Skip to content 
Learn To Play Jazz Piano
A common question people ask me about learning Jazz Piano:
How can I learn to play chords and improvise without using sheet music?
The answer is: It depends.
I know that's probably not what you were hoping to hear.
The truth is, the path to being able improvise and create music on the spot like a Jazz Piano Pro won't be exactly the same for everyone.
But I can tell you how to figure it out based on where you are in your journey.
Pro jazz pianists draw from this basic pool of knowledge when coming up with their own chord voicings and melodic ideas:
- All twelve major scales (there are a lot of scales, but major scales are the gateway to all of them)
- How chords fit into scales and the relationship between chords and scales
- 2 basic chord voicings to build from
- A three chord progression that is ubiquitous in jazz music
So your path to improvisation will depend on where you are in these conversations.
If you only know some major scales, that is the stage to work from. If you know how to make chords just by their names or symbols, but you don't know how they fit into scales, that's where to go to work.
If you know some basic voicings but are unfamiliar with the widely used jazz chord progressions then there's more to discuss here than I could possibly put cram into a post.
However, these are the topics that I cover in my course, Jazz Piano Pro Essentials.
Inside the course, I help my students put these chunks of knowledge on autopilot, freeing them up to create, enabling them to take it to the next level and beyond.
I’ve poured everything I know about the essential building blocks that the Jazz Piano Pros use into my course, and I’m incredibly proud of the results my students are getting.
