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One of the most common false beliefs that I hear from students is that they need to practice for years before they can improvise.

And I believed it too…

I remember taking traditional piano lessons as a kid, and while I was improving my technique, what I really wanted to do was improvise.

I wanted to just sit at my keyboard, without sheet music, and play!

Blues, jazz, funk, pop, whatever!

I wanted to rip some cool runs down the piano, and play those crunchy amazing chords!

But when I heard great improvisers play, it sounded super complex… too complex for an ordinary kid like me.

Besides, who did I think I was?! I had no business playing like those cool pianists. They had talent. I was just… mediocre.

I had this idea that if I studied classical piano for 10 years, then I would be ready to learn those fancy scales and chords.

But when I started learning how to improvise with my jazz teacher when I was about 14 years old, I was actually quite blown away.

Why?

Because so little of my traditional piano lessons helped me improvise.

The truth is that I actually had to learn much of the piano all over again.

But this time, it was different. I wasn’t drilling scales and arpeggios. I wasn’t painstakingly memorizing measure by measure of a Bach prelude.

I learned that I could create amazing sounds at the piano, with just a small set of material to create with.

And boom!

The floodgates opened for me, and I could create, and create, and create.

I was flowing. I was free. And it felt good.

But the paradigm shift for me was that a great improviser uses small subsets of material to create with.

Think of a woodworker. With just a hammer, nails, wood, and saw, they can create infinite things.

And that’s how I approach improvisation. Learn the key techniques, and let the floodgates of your imagination open.

That’s today’s lesson. I’m going to give you the key techniques that I use to improvise. Not 100. Not 10. Just 4.

And the amazing thing is that you don’t need to be an accomplished pianist to start. In fact, you can start improvising now, even if you have absolutely zero piano skills. And most strikingly, you can love how you sound!

In my opinion, being a great improviser starts with eliminating false beliefs.

False beliefs that you need years of piano lessons to improvise.
False beliefs that you need to have exceptional talent to improvise.
False beliefs that you are too old, too late, or too uncoordinated to improvise.

If you actively refute these, that drip of creativity inside will turn into a gushing river.

What are some false beliefs that are stopping you from playing piano the way you want?

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