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Basic Scales of Piano Improvisation in C

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From Quick Guide: Basics of Scales

Summary: What are the basic scales you need to know to improvise on piano in the key of C? Learn this and more in this free online piano lesson taught by expert pianist Ryan Larson.

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By Ryan Larson
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Ryan Larson is a young jazz composer whose teaching technique focuses on the basics of music theory in all 12 keys. When applying his 12-key technique to understanding the logic behind...read more

Series Summary

The piano has been a very important instrument in the development of western music of almost every genre. Its popularity with composers rests in the fact that the tones made by its keys offer an easy means of expressing a complex melodic and harmonic relationship of notes. Each year, many people young and old alike take up piano, and many of those will seek out an instructor to tutor them in their playing ability. These people are joining a grand tradition with an illustrious history, spanning much of classical and jazz music.

In this free video series you'll learn how to play improvisational piano in the key of C major. Expert Ryan Larson shows you the major scale, harmonic minor scale, and 7th scale on the piano. He'll take you through a song measure by measure, reading the sheet music, and showing you some great improv bebop and blues progressions.

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Video Transcript

"So today we're going to go over the basics for your left hand playing through fake book. So you can go through and read all these different chords that come up. We're going to go over reading the actually melody lines in another segment. Right now we're very focusing on the chords and seeing how we can instruct our own chords and figure out the harmony and the melodic ideas behind it and how chords move through a piece. So by doing this, we're going to take two simple pieces and run them through all twelve keys and we'll have all these different chords that will come out of a couple of different scales. We're going to learn our C major scale today, and we'll get three chords out of that, or four chords out of that. And then we're going to transposed it and make it a C7 and a C minor, and we'll go through a blues and apply those two new scales. So by learning three simple scales, we can learn all these different chords and get all these different ideas behind how to construct chords and put them together, and play melodically, and how to accompany ourselves as we go through and read through chord changes out of a real book."

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