HELP needed

[CyberCobre]

Occasionally I "pick up the piano" and try to play with SD. Usually this ends with me very frustrated and ready to kill myself, the piano, and anyone in the district. (SD has, by that time, gone to ground and is covering his favorite guitar with his body.)
Now, I've studied under some of the very best concert pianists of my schooling era and gone to some of the best schools. I've played with symphonies. I'm very, very good...so long as I have notation to work from. But...SD wants improv (gulp), and, worse, he wants blues and jazz type of rhythmic emphasis, and worst of all, he wants rock keyboardist type of "jammability."
There's a 15 year old kid who's taken one month of lessons who can do it, but me who has all the technique and all the know-how just gets stranded. I watch people who do this thing, I can "feel" the "secret" to it, I know its easy...I just can't quite catch that "easy" "secret" myself. What is it?
http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/dead.gif

[Sixstring]

Well considering that you have SD’s ear at your disposal, and I’m sure he’s given you pointers, it may be a bit presumptuous to offer my tidbits, but here goes anyway. Maybe it will help; maybe it will be old news.

Music has been around long before man started playing with it. Wind in the trees, birds singing, oceans breaking on the surf… you get the picture. The moral of that analogy is this; we are just along for the ride! Music has been gracious enough to allow us to interact with it. Only when we think we are the driver’s seat does it become stale, boring and predictable. You know all of man’s self-imposed rules, which is great, now check them at the door the next time you sit down to play. Forget which notes you are supposed to play, and consider that music is just tones bouncing around together. Any tones! (Set up a small pool and invite the neighborhood kids over to play and you’ll hear a symphony that would rival “Ode to Joy!”)

OK, enough analysis already, here are some tangible tips.

Tip 1:
Let SD set up a rhythm of chords, very basic- no melody! Have him play this over and over until you hear the melody develop in your head. As you hear it come together, find it on the keys and play it over and over until you hear the next phrase. Some may argue that this is not true improv because you are playing a pre-determined melody and not just “winging it.” But what can happen along the way is what I call “happy accidents.” http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

It starts by not being afraid to play a bad note. (Sometimes playing an off note can be the best thing for improv because it can force you into a brand new direction.) I am reminded of something Mike Kinneally (sp?) said once. During a solo he hit a stinker, and he knew it as soon as he touched it. Rather than run away from it as fast as he could with a red face, he hung on it and just hammered on that one note for the next few bars, making sure everyone got their fill of it. I’ve tried this and I can tell you it is quite rewarding in a very perverse sense.

You can also start cold with a rhythm and just spit out 4 or 5 notes and them just listen and see where those notes might be taking you, and then just follow them along. Stay away from set scales and patterns, and just play single notes, intentionally avoiding their closest neighbors. After you become familiar with it, you will sense the mood of the song and be able to “salt to taste.” When you’re done, take the same rhythm and play something completely different over it, avoiding the previous patterns and listen as the mood changes.

Tip 2:
Take a song you enjoy and learn it by ear. Normally during the course of searching for the notes you will hit on something just weird enough to be inspiring. I suggest a challenging piece you are not familiar with, in a style you are not comfortable with. Use your education to your advantage at this point and take patterns that shouldn’t work and try to squeeze them in.

Back to “wrong notes”- forget they exist. Explore every possibility without inhibition or fear of screwing up. I think this is the “secret” you are looking for, but it’s not always easy. In fact it can be murder on our egos to play with careless abandon, because we are bound to play some really ugly lines and appear very human. But I say, forget all the regiments and grueling rehearsal habits involving perfect execution. I call it “Practice Your Imperfection!” If you hit a stinker, let it breathe and see if you can find the beauty in it. It sometimes creates a wonderful dissonance. If all else fails, just go for it and call it jazz! http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

[CyberCobre]

Wow. Thank you, Sixstring. I'll give it a try. NOTE: You are correct that I am in abject terror of hitting a wrong note. I literally beat on myself when I hit one too many. Comes from growing up under a very critical parent and having some very old fashioned piano teachers when I was little who actually wacked my hands with a stick when I hit a wrong note. So I'm the one who takes the notation and practices it until my hands bleed - yes, literally.

So, I will try what you say, take lots of deep breaths, and really just try to get back to what I did before I was given piano lessons. (I was a little girl and discovered an old player piano in the basement. it had its ivory stripped, the old roller still in it, was completely out of tune and had a few keys that stuck or wouldn't play at all. It was great. I lived down there happily plunking away. Then one day it was decided that I should take piano lessons - classical ones. No chord work at all. And my mother began her monitoring of my practicing on a brand new piano upstairs from that point on. If I started to just do my own thing, well, it meant big trouble.

So now I have to go back and do what I used to do. Okay. I'm going to print out what you wrote and post it to myself to read. We'll see what happens.

Again, thank you.

[Bluice]

This may sound out of line, but as a "trained musician" I never performed anything I wasn't sick of playing. I'd practiced it forward,backward,in my sleep,you get the idea. I swore when I picked up the guitar and started playing that it wasn't going to be like that. I avoid the rut and continally try different things every time I play a song. By not having anything etched in stone, I'm free to experiment within the basic confines of the song. I don't even normally use tab to learn a new song,I'll listen and form my own interpretation of what the music is saying to me,rather than an arbitrary notation of a moment in time. This helps my ears to listen and interact with the other musicians in my group. In this way everything I'm playing is an improvisation rather than a cut and dry note by note rendition.Hope this helps.

[CyberCobre]

Thanks, Bluice. ...And, yes, I have to agree with you that classically trained musicians, including myself, tend to learn pieces until we're sick of them and, in my case, beyond. Once I could play a piece the same way in my sleep 3 times through without error everyday for 2 weeks is when I considered it ready for performance. Not before and sometimes not then. I tried a little of what both you and SixString suggested last night. It went well...considering. But I can tell that erasing 30 some years of strict "play the notes as written perfectly" and "do NOT deviate from the score" is definitely interfering with any sort of relaxation. I think it is going to be a hard uphill fight.
As to interacting with anything or one, I am having a hard time even allowing myself to interact with myself right now. http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

[Bluice]

You might just have to pick up a bass guitar instead of a keyboard for a while. Don't let SD even show you a note. Let him start off with a progression,use your ears and pluck around with him. It won't take long before you'll figure out some notes will work and some won't. You'll be using your ears instead of your eyes to tell you what works and what doesn't. It took me a while to break the old mold,but now I'm makin music instead of just playin it.

[Strat-n-Paul]

What Bluice is discribing, is how I learned to first play bass, and then guitar, and am now tryig to learn therory. It's hard either direction you go.

A lot of good advice hear, the only thing I would add, is just sit and listen to a song you want to improv on first. Get a picture in you minds eye of where it's going melodically. Don't worry about what "mode" the soloist is using, or what "type" of music it is. (just make sure it's something you like) Then try and pick out the chords on the keyboard that your hearing; What sounds good to you? If they are playing a major chord, try adding a seventh...How does that sound to you? Does it add color, or clash with where the songs going? How about a flatted 5th? Same questions... that's how a lot of the "greats" learned how to improvise. Just go with what sounds good. Don't be afraid to try something, as long as Stone's not recording it, know one else is going to know that you tried something and it didn't work out!

I think that some times that "trained" people developed their brain to "read" the music, but not really Listen and FEEL where the music is going. Your too concentrated on the note of the moment to be played, rather than "reading" ahead and "knowing" in your minds ear, where the songs going, so that you can add some spice where needed.

Everything that was suggested to you earlier is great, and it takes time. It's like "relearning" to play your instrument. I've been having the same strugles with relearning the "trained" way, and has been discouraging, but you just have to keep trying, as it will only make you a better player.

Learn to have fun, by "noodling"!

[CyberCobre]

Relearning my instrument is exactly it. H*ll, it's a bad blow to my ego. I'm like a complete beginner all over again, with the added insult of feeling like a complete ******. Just can't get anything right. Oh well. Strive and strive somemore. At least I'm not blowing up which is a giant step forward. It's just everything else that *ssed backwards and screwed to down there and gone.

[Strat-n-Paul]

Another analogy would be the difference between playing from your head, (playing what you memorized, or you know is theroritically correct, and playing from the heart, what you feel.)