Jazz Piano Improvisation Lesson for Beginners

In this lesson I’ll show you my top 5 improvisation techniques for Jazz piano.

Each technique is ideal for beginners...

And even if you only mastered these 5 techniques - your improvisation would sound authentic and professional.

Let's dive in!

How to Practice Jazz Improvisation

First of all, how should you practice improvisation? My advice is to keep things really simple. Start in one key - we’re going to take the 2-5-1 in C major. That’s going to be a D minor 7 chord going to a G dominant 7 chord, ending on a C major 7 chord. That’s the major 2-5-1 in the key of C major. Most jazz songs are made up of this major 2-5-1, just played in different keys. Sometimes you get the full three chords, other times you’ll just get a 2-5, and other times you’ll just get a 5-1.

Most jazz songs’ structure is based around the 2-5-1. For that reason, it makes the most sense to practice our improvisation over the 2-5-1. Unless you have any better ideas, I recommend you just start by practicing over the 2-5-1. We’re going to hold things still within the key of C major. Holding things still in one key is a very good idea when it comes to anything composition related because it helps you to keep track of which ideas you’ve already experimented with and which ideas you haven’t explored yet.

So, we’re going to take the 2-5-1 in C major. One variation is sometimes I make it a 2-5-1-6 because this chord progression actually loops around on itself. You go 2-5-1 and then you go to an A dominant 7 chord, and that’s the sixth chord which resolves back down a fifth to the two chord. The 2-5-1-6 chord progression is nice for practice because it loops back around on itself. You might want to do 2-5-1-6, 2-5-1. You can keep repeating that. So, 2-5-1-6 and then you can go 2-5-1. Then you’d end on the one chord.

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When you practice improvisation, have sheet music handy where you can write down your best ideas. You don’t have to remember all of this stuff you want to explore, but you want to write down your best ideas because you might want to come back and really ingrain some of those best ideas later.

Technique 1. 'Chord Tone Soloing'

Next, I recommend focusing on chord tone soloing. Chord tones are the root, third, fifth, and seventh of the chord. If you have a C major 7 chord, then the chord tones are going to be C, E, G, and B. If you have a C minor 7 chord, the chord tones would be different: C, E flat, G, and B flat. If you had a C dominant 7 chord, the chord tones would be C, E (the major third), G (the fifth), and B flat (the minor seventh). I would say about eighty percent of jazz piano improvisation is focused around the chord tones. Each time the chord changes, our chord tones will change as well, so our notes in our solo will naturally change.

Let’s take a 2-5-1 in C major. For the D minor 7, which four notes will we use? That’s right: D, F, A, and C—the root, third, fifth, and seventh of D minor 7. For G dominant 7, we’ll use G, B, D, and F. For C major 7, we’ll use C, E, G, and B, and so on. I’m actually going to add one more note, which is the ninth. Even though the ninth isn’t really considered a chord tone, it’s more of the extended harmony. It is still an excellent note to add to this technique. Then you’re actually using the root, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth of every single chord. In pretty much every case, it’s going to be a natural ninth. For C major 7, you would play C, E, G, B, and add a major ninth. Just count up a whole step from the root to find the ninth. If it was a minor 7 chord, the same ninth. For a dominant 7 chord, the same ninth. If you’re feeling more advanced, you can do a flat nine—that’s also nice—but in most cases, I’m using a natural ninth.

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Let’s apply this to our 2-5-1. Five notes over D minor 7 are going to be D, F, A, C, and E. Then we’ll go to G dominant 7. Our five notes are going to be G, B, D, F, and A. Then over C major 7, our five notes are going to be C, E, G, B, and D. This is really nice. We get five notes over each chord.

To be thorough, if we do a 2-5-1-6 and we have this A dominant 7 chord, we’re going to have A, C sharp, E, and G. This is actually a chord where I would like to play a flat 9, B flat. It just sounds better in this context. The 2-5-1-6, I would use a flat nine in this context. You can do the natural nine as well, but I tend to enjoy this flat nine in this case.

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This is the sound of chord tone soloing. The nice thing about it is it uses the same brain work which you’ve already done to find your left hand chords. If you’re playing a D minor 7, well, you’ve already figured out the notes in your left hand, so it doesn’t really require any more to play those same notes in your right hand—the same brain work. Once you’ve figured out the notes for your left hand, you’re using those same notes in your right hand.

Technique 2. 'Approach Patterns'

Next, we’re going to look at approach patterns. Approach patterns go perfectly with chord tone soloing. An approach pattern is a melodic shape that precedes usually a chord tone. Say we have this D minor 7 chord. We can proceed the root, third, fifth, and seventh with a whole series of approach patterns.

The most simple and probably most effective approach pattern I can show you is called the half-step below approach. We’re going to precede any of these chord tones with a half-step below. C sharp can precede D. F can be preceded by E. A can be preceded by G sharp. C can be preceded by B natural. Then we go to G dominant 7. We can do the same again. Take any of the chord tones and you can precede these with a half-step below. Again, for C major 7, just take the chord tones C, E, G, B, and you can precede any of these notes with a half-step below. C can be preceded by B. E natural can be preceded by E flat. G can be preceded by F sharp. B natural can be preceded by B flat.

You’ve probably noticed that some of these approach patterns take you out of key. They take you chromatically out with the C sharp, G sharp, E flat, and B flat. In this context, that is absolutely fine. These half-step below approaches actually sound really sophisticated, especially when they take you out of scale.

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The half-step below approach pattern is the place I would start. It’s probably my favorite approach pattern. It’s just so simple, it’s not tricky to do. Again, you’re just finding the chord tones and then you’re preceding any of those chord tones with a half-step below.

There are all sorts of other approach patterns. You can do what’s called a chord scale above approach, where you take any of these chord tones and you approach them from the note above. However, in this case, you actually have to be aware of which scale you’re in. If we’re playing a 2-5-1 in C major, then over all three chords you can play C major scale because all three chords are taken from the C major scale. If you want to do chord scale above, you would approach any of these notes with the note from the scale that’s above, so it’s going to be all of the white notes in this case.

There are other approach patterns where they really get more sophisticated in working backward from a chord tone and playing the surrounding notes. You get patterns like this. Say we’re targeting D here, above a D minor 7. There are all sorts of patterns that you hear and really the sky is the limit. These are actually called enclosures when you get these neighboring notes which form a pattern around your target notes, which is usually going to be a chord tone. These are just patterns that you precede the chord tone with. It’s like working backward. It adds on some notes and then once you’ve played that, you usually resort to chord tone soloing.

My favorite approach pattern which I recommend you start with is the half-step below approach. Practice the chord tone soloing and practice preceding some of these notes with a half-step below. A little detail on that: it’s good to place the chord tones on the down beats, the strong beats, so the beats one, two, three, four. Usually, you’re trying to put the approach notes on the offbeat, so the one and, the two and, the three and, so that way you’re playing the sort of dissonant notes on the weaker beats, the offbeats.

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Technique 3. 'Add a Triplet'

Next, let’s talk about rhythm. Most of the time in improvisation, you’re mostly playing eighth notes, one and, two and, three and, four and. That’s going to be most of the solo. To keep things interesting, you need to add some variety to your rhythms.

One of the easiest ways you can do this is to add a triplet to each line. A triplet is where instead of playing two eighth notes per beat, you’re going to play three triplet eighth notes in the same space. Instead of playing one, two, you’re going to play one, two, three. If I play the chord on one and then I start on the second beat, I’m going to play one, two, three. It’s going to be a triplet. On the beat two, I’m playing triplets. Try to add a triplet to each line. The triplet goes well at the beginning of the line or it sounds good in the middle of lines. (This ones a little confusing to read)

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So, I’m trying to add a triplet to each line. The triplet goes well at the beginning of the line or it sounds good in the middle of lines. There, I placed a triplet in the middle of the line. I started with just eighth notes but then played the triplets, one, two, three, and then go back to eighth notes.

Technique 4. 'Mimic Speech'

My next improvisation tip is to try and mimic speech. That’s what improvisation is, it’s like small talk and it’s designed to sound a lot like us talking. When we have conversations, we talk for a while and then we take breaks. Why do we take breaks? So that we can take a breath. You need to have breaths in your improvisation. You don’t want to just keep playing eighth notes forever. What happens after we take a breath? Usually, when we start the next sentence, we change register. If we’ve ended down here, when we start the next phrase, we might start in a different register. Then we take a breath, we might start our next phrase by coming down an octave. We’ll take a breath, then I’ll start my next phrase up an octave. (Can be simplified)

This is a simple trick you can do. It sounds very authentic and natural because it mimics speech. When you finish a line, take a breath and then change octave. Go up an octave and start your next line up here. Then you take a breath and change octave either by going up or going down. When I’m improvising, that’s one of the things I’m thinking about. When I end a line down here, it’s almost natural for me to jump up the octave and start my next line up.

Technique 5. End on Resolution Notes (1, 3, 5)

Another good principle to use in your improvisation is to end on resolved notes, in particular to end your lines on the root, third, or fifth of the chord. If you have a D minor 7 chord and you’re about to end your line, try to end it on D, F, or A. It’s not a rule but a good guideline. It sounds more confident most of the time if you end a line on one of these notes. It sounds more confident usually than ending a line on the fourth, sixth, ninth, or even the seventh. It’s not a rule, just a guideline, but it mimics speech because usually when we talk, we end our sentences sounding resolved. For C major 7, ending on the root or any of these three notes is a good note to end your improvised lines on.

Key Takeaways

In this lesson I showed you my top 5 improvisation techniques for Jazz piano (ideal for beginners):

Tip #1. Practice your improvisation in one key (C major) over the 2-5-1 progression. In C major that's D minor 7 - G dominant 7 - C major 7).
Tip #2. Focus on Chord Tone Soloing: Emphasize the root, third, fifth, and seventh of each chord in your improvisation. Add the ninth for more depth. Practice identifying and using these chord tones for each chord in the progression.
Tip #3. Approach Patterns: Incorporate approach patterns like the half-step below approach to precede chord tones, adding sophistication to your improvisation. Experiment with other patterns such as the chord scale above approach.
Tip #4. Mimic Speech: Add pauses (breaths) in your improvised lines, and jump up or down an octave every time you start a new line (after a breath).
Tip #5. End on Resolved Notes - the root, third, or fifth for a confident sound. Add rhythmic variety by incorporating triplets into your lines to keep the solo interesting.

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