Many intermediate or even advanced pianists find it difficult to begin improvising if the majority of their musical experience has been learning music by others or working with styles which focus on replicating written music note-for note. Fortunately, when you spend a lot of time with your instrument, your mind and fingers internalize many of the patterns, motives, and harmonic movements that you use, even if on a subconscious level. Learning to improvise is simply about lea

The more I learn about music, the more I understand it to be a reflection of life – the principles which help you be a better musician make you a better human, and vice versa. Here are five insights I've learned over the years in my development as both a musician and human. 1. Music ultimately lives within the connection between musician and listener. Many musical traditions, especially classical ones, treat music as something fixed, existing in some abstract realm beyond the

Improvisation, by definition, is unpredictable and spontaneous. This means that there are an infinite number of ways to approach it, none of them inherently 'wrong' or 'right.' However, if you don't know where to begin; here are a few ways to think about it to help you get started. I. Start with a structure: a chord progression, accompaniment pattern, or musical form for example: Dm-Am (two chord progression, 2 bars each), a i-III-VI-vi progression in Cm, a 1-5-1 pattern in t

An Ancient Observer — Tigran Hamasyan Tigran Hamasyan's An Ancient Observer blends Armenian folk influences with progressive jazz to create a journey which shifts between haunting melodies and heavy, complex rhythmic interplay. Like many of his albums, Hamasyan draws on strong narratives themes from start to end, and he frames the album as a reflection on the interaction of "deep history" with our hyper-technological present day. In his words, the album's songs are "musical o

Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within – Kenny Werner In his seminal book, Kenny Werner redefines what it means to be a virtuoso and to pursue musical excellence. Speaking from his own experience and struggles with a musical culture based on competition, shame, self-judgement; and critically, effort; Kenny provides an honest and insightful counter-perspective. Exploring ideas around fear, freedom, detachment, ego; Kenny challenges our traditional assumption

Where does musical meaning come from? All musical meaning emerges from relationships. In order to create relationships, we need a reference point. The tonic note is our starting place, or "center of gravity" within a major scale or key. While the notes of a scale will change if the tonic note changes, the distance between these notes and the tonic will always be the same. Each note of the major scale has an inherent meaning, or "archetype," based on its relationship to the to

One of the most common ways to structure music, from classical to popular music and many other genres, is through pairs of “question" and...

How to Approach Piano Improvisation Improvisation can feel intimidating if you are accustomed to having a blueprint for the music you...

Keith Jarrett on Saturday Night Live (1978) 1. Keith Jarrett – transcendent jazz Keith Jarrett is widely accepted as the greatest solo piano improviser of our time. His 1975 classic, The Köln Concert, is the top-selling piano album of all time. Jarrett was known for delivering fully-improvised, stream of consciousness solo piano concerts, many of which were published as records. Jarrett's music shifted through gospel, classical, jazz, and folk traditions, often in the same pe

One of the fundamental concepts underlying Western music is harmonic function. Within this system, chords fall into one of three...

Music can be understood as a language. The better one understands the principles and functional relationships of music...

Music is created from pitches, specific points on the spectrum of sound frequency which we measure in Hertz. Octaves are distances...

Just as notes are related to one another in terms of pitch, the other main component of music, rhythm, concerns how notes occur in...

Each major and minor scale has seven notes which are determined by the scale’s pattern of intervals from the starting note. Scale degrees...

The most basic form of music is the melody, a singable, linear succession of pitches. Melody has existed since humans began adding...

While intervals can occur between two successive notes within a melody (melodic intervals), they can also occur simultaneously (harmonic...

Groups of three or more notes can be classified as chords. Chords built from notes of a major or minor scale are known as diatonic...

The I chord: the tonic Just as the tonic note is the most stable note of the key, the major chord built on the tonic, called the I chord,...

The ii chord: the supertonic The diatonic triad built on scale degree 2, called the ii chord , is a minor predominant chord . It consists...

One of the fundamental principles behind compelling music is the balance of expectation and surprise. Music which is very predictable is...

Along with its melody, music can typically be analyzed as series of chords. Often these chords occur in repeating progressions. In...

All live music involves elements of the unknown, as anything which is created in real-time carries a level of unpredictability....