Playing/Improvising Chords and Harmony and Progressions, etc.

[ILoveMozart]

Hello,

I'm a musical newbie. So, maybe you more experienced people could help me out here. I'm an aspiring composer and I want to be able to improvise better on the piano. I can improvise melodies with my right hand just fine I but I can't improvise with my left hand. I can't improvise chords and harmony, and I'm not sure how to go about learning.

Should I just start playing I, IV, V in all keys? Then I, IV, III, V, etc. etc? Is that how most people learn? They just play the chord patterns over and over until it's second nature and they're able to improvise? If so, what patterns do they practice?

It's kind of hard to explain exactly what I mean here.

For instance - I'm playing through some easy pieces by Haydn right now. In one of the pieces the right hand has a pretty melody made up of half, quarter and eighth notes while the left hand is playing triad triplets in various inversions. And I would never think to use the progressions or inversions he does, but I just know they came naturally to his hands.

How do I learn that sort of thing? Does anyone have some sort of advice?

[persentio]

I've completely lost touch with my piano skills, but from 10 years or so of having touched it all the way to Grade 8 ABRSM, I guess the best thing for you would be to just keep practicing.

You can go pretty far with tutorial books / tips from others, but ultimately you have to 'get' it yourself. And that comes only with experience and lots of practice. Or, you can discover the 'inner' you which might give you that spontaneous 'feeling' of running improvised chords by yourself. I like to call it letting your heart play.

I never really took into classical piano though... Because I somewhat felt that playing from scores just didnt let me play from my heart. I got thoroughly insulted when an examiner failed me for an exam piece which I thought I played with the most emotion; but criticized instead of not having much expression at all or something like that.

[Walker T]

At first, your improvisations as a pianist are just random, but keep practising until you figure out the chords you like - until you find your own style. We all have one.

I know all my favourite chord transitions, rhythmical constructs and just about every aspect of music. Mind, you shouldn't base your songs too much on the diatonic side. Real colour can without a doubt come from adding that (sometimes painfully) beautiful ninth, or a gentle but powerful seventh, but also a diminished chord at the right place, neapolitan chords and every possible combination. Even chordless chords have great potential.

While learning, it's always important to do some of the exploration yourself, to develop a more unique style. Personally, I've seen so many 'composers' passing off other musicians stuff as their own, stealing the best part of the chorus and writing their own around it, and that's not creativity, it's plagiarism.

After a while, you can start using specific themes while improvising. I frequently look out through a window and play according to the weather.

And do you reackon Haydn was a newbie when he wrote that? Comparing your young self to someone much older and experienced is bad science. No one starts at the top, the first piece Mozart played wasn't Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu (naturally for many reasons other than skill, but you get the hypothetical situation). Start off with the basics. Steer from the basics. Move further and further away from the basics. It comes with practice. The most vital part being the experience of knowing what sounds good, and in which way it leads the music. John Williams isn't a good composer just because of natural talent, but because the man has years and years of experience piled on top of it. I like to wonder how good he was compared to me, now, when he was my age.

I know 'practice makes perfect' isn't very inspiring or dimensionally helpful advice, but once you can improvise beautiful and original music with your eyes closed and talking to your cousin at the same time, heck it's worth it.

[MPDmike]

Hello,

I'm a musical newbie ... an aspiring composer and I want to be able to improvise better on the piano.There are musicians who are so familiar with their instruments that they can improvise at the drop of a hat, but this will not have been achieved until many hours of practicising have been put in. Whether the musician has found the right formulas by accident or through musical study does not seem to matter if they play well enough to satisfy their listeners. You could, for example, search out some music in a style that you like, and then study how the left hand works to create that effect.

However, I think if you are starting out with a desire to be a composer, then it makes sense to at least study the basics of musical theory. There is not a great amount to learn about harmony and how melody and harmony interact, to gain a greater understanding of why certain chords work better than others.

A lot of improvising is also about your technical abilities as a player, and how easily the notes fall under your fingers, and I can't see how you can be a good improvisor unless you have a good technique on your instrument. But I believe the best route to understanding what you are doing is to have some knowledge about musical theory, and that can be obtained from the many books already available in stores and libraries.

[chest]

ILoveMozart, judging byt your first post, I think you might be trying to go too far in a single step. If you really are quite new to keyboard playing, and if you don't already have a reasonable feel for (conventional western) harmony, I don't think you can expect yet to be able to invent a left-hand part "on the fly" to go with your improvised (right-hand) melodies, ie assuming you're wanting a somewhat conventional harmonic result - which I assume you are, because of the way you're talking about practicing chord sequences.

I can make some suggestions based on my own experience, though I don't know if they'll work for you - or for anyone else, actually, because I've never tried to teach anyone. But perhaps you could give them a try? You should also learn at least enough harmonic theory to understand about the kinds of key changes that can happen during a simple melody. Knowing more about harmony is "a good thing".

I suggest you work towards your goal of 2-handed improvisation in several stages...

1. Get to a point where you can recognise the harmony in uncomplicated music. Do this in small steps:

(a) Get hold of some printed music that makes the harmony obvious. One possibility would be "fake books" - they contain popular songs with the melodies written out on a single staff, together with chord symbols to indicate the harmony. If, instead, you could find an old book of songs with a piano accompaniment consisting of just LH octaves followed by RH chords on the beat, that would be better.

(b) From the book, pick several songs that you've heard often enough to be able to sing along with them. Find at least three all in the same key, preferably C major.

(c) Take one of your chosen (C maj) songs and sing/hum the tune out loud, or just hear it in your head. Don't play the melody on the keyboard. Instead, just play harmony, rather like a guitarist might play chords to accompany a song. Play octaves in the LH and triads in the RH. Play through it over and over - start by playing each required chord just once and, as you get practiced, play something to bring out the pulse. Learn to play through the piece from memory - singing the melody and playing a harmonic accompaniment.

(d) As you play the piece listen to the chords in relation to each other and to the melody. Learn to recognise the sound and the roles of (first) chords I, IV & V, and then chords II, VI & III. If there are key changes, either work out what's happening if you can, or ignore them until later (when you've understood enough theory).

(e) Repeat (c) & (d) with a second song in the same key.

(f) Pick a third song in the same key. Ignore the sheet music. Sing the song from memory and play harmony as best you can using the chords that you've become familiar with. Practice until you can play a reasonable accompaniment. THEN look at the sheet music and compare the harmony there with yours. Learn from any differences.

(g) Ignore the sheet music. Bring other songs to mind. Make harmonic accompaniments (still in C or whatever key you chose).

(h) Away from the keyboard, mentally "listen to" songs that you know; be sure you are mentally listening to the harmony, not just the melody. (Also, if you can, mentally listen to the bass part.) If necessary, start by first playing recordings of the songs several times until you can mentally hear them quite well. Then, using what you've learnt from constructing harmonic accompaniments at the keyboard, recognise in the mentally-heard pieces what chords you would play (in C) to match the harmony that you're mentally hearing. This is a crucial step, because it's "square 1" in the process of learing to be able to sit at the piano and play, by ear, with few errors, a piece that you've heard often enough to be quite familiar with it but have never played before. If you can't do that with a familiar song running in your head, you probably can't expect to be able to improvise harmony to a melody that you're improvising.

2. Get familiar with a few keys on the keyboard.

(a) Don't try too many at once. For instance, pick C, D, F & G. (Get familiar with other keys gradually over time.)
(b) With the chords that you've been using (in C), learn what the equivalent chords are in the other keys.
(c) Pick a song for which you can do a harmonic accompaniment in C. Sing it in each of the other keys and play, in those keys, the chords equivalent to those that you used in C.
(d) Repeat this for other songs, including ones for which you haven't already practiced harmonic accompaniments.

3. Learn to play the melody and an accompaniment at the same time.

(a) Pick a song for which you can play a harmonic accompaniment.
(b) Play the melody with your right hand, while playing chords with your left.
(c) Play it repeatedly, gradually taking over some of the harmony notes with your right hand.
(d) Practice a lot until you can play it reasonably smoothly.
(e) Develop this until you can make a reasonable job of playing by ear (in one pass) something you've not played before.

4. Learn to play a decent bass part - not always the root in the bass.

(a) If it just comes naturally, go ahead and improve.
(b) If you need guidance, listen to the bass parts in records (of different kinds of music), and look at simple harmonic writing like, initially, hymn tunes and later other SATB writing.

5. Learn how to play with not too many notes in your chords, and with the inner strands moving smoothly.

(a) Fetch some hymn tunes again and learn formally how four part harmony works.
(b) Practice playing until you can improvise fairly correct four-part harmony (adding alto, tenor & bass to a soprano melody).
(c) Try improvising just three-part harmony.

6. Apply the above to other kinds of music (not just songs) - eg be able to play by ear a good approximation of the melody, bass and harmony that you hear in suitably chosen orchestral music.

7. Apply the above to your goal of improvising accompaniments to improvised melodies.

8. If you're thinking in terms of jazz-type improvisation, read about jazz piano LH chords and get fluent in the use of jazz-style harmony.

[fongi]

Everything you will ever need is in the Mark Levine Jazz Piano Book, some good tips from Chest, hey Walker are you serious ? :rolleyes:

[Walker T]

Everything you will ever need is in the Mark Levine Jazz Piano Book, some good tips from Chest, hey Walker are you serious ? :rolleyes:

Depends on what you mean. I do have a tendency to forget the point and dwindle on about something completely off-topic.

[Erik Wietzel]

Hello,

I'm a musical newbie. So, maybe you more experienced people could help me out here. I'm an aspiring composer and I want to be able to improvise better on the piano. I can improvise melodies with my right hand just fine I but I can't improvise with my left hand. I can't improvise chords and harmony, and I'm not sure how to go about learning.

Should I just start playing I, IV, V in all keys? Then I, IV, III, V, etc. etc? Is that how most people learn? They just play the chord patterns over and over until it's second nature and they're able to improvise? If so, what patterns do they practice?

It's kind of hard to explain exactly what I mean here.

For instance - I'm playing through some easy pieces by Haydn right now. In one of the pieces the right hand has a pretty melody made up of half, quarter and eighth notes while the left hand is playing triad triplets in various inversions. And I would never think to use the progressions or inversions he does, but I just know they came naturally to his hands.

How do I learn that sort of thing? Does anyone have some sort of advice?


Well, 1st Haydn was a genius for sure 2nd, I'm not sure it came naturally to his hands. What I mean is comparing your impros to such a composer won't do you any good except frustration (as you put it - it could be exhilarating, inspiring but you seem to say that it shows you your lackness of ideas as far as chord progrssing is concerned). I mean too : beware of this "coming naturally" feeling. It's more often work and work and work... It's the same in every art : it's not what looks like the most easy, simple, natural that has required the less work. It can a whole lotta work to make work disapear behind apparent simplicity or natural impression. Good luck anyway, I'm sure you'll sort that out :)