Improvisation for Piano Players

If you're doing the Rock School exams, you'll find that there isn't actually that much improvisation for piano players. We thought we'd create this extra content to show you how to become an improviser yourself as a piano player. This is really important when playing with other musicians in your own projects or developing your own sound as a musician.

Understanding the Blues Form

So, I'm going to show you the blues form now in a slightly more complicated way. We have, like the standard blues:

• Start off with F7
• In the second bar, go to Bb7
• Then back to F7 (twice)
• Next, proceed to Bb7, B diminished, F7, D7, G minor 7, C7
• Finally, return to F7, D7, G minor 7, and C7

This might all seem a little bit complicated, but really it's the same selection of chords happening throughout.

The Chord Progression

So, we have, like, the standard blues:

• 1 (I)
• 4 (IV)
• 5 (V)

This format still exists within this more complicated blues, but we just have some extra things thrown in. We go to the four and back to the one in the beginning. This develops the form and makes it slightly more interesting, adding a bit more inventiveness and personality into the sound.

Traditional vs. Jazz Blues

Now, if you're playing traditional blues music, where you're going, this doesn't tend to happen; you're normally just doing the 1, 4, and 5. However, when we use blues in a jazz context, for example, we'll find we use these more interesting harmonies to add a bit more color and richness to the sound.

Practical Demonstration

So, I'm going to play this form for you in time:

"One, two. I want to do."

You might have noticed within that form that I'm using slightly more interesting and varied chords. You'll find from the Rock School voicings that:

One of the things about being a piano player is learning how to approach and play voicings in different ways.

Voicing Variations

For example, you can play F7 like this:

• You can play F7 like this
• Like this
• Or like this

And that's not even mentioning the extensions we can throw in, like the 9th. The ninth chord is the ninth note in the scale, giving it a slightly more interesting texture and sound. This really starts to add a bit of juice, a bit of color to these chords that make them sound beautiful and interesting.

Example of F7 Voicing

A nice F7 voicing, for example, might be:

This is very similar to the original but using the 9th and the 6th.

When we do this, what we're doing is adding more color, making things sound slightly more interesting and more fun to play over.