Chords for Improvisation Piano Exercises from Chick Corea

[Ab] _ _ _ [Eb] _ [Db] _ _ [C] _ _
_ [Db] _ _ So this is the [C] beginning, first one.
[Ab] Here we go.
So we're going to cover improvisation.
And _ Bill, Bill's going to, we're going to talk about it a little bit.
So what, we want to define it first.
That's, start at the beginning.
I thought that was a good idea because _ when people ask me,
musicians ask me, they say, well, how about improvising?
How do you improvise?
What's it all about?
Like, what do you do?
What do you think about?
All these various questions.
I think to myself, well, you know, I've never seen a _ _ _ satisfactory definition of improvisation.
_ So I want to try to give you what my, _ _ _ _ what I think of when I think of improvisation,
which is just something natural, something natural you do.
_ Improvising is living.
You, like what I'm doing now is I'm improvising.
I have a thought in my head and I'm trying to get it out using the cumbersome _ _ medium of the English language.
It's really difficult.
I mean, I could go like this.
_ [C] _ _
[Ab] _ _ _ _ See, I don't have to, I don't have to then try to say in words what that was because that was improvisation.
_ But to try to define it in words, it's the natural thing that you do that you've already decided you're going to do something and you're going to make a movement.
_ _ So within improvisation, the decisions that have to, there are decisions that have to be made of what kind of freedoms _ and what kind of rules.
There's freedoms and then there's rules that you make. _
_ And that's how you come about _ deciding how much improvisation there's going to be in.
Like you determine a pattern.
Let's use the term pattern.
Okay, so let's take for an example a pattern.
I thought it would be good to start demonstrating right away rather than try to put a verbal definition in.
So you take a pattern and then you decide how much freedom or how much rules and decisions you want in it.
Let's take an example.
[Cm] I thought we'd use _ _ Armando's Rumba.
Some people know Armando's Rumba.
You know, this tune here.
[D] _ _ _
[Cm] _ _ Okay, so _ _ here's the first phrase of Armando's Rumba.
It's written right here.
If you can read music, here it is starting right at A.
_ [D] _ _ _ [Cm] _ _
_ So that's the first phrase.
Now that I can, if I'm going to play it exactly, I have to decide.
I'm going to play that exactly.
So [D] _ _ _ [Cm] _ _
not much improvisation in that because I already decided.
So then I'll say, well, let me play that same phrase and keep everything pretty much the same.
But let me change the melody a little bit.
So I could do something like, _ [D] _ _ [Dm] _ [F] _
[Cm] _ _ _ that was a lot of change.
I mean, comparatively.
Or I could do _ [D] _ _ [F] _
[Cm] _ _ _ _ even closer.
I could change the tempo.
_ _ [Gb] _ _ [Fm] _ _
[G] _ [Cm] _ _ _ _ It's endless.
So with that kind of thing, you have a pattern and you decide how [Abm] closely you want to stick to a pattern.
And the improvisation part comes as what freedom you give.
Like, for instance, what if I say _ _ to myself, I decide.
It's all decisions.
What about if I decide I'm going to play something before I start the [G] melody.
I'm going to improvise something and then play the melody.
So then I'll go at it.
It's free.
I play what I want. _
[Ab] _ [Gm] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
[Cm] _ _ [G] _ [Cm] _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ [G] _ [Cm] _ There we go.
I'll do another one, like play something even [Fm] stranger.
[Dbm] _ [Ebm] _ [Db] _
[Bb] _ [G] _ [Cm] _ _ _ _ _ [F] _
_ [Cm] _ _ [D] _ _ _ [Cm] _ _
_ See, there would be like an infinite number of ways to [N] _ take a theme.
So that's one basic way to describe improvisation.
It's what you decide will be there as a pattern.
And what you decide you'll be free about interpreting.
That's great.
Improvisation.
_ Do you have [Gbm] a way that somebody could try that?
Or like, you know, _ apply what you just said?
Yeah, [D] if you want an exercise on that, do something like what I just did.
Pick out a melody, _ a piece of it or the whole [Em] tune.
_ _ [F] Right now we're confined to my tunes in terms of publishing and all of that.
I'll explain that all to you later.
Don't worry about it.
_ But _ you pick out a – come on, happy birthday is a –
Public domain.
Is public domain, right?
So I can demonstrate with happy birthday.
So you take a melody that you like, I [Cm] mean that you know, _ hopefully you like.
_ _ _ [D] _ _
[C] _ [F] _ [C] _ _ _ [D] _ _ [C] _
_ [F] _ _ [C] _ Actually I put that into a rhythm.
People sing it like [D] – [Fm] _ _ [Em] [C] they sing it like that.
[D] _ [C] _ [F] They [Db] also sing it [Cm] _ [Abm] _
[C] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [Bb] [C] – but that's the melody we know, all right?
So then you can play with that and do it different ways.
Like let's do it straight.
_ [D] _
[Eb] I'm going to do it in tempo.
One, two, three, four, [C] one, two, [F] three.
_ _ _ [C] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
[C] Right?
Or I do it in a waltz.
[F] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
And then you take the melody, any melody, and start varying it.
[N] But the trick of you – you know, we'll go into this another time of how to practice
because that's real important to being able to have a success at that.
But briefly what you do is you take _ gradient steps.
Take it as slow as you need to in order to build it up to [C] the next step.
_ [D] _ [C] _ [Fm] _ [E] _ _
[C] _ _ [D] _ [C] _ _ [F] _ _ _
And then build it up, right?
_ [Cm] _ [F] _ _ [Bb] _ [F] _ _ _ [Eb] _ [F] _ [G] _ [Bb] _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ _ [Eb] _ [F] _ _ _