Ep 300: The Psychology of Jazz Piano Improvisation

Ever wonder how the fingers of really experienced pianists seem to fly across the keyboard? How do they know where their fingers are going? How can they think that fast? In this episode I’ll tell you about some of what the brain is doing when pianists play the piano. Maybe you’ll be inspired to start playing yourself….?

Resources for this Episode

• The bytes of audio of pianist Bill Hilton explaining the “mental toolkit”, snippets and flow are taken from a couple of his excellent YouTube tutorials. Here’s a link to Bill’s homepage. I highly recommend his book, “How To Really Play the Piano”. I bought it myself.
• Another great source for instruction on improv jazz piano is PianoBreaks. I went through all of Mark’s free lessons and learned a lot. Highly recommended.
• A powerful inspiration for me is Claude Bolling‘s album, Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano cannot recommend it enough. I’ve been listening to it over and over since I was a teenager.
• Another inspiration: the pianist Oscar Peterson
• Long time Psych Files listener and musician Shane Partington recommended the ipad app called Musician’s Ear. I tried it – very cool app. Give it a shot.
• Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills