actually created a video session dedicated to helping learning improvisers and piano stylists to get a handle on this special, easy-to-grasp improvising technique. The title of the session can be rather deceiving since it can lead one to believe that it is dedicated to learning blues piano exclusively. This is far from the truth. The video session actually shows example of how you can tastefully utilize the blues scale to create some very interesting piano embellishments when playing standard songs.
The name of the session is 5 Blues Piano Licks You Just Gotta Know and it can be accessed online instantly. It’s rather amazing how just using a simple strategy in such a subtle way can really make you come across as a player who “stands above the crowd.” The reason is simple: when you play something that sounds as if it was produced in an effortless fashion, the listener picks up on that.
Try A Little Piano Improvisation
Here is a little piano improvisation experiment you can have fun with. You are highly encouraged to take a standard song that you are confident when it comes to playing it. Now, locate the end of a phrase that is inactive. Specifically, I am referring to an area in the melody that includes a note with a duration of at least 3 beats (dotted half note or more). Next, play that entire melodic phrase and, right after you’ve played that note, instead of holding it to its fullest extent (3 beats or more), play a couple of notes from that melody in an effort to “echo” a portion of what’s been played.
Don’t be concerned with your choices. Don’t overthink this. Rather, adopt a very accepting attitude of yourself and your efforts. This is key. You see, when you are confident, your audience knows it. So practice confidence when you are playing alone. You’ll find that, before long, this confidence becomes transferred when you are actually playing for others!
Remember,
Always…
ALWAYS…
PLAY WITH PASSION!
Musically,
Dave
www.PianoAmore.net
www.ProProach.com
One of the piano scales enjoyed by the pros as an alternative to the major scale as most of us know it will be acknowledged here. This scale really can add some “juice” while improvising over those major 7th chords. What’s great, too, is if you’re already familiar with the traditional major scale, you’ll find this one easy to get used to.
One of the best piano improvisation tips that I ever had been exposed to was that of “going outside the chord.” I mean, when most of us first learn to improvise, we are encouraged to utilize the actual chord tones of the chord we are playing. By the way, this is good advice. That said, you can add even more dimension to your use of those chord tones when you consider using those “other” notes.
Notice that the first four eighth notes are simply those “other” notes… yes, the chord tones from Amin7… and the following four eighth notes consist of only chord tones from Gmin7.
One of the most valuable piano improvisation tips one can learn to implement is that of overusing a concept to the point of it becoming part of one’s nature. Perhaps we can more easily understand this if we equate this to the language that we speak, since music is a language in itself. When we learned to say a certain word like, “Wow!” we found many places within our conversations to implement it to the point of it becoming natural to do.
When it comes to playing cocktail piano, of the many piano improvisation tips I could offer, a favorite to promote that is most conducive to getting satisfying results is using chord tones. However, this approach can take on a more mature flair when your mind set is that of combining chord tones with thinking and playing in a linear fashion as well.
Among the piano improvisation tips that you could be offered, one you’ll want to not overlook is that of playing patterns. The possibilities are endless. If you’ve never experimented with patterns, there’s no time like now to get started, so let’s do it!
A piano improvisation handbook for beginners that will serve as a starting point for those who feel as though they would like some encouragement in this area is available. This guidebook is brief and is accompanied by a short video that demonstrates the easy approach presented. If you have felt inspired to improvise on piano but wish you had an easy way to get your feet wet, you are likely to find this one quite eye-opening (and ear-opening).
If you have an interest in developing some pentatonic scale solos, as a beginner this is a good choice since you can really come up with some impressive sounds with little effort. Who said it needed to be complex to be good, right? It certainly doesn’t. Actually, when it comes to creating simplistic solos that sound “pro,” the utilization of pentatonic scales is an excellent choice.
One piano improvisation technique that you absolutely want to make a regular part of your practice routine is the use of chord tones. Please don’t make the mistake of underestimating the power of this improvisational approach.