Stuck

[Kayven1]

Hi all,

I've been taking lessons for a bit now but i'm stuck in a rut and need some help. I am unable to comprehend how to make my piano playing fluent. I don't know how to do fill-ins, and little things to make songs sound much more fuller, if i could use that term right now. I can pick out melodies easily now, I can put basic chords to them, but after that I'm stuck in that rut. Any help would be great.

[B3Wannabe]

Practice your progressions diatonically. That's what helped me out.

After a while, once you understand that, practice modes doing the same "mode" scale across each note of the diatonic, so if you're playing a Amin scale over a F chord (and you're in the key of F), then play a Bbmin, Cmin, Dmin, etc. scale over an F chord. Do the same with each mode, across each note of the diatonic. It may sound weird, but after a while, you're ears will start to open up to different possibilities.

[T-Block]

I think I may be stuck in a rut myself.  Guess I need to get back to the basics and get focused.  Sometimes, it helps to go back to the beginning.

[KevinP]

Everybody gets in ruts at one time or another. When I do, the best thing that works is to get away from the piano (why frustrate myself?) and listen intently to recordings, especially ones I'm not overly familiar, and listen for those fills and riffs.

Listen to Mildred Falls on some old Mahalia Jackson recordings. She really listened to her Mahalia and responded to her. Too often, the pianist (and any other instrumentalist) is off in her own world.

[KevinP]

And...

My ruts usually seem to come when I turn to myself for inspiration. I need to look outside myself sometimes, whether to another pianist or to nature or whatever. If you don't look elsewhere, you'll always repeat yourself.