CW 40: Improvising on my Piano

It is literally music to my ears...

Yes, I realize it was a tasteless horrible pun, but this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Anyways, this week I got a piano for my flat. I've been playing the piano on and off for about 16 years now. It started by just joining the lessons my sister would take and continued by taking lessons at home. After a while it just got boring. As so often, when you learn an instrument, you're not really making any progress and the motivation to practice is just not there, so I kind of stopped. But our piano at home was always there in the living room. I don't even know when or why I picked it up again, but at some point I was finding myself playing around, improvising and just figuring out the notes and chords to songs that were just stuck in my mind and I stuck to it. After a while I bought various music books to great movie soundtracks like "La La Land" and "The Greatest Showman" and got back to playing from sheet music. It became a great hobby and added variety to my life.

So now, whenever I have a song stuck in my head I find the chords online (usually the guitar chords work perfectly and are available on Ultimate Guitar) and start by singing to it while playing the chords. Then I go on to find the notes to play them with the right hand and lastly - if I ever make it that far and my hands are independent enough - I'll add some rhythm with the left hand. Recently, I found a super easy way to play "Consequences" by Camila Cabello. For a simple song like this - just so I don't have to hear myself sing all day - it's great to turn on the song and play along to it, making you feel like you are in a huge concert hall full of people listening (probably only with lots of imagination, but still).

And whenever I'm not feeling like playing a huge concert or accompanying Camila Cabello at the AMAs 2018, I just improvise by using chords I know go well together and try out new melodies and riffs on the right hand. My piano is placed right next to my desk, where I spent most of my time, so it is super chill, to just turn over to my piano every now and then and try out some melody I have stuck in my head.