Improvising Isn’t Just for the “Gifted”—Try This Easy Piano Trick

In my ongoing effort to convince everyone that they have what it takes to sit down at a piano and have some fun, and even improvise a little bit, I want to give you a little exercise that will help you to be able to do just that to create some really nice sounding music on the piano. More than anything though, I want to prove that the prevalent thinking that you either have the “gift” or you don’t isn’t true regarding your ability to improvise or play for that matter. Today’s tip covers improvising using just black notes.

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The chords

Here are two chords you will need to play with your left hand - F#, A# and C# (F# chord) - and F#, B and D# (B chord, which is inverted).

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Spend about one minute jumping between those two chords.

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The trick

Now, here is the nice thing: By using those 2 chords and nothing else in your left hand, you can play anything with your right hand if you stick only to the black notes. Anything you play will melodically sound just fine, so you can play without any stress of worrying about hitting a “clam” or a wrong note.

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As unbelievable as that sounds there actually is some theory behind it, as it is based on what is called the Pentatonic Scale (but you don’t need to know any of that just to have some fun and to sound good too).

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The more you improvise, the easier it will be to make something up rhythmically that sounds pretty good. No matter what you play, it will sound OK. This is a good first step to use to get started into the world of improvisation in a stress free and pain free environment. I hope this will be a liberating experience for you without having to worry about what chords you are on or which notes you are playing …What I really hope is that you continue to have fun playing piano."