Start Improvising Right Now!

I am writing this article sitting in the window on the 34th floor of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Looking out of the window gives me mixed emotions- scary and very exciting at the same time. I almost want to jump out and fly! Only humans can't fly. The idea of improvisation is much like this. Scary and exciting. Learning how to improvise is like learning how to swim. There is the theory part indeed. We need to learn chords, chord progressions, scales and lines. One can spend many life times learning all these. And it is a good way to spend a life or two. However I believe there are two kinds of musicians-- the ones who know theory and the ones who also can improvise.

How can the ability to improvise be learned?

I believe improvising should be one of the first things children learn about music. Music started from improvising. You go to the piano. You play a single note. You produce a sound. That is improvisation. If you remember the note you have played and you can repeat it again- it becomes a composition. Somehow we seem to have lost the ease and freedom of creating music. We teach piano for many years, and then wonder why pianists in college can't improvise. They know enough theory, they can play written music quite well, but they don't improvise. Why?

The simplest answer that comes to my mind is: because they never do. They don't have the slightest idea how to create a piece of music. To me it is like taking swimming lessons for years without having access to the pool. I believe anybody taking music lessons should start improvising--at this very moment. Everybody should go to the piano and play something they have never played before, whatever it might be. You do not need to know anything more about music, even if you know almost nothing. Just go ahead and do something. It does not need to be long, it does not need to be in a particular style or remind you of something you have heard before. Anything will do. If you can create 10 seconds of your own music- you are improvising.

It is a common belief that improvisation is something typical for Jazz music, Irish fiddlers and garage bands. Basically this is because many classical musicians that we come in contact with dislike the idea of improvisation. I wonder where that attitude comes from... Well, I might ask, is it because they never do it? Because they have never started doing it? That is when I suggest starting improvising right now. What is the worst thing that is going to happen? You are not going to sound like Oscar Peterson or Yo Yo Ma? Tough! Nobody wants you to sound like them. You can develop your own improvisation technique any way you want to. Three melodic notes create a motive, five give you a melody. You can repeat it, vary it, change it, and the best of all- you can play another melody, and it is still wonderful.

Chopin never played any of his Mazurkas or Waltzes exactly as they are written. The version we know is only one version of playing these pieces. Until the beginning of the 20th century, concert pianists were required to improvise. Why is this tradition almost lost?

Stravinsky and Copland wrote special compositions for Benny Goodman, and many classical composers from Satie to Prokofiev had a very serious Jazz influences. And I believe the main reason for that interest is improvisation. The idea of never performing the same tune the same way as opposed to the exact repetition of every note again and again. A keyboard player of the baroque period was given chord charts including the bass note. It was up to him how to structure the chords and what the texture of the music material would look like. Sounds very much like many gigs I have played. I had chord charts and everything else is was up to me. So, is the improvisation idea new? I believe, improvisation is one of the most natural urges of any sensitive musician. It is the way to express your own ideas and emotions. If you are happily in love, play the C13 and resolve it into FMaj9:

How do you start? First of all- go to the piano, play something and try to figure out what it was about. After all, music is not just a set of rules. As a matter of fact, most of the rules were verbalized after the fact, and often by the people who had nothing to do with the original creation. Music in my mind is a language that allows humans exchange emotions and feelings that are almost impossible to share otherwise. The first step in creating music- is to start doing it. Just like swimming. Get in water and try to stay on the surface. Scary and exciting at the same time. Just like looking out of the window of the 34th floor. Humans can't fly. But they can improvise! Anybody can. And it feels very much like flying! I wonder if that's how Cole Porter felt when he lived in this building. His beautiful Steinway sits downstairs in the lobby, and when I looked at the keys- my God, they are worn out! He played this piano a lot! And I bet much of it was improvised!