How to Improvise Freely on Piano!

Ah, to sit down and play. One of the joys of being able to play the piano is to know how to play it. But so few can or do. What I mean is this - if you can't walk over to your piano, sit down and just play whatever you feel, you are shortchanging yourself on a wonderful experience. Plus, it's not as difficult to do as many might have you think.

The thing that stops more students from being able to improvise freely is self-doubt. They just don't believe they can do it. And of course, they lock themselves with this belief. I can relate. I had to work long and hard to give up my own set of self-limiting beliefs about what I could or couldn't do on the piano. One of the biggest of these was "I'm not good enough."

This thought in particular will freeze you and keep you stuck. Look at it this way. No one is good enough! That's right! No one will ever be the best at playing piano because there will always be someone better - technically speaking that is. That's why it's very important to free yourself from such inane beliefs. Listen, you are good enough and you are ready to express yourself at the piano. Here's one method that will have you improvising freely in no time.

We'll begin with the piano lesson "Reflections in Water" as an example. It's a free lesson that everyone has access to. The beautiful thing about this lesson in particular is that you are given a way to play the chords that sound modern and you are given the chord progression to play. You are free to create your own melodies to these chords. You see, another thing that students often don't get is that you need a set of limitations to improvise freely. Why? Because there are so many choices!

By giving you a certain Key, chords, and chord progression to play, I'm limiting your choices so you can focus on expressing yourself rather than trying to decide what chord to play. Eventually, when you understand how limitations work, you'll be able to create your own set.

Now, with these parameters in place, we can sit down at the piano and spontaneously create music!