The Surprising Piano Technique I Learned from my Saxophone Teacher: Featuring Ko Amar
Keep reading until the end for sheet music download!
It’s amazing how sometimes an experience in one area of your life can have a huge impact in a seemingly unrelated area. This is what happened for me when I learned to play the saxophone as a senior in high school.
My Sax Teacher: an Unexpected Catch
I was looking for a teacher, but didn’t know anyone who played the sax. Around that time, our family was having the piano tuned and my mother asked our piano tuner if he knew of anyone. He told us that yes, in fact one of his other clients was a sax teacher. We got in touch and set up lessons.
It turned out that my saxophone teacher was actually a jazz musician who played in a band – and I was his only student! This ended up working out beautifully because he did not have the hang ups that typical music teachers tend to have around exclusive note reading. I already knew how to read music, so now I just needed to learn some new fingering and of course breathing and good tone production relevant to the saxophone.
The Technique that Changed Everything
My sax teacher was only too happy to move on to some of the more fun and exciting aspects of playing. As a jazz musician, one of the important skills that players need to learn is something called improvisation. Loosely speaking, improvisation means making up what you are playing as you go along, without prior preparation.
Here’s how it often works in jazz: at a gig, the band plays the song as planned, and then at some point in the song different band members take turns for solos. A solo is where one musician at a time gets a chance to shine. Following the chords and general structure of the song, the musician improvises a new melody on the fly. The other band members continue to play accompaniment for him.
The Learning Process
As part of my lessons, I learned how to improvise. When you improvise you are not practicing the same thing again and again until you get it perfect; rather you are thinking on the spot and creating something new and different each time. You need a good knowledge of scales, chords, and music theory to produce great improvisation.
My teacher encouraged me to record myself improvising on the sax and then listen back to myself playing. This was an incredibly useful feedback tool for me to hear what sounded good and what didn’t work so well.
Applying My New Skills to Piano . . . and All of Music!
Somewhere along the way it hit me that there was no reason that improvisation had to be reserved only for saxophone playing. Why couldn’t I use the same technique when I played piano? Whereas until that time I played fancy patterns and manipulated chords systematically, much in the way that I teach in Spicy Piano, now I began to take all those different techniques I was already using and mix and match them on the fly. On the sax I was improvising only in terms of melody; on the piano I took this a step further and began to improvise when I was playing accompaniment as well.
This one technique has had a huge impact on the way I play and view music on all instruments and from all angles. I use this when I create harmonies, when I arrange, and when I play.
In the video above you can watch how I use improvisation on the piano to accompany the melody being played on the saxophone. (Ironically I am not improvising on the saxophone in this video.) If I played the same song again it would sound different the next time . It is an advanced technique and incredibly satisfying way to play.
Getting Started with Improvisation
To get started improvising on your own, follow these 3 steps:
- Start with a solid foundation of chords (learn chord basics with 5 Weeks to Kumzits Piano Course) and some basic patterns to work with (Spicy Piano is a great resource for mastering a variety of chord-based patterns for both right and left hands).
- Find a recording of the song or record yourself playing the song (with or without the melody).
- Following and respecting the chords and structure of the song, use the notes of the scale to play new melodies or accompaniment along with the recording.
If you’d like help on this journey you can also work with me privately.
So nice. Thank you!!
I have been working on music transcription using Musescore. I transcribed “Shabchi Yerusahalayim” and Shiru LaMelech recently. Would you like me to send them to you?
This is unbelievable, iv’e been searching the web for the notes of Ko Amar for the past few hours with no success, as i gave up and started trying to write them by myself i received an email with this. feels like g-d sent it to me. Thank you for posting it just on time!
I really enjoy playing your songs! Can you please send me Sukkos songs. Like V’samachta, or any Simchas Torah songs. I would really appreciate it.