Piano Improvisation

I’d appreciate any feedback/tips I’m trying to learn how to improvise in a romantic era style although right now my improvisations don’t have much variety.

If you intend to write romantic-styled piece,

1. You may want a good melody to start the piece, like a singable theme which the listener can easily recognize throughout the piece. By good melody, in my humble opinion, should have "up's and down's" and good contrast other parts of the music. There are some horizontal motion but it is rather oblique and it does not stand out much from the accompliment. You may think it as a opera singer singing passionate tunes and interact with the orchestra.

2. I would also expect more chromaticism in both the baseline and the melody.

3. Candences. I would expect a stronger sense of cadences for the phrases in a romantic piece. It is like journey - you need some rest between the beautiful scenaries so you can stay energetic and focused. Your improvisation seems more modern to me as it reminds me of the never-ending minimalistic music with non-diatonic (non-triadic) lines.

For the variety part, you may want to try with

1. Change of tempos

2. Change of baseline rhythms

3. Change of scales/ modality ("colour")

4. Change of timbre (high vs low register of the piano)

5. Change of texture (Density of chords)

What @HoYin Cheung is essentially correct about 19th century period music (romantic period music).

1. Phrases became more irregular and uneven. This means that a four-bar measure gave way into themes were longer. Now, you would still this structure pop up. Dvorak used the period form in second movement of the new world symphony!

2. Harmony: While the 19th century composers still used the same harmony as others, they were more chromatic!

3. Cadences: delay resolutions.... if you have I64 the next chord should not be V but maybe something else... I64 ii6/V V7 I? See what I did there. You would expect I64 to lead to V then resolve to I. But I delay it.

I64-bII6-V7-I Beethoven loves to delay the immidate resolution of Cad 64!