 Okay, so we're gonna start at level zero actually, and I didn't wanna count this as one of the levels because it's literally not improvisation at all. And that is sheet music. We all know what that is. I'm reading a piece of music and playing exactly what it's written on the page. It dictates the rhythm, it dictates the harmony, it dictates the chord voicings, it dictates the melody. Anything about what you're playing is written down on the page. That would be level zero. There's no improvisation at all. That's just reading sheet music. Let's step into the world of improvisation on the very, very first level. And mind you, this is just sort of like my own self-organization of how I would explain this to somebody. So I'm sure there's plenty of other ways for somebody to kind of explain what all this is. And it may be completely different from this. But so to me, number one is I have the melody and I have the chords. And the only part that's improvised is how I'm actually playing those chords, right? So if somebody says E-flat, well, if I'm just playing an E-flat triad means. Okay, but what can I do with that, right? I can play. Or I can spread it out. Maybe I add a note to it. Like an add nine voicing or something, I don't know. So there's all these other things, just because it says E-flat, I get to then decide what I'm gonna do with that information. And none of that is decided ahead of time. So it's a level of improvisation. Here is a little bit of me playing a melody that's pre-written to a chord sequence that's pre-written. But the actual way that I play the chords has not been decided at all. And that is level one of improvisation. Okay, so that brings us to level two of improvisation. Now we have the chord structure. We're making up how we're voicing those chords. But we're gonna toss out the melody and now we're gonna replace it with our own melody that we're coming up with in real time. So at this point, everything that I'm playing is improvised. The only thing that is not is the form and the harmonic structure of the tune. So the chord progression, basically. I'm still playing a certain number of bars from beginning to end. I'm still playing the same chords, even if there's slight variations in there. Maybe I make a decision to change a few of the chords here and there just to add some different colors or whatever. But I'm still using that pre-written formula for how to play this tune. It's just every component of how I execute it is all improvised. This is what I would call this level two. And here's an example of that. So that brings us to level three or what I would say the absolute purest form of improvisation. Now this is something that was very difficult for me to learn. And that's kind of counterintuitive because you're like, well, it's all made up. It's improvisation. How, what is there to learn? You're just making everything up. Well, that's in some ways true. But that's really tough for us as musicians because we don't want to sound bad. We don't want to play things that don't make any sense or don't sound like anything. It's not really fun. Your brain wants to stop you from just playing nonsense. And most of the time, that's a good thing, except for the fact that if you really want to free yourself up from any of the confines of like a chord progression or just some sort of pre-determined aspect of a song, you have to let go of that desire to sound correct. Just be willing to sound bad. That means literally placing your hands on the piano and just kind of going, what is that? What does this elicit? What does this feel like? Where would I, if I were to continue playing, where do I go from here? You know, like. Like obviously that doesn't sound like anything, but the development of this process as you practice and practice and practice, you learn to start incorporating those elements of music that you do understand, you know, different chord voicings, different movements, different harmonic motions. I don't want to say chord progressions because it's never that structured, but it's just the idea of being willing to go anywhere, right? And it's not that you have to just place your hands on the keys and just play random shapes, but you want to take those, maybe a random shape or a sound or even a single note and just kind of follow wherever it is that it's kind of, it just feels like it wants to go. And that's going to be informed by what you do know about chords and music theory and all that stuff. And so all that stuff is okay to incorporate. You know, I don't think it takes away from the improvisatory, is that a word? Improvisatory, I don't know. The improvisatory nature of what you're actually doing. I don't think it takes away from that. It's just utilizing the language that you know in order to better inform these decisions that you make. I think conversation, for example, right? So if you and I were having a back and forth conversation and of course this isn't, but if it was, you would say something to me. I would hear that, I would interpret it and then I would respond with something that ideally pushed the conversation forward. Now what would I use to respond to that? I don't know what you're gonna say and you don't know what I'm gonna say, but yet we both know the language that we're speaking, whether it's English, French, German, whatever. We know the language, so we're able to utilize that language to just kind of keep going in a direction. That's all we're doing with this, is we're just allowing it to keep going in a direction and we're utilizing our knowledge of the language to help that happen. So here is me just sort of, I'm gonna call this free improvisation. It's literally based on nothing. I have no structure. I don't know any single chord that I'm gonna play. I'm just gonna play something, listen to it and just kind of allow it to push forward. And that's it, that's the three levels of improvisation. I hope that maybe introduces some concepts that maybe you hadn't thought about before. Try this, really seriously, try it. Just allow yourself to play something and let it be whatever it's gonna be and just follow it. And it might sound bad at first, but that is okay. It is totally okay to sound like garbage. That is a part of the learning process. We gotta get through that before you can start to speak fluent sentences, right? Anyways, that's it. Thanks for watching. If you'd like to more videos like this, I mean, I do enjoy doing these types of videos. They're a little different than I guess, you know, the sketches and the memes and stuff, but they are a lot of fun for me to do. And if there's subjects that you'd like me to cover, put them in the comments below because I'm happy to do it if it's something you guys would like to see. Thanks so much for watching. Please remember to subscribe and I will see you next time. Bye.