This past year, I have started to include more improvisation in my general curriculum. I never learned about improvisation in formal lessons or classes (not even in college!), so presenting it to beginning, or even somewhat-seasoned players is new territory for me. Every student reacts to improvisation a little differently, but overall, it’s been a revelation. Most students get so charged up and excited from the experience, we both end up completely bewildered and thrilled, which means we must be onto something!

I have a 7-year-old piano student (in his first year of study), who especially loves to play songs he already knows. He exudes the sheer joy of making music when he plays something he’s already really comfortable with, so I try to have him do some of this at each lesson. At one recent lesson, though, we basically played one of these familiar songs as a jazz tune, meaning that we played it over and over again, taking turns improvising on the form. No, that’s not how I verbally described it to him, but that’s definitely what we were doing! Wonder of wonders! It was an incredible experience!

I am teaching some older students the blues scale and 12-bar blues chord progression, which provides another route into structured improvisation. People who like pop music usually like the sound of the blues scale, so it’s an easy sell! Writing blues lyrics is also one of the simplest ways to dip one’s toe into songwriting, and I am eager to see where this will take some of my students.

I have invented an improvisational game where the student and I take turns improvising in a completely free and open space. No form, no rules, except to determine whose turn it is, and how to signal that we are switching. A couple of my students love this game so much, they want to play every single lesson! In the past, I hadn’t thought of young children being into improvisation, and I certainly never had any opportunity to improvise when I was a beginning piano student, but now I know that a player of any age or ability level can have fun with this, and become a better musician in the process. It’s weirdly natural. It’s almost like… playing.

“This is the life… Just cruisin’ out on the piano.”

-a 10-year-old, very psyched up after improvising