Baroque Improvisation Tip #1: Listen, Experiment, and Practice

Background

The musical language that comes most naturally to me is the Baroque style. I've been improvising in this style since I was a kid and consider myself to be far more proficient at improvising in the Baroque style than any other musical style. It forms the foundation of all of my musical creations. The lessons I received on Baroque improvisation were from the Baroque era composers themselves through their compositions. I learned through listening, experimentation, and practice.

I've been brainstorming how best to go about teaching others to improvise in the Baroque style, because others should be able to get as much enjoyment out of it as it's brought me over the years. I'm by no means an expert on Baroque improvisation, but perhaps some insight I provide can serve to complement other teachings that might exist on the subject. I'm hopeful that the methods and techniques I outline in this and future writings will help others learn to improvise in the Baroque style, too.

My assumption going forward is that you, the reader, already know how to read music, play the piano, and have a basic understanding of music theory. Some of the methods and techniques I share might not necessarily be what I personally used to learn Baroque improvisation, as this content is a combination of early recollections and later observations based on years of improvisational experience.

Introduction

 Learning to improvise musically is like learning a foreign language. It takes lots of time and practice. When learning a new language, you have to build a vocabulary and properly form sentences in order to communicate clearly and effectively. The same applies to learning a particular musical style, where the vocabulary and sentences are in the form of chords, progressions, and rhythms appropriate to the style. 

If improvisation intimidates you, don't let it, because you already improvise every day. Speaking to somebody else is a form of improvisation, because it requires us to think of words on the fly and put them together into sentences with the goal of conveying meaning to the listener. You're simply making it up as you go. This linguistic improvisation is equivalent to what you'd be doing when you engage in musical improvisation.

Build an Improvisational Vocabulary

Listen

What makes Baroque music easily identifiable as Baroque music? What makes any musical style sound unique compared to other styles? The signature is embedded in the note intervals, chord progressions, phrases, and rhythms that characterize a particular musical style. In order to successfully form musical sentences, you have to build phrases. In order to build phrases, you have to rely on a musical vocabulary.

How do you build a musical vocabulary for Baroque improvisation? A great place to start is by immersing yourself in Baroque music. Listen to your favorite Baroque pieces with deep analysis as your goal. Not only should you listen to a piece as a whole, but train your mind to focus on the individual parts that make-up the whole. Mentally isolate an individual part ignoring all the other parts. What are each of the inner voices doing? What's the bass doing? This may take getting used to at first, but it'll be beneficial in the long run for developing a strong musical ear for improvisation. Perhaps challenge yourself to transcribe the notes of some inner harmonies.

Experiment

Learning through analysis and experimentation is something else I recommend as a way to discover new improvisational vocabulary and improve improvisational skills. Extract a short musical phrase you enjoy from a piece of music and break it down into a simpler form so you can examine what's happening and gain insight into what it is you like about it. Then try modifying the phrase by ear to see what different combinations of notes produce. Trial and error is a great learning tool. Here's an example that comes to mind from my childhood. I recall being obsessed as a kid with a phrase from the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, because it had a Baroque sound to my ear.

Let's examine a simplification of the above phrase to see what's happening.

This chord progression appears in Baroque music in different forms and variations very often. At its core, it represents the circle of fifths (B7 E Amaj7 D#dim G#7 C#m). Furthermore, if you examine the first and third measures individually, they each have a V-I progression that's very common in Baroque music too: a 7th chord with a 3rd in the bass that resolves to either a major or minor chord. The supporting 3rd in the bass with the 7th chord above it screams Baroque to me. These are two examples of Baroque style elements that you can experiment with and absorb into your improvisational vocabulary. Familiarizing yourself with a musical style through experimentation and analysis is an important tool at your disposal and shouldn't go to waste.

Practice

Part of my childhood obsession with Baroque-sounding phrases included developing piano exercises from what I discovered during the experimentation phase mentioned above. Creating your own exercises will not only give you practice playing Baroque style elements in different keys, but also get the creative juices flowing while developing exercises and improvisational variations on them (a fun part of the learning process). I suspect that the time I spent creating and performing exercises played a huge role in helping me form a strong foundation for my understanding of the Baroque style. For this reason, I recommend others do the same.

This first example exercise is similar to the types of exercises I'd develop as a kid. It's meant to be played from the top of the keyboard to the bottom without interruption.

This second exercise is an example of one meant to be played from the bottom of the keyboard to the top.

Take a look at the companion video to hear examples of other exercises and start developing your own. You can make your exercises fast, slow, basic, complex, major, minor, or whatever your ear desires.

Summary

 My first Baroque improvisation tip is one I consider to be the single most important tip of any tip I might share, which is to listen, experiment, and practice. Listen to Baroque music and mentally isolate the different parts that make-up the whole to help develop a good ear. Transcribe short phrases you like onto the piano, analyze them, and experiment by manipulating them. Finally invent your own piano exercises based on what you discover.

Closing Improvisational Thought

Sheet Music

Companion Video