Piano With Willie: How to Improvise in 30 Minutes

Learn basic improvisation using the five finger blues scale and a simple bass line, explore legato vs. staccato, and practice licks to expand your blues melodies.

Explore how to improvise by balancing tension and release, choosing good versus bad options, and embracing ear-opening sounds rather than fearing wrong notes.

Explore what a lick is—a short melodic phrase used for improvisation—by comparing licks to vocabulary words and phrases, and learn to use them right away to begin improvising.

Learn how to connect scale tonality to improvisational licks, using blues scale patterns over different accompaniments, and choosing major, minor, or chromatic options to fit chords.

Vocalize the rhythm of each lick before playing, and use a staccato chord to add bounce. Practice the two-measure left-hand licks and the letter b passage to coordinate fingering.

Move your licks around while keeping a steady bass line to improvise new phrases; copy and paste measures between A, B, and C to create fresh right-hand ideas.

Explore improvisation by balancing play and rest; use measures of rest and held notes to give the listener space and prevent ear fatigue.

Combine the licks from letters a, b, and c in any order while maintaining a steady bass line, and learn notes, patterns, rhythms, and chords to improvise.

Learn to break the blues scale into two tetrachords—the low and high touch a chord—and use a passing tone between b flat and c, with steady rhythm for free improvisation.

Explore improvisation within the lower blues tetrachord and learn to vary the last two notes of a four-note lick, using rhythm patterns to form your own phrases.

Practice baseline and blues five finger scale with hands together, using rhythms and a metronome. Build improvisation fluency by applying rhythms to licks and patterns with left and right hands.

Learn to form major triads from a five finger scale, build a three-note chord, and use inversions to move between F and C triads with one hand.

Master improvisation by using high and low blues tetrachords to fill two quarter notes, apply chord symbols, and mix licks across measures for flexible piano phrasing.

Turn rhythms into original licks on page 20 by mixing left-hand chords, bass lines, and triads, and explore varied rhythms to improvise with confidence and resolve tension.

Explore page 24 improvisation in G minor, featuring a five-finger blues scale, a half-note bass line, and lick patterns over G minor and E-flat chords to spark your improvisations.

Learn practical improvisation techniques for piano, including comping chords, building bass lines, and altering licks within given scales. Practice with play-along tracks to loosen hands and explore musical ideas.

Access fast help via the support email and ticket system for this course, and explore more styles—jazz, blues, funk, gospel, rock, Latin—at piano with Willie Dotcom.