How To Play A Piano Solo

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Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had to play a piano solo and not known how or what to play? I know I have! Playing a solo used to be one of my greatest fears when I was in a band. I could play by ear no problem, but ask me to solo? NO WAY!

Guess what? Playing a piano solo doesn’t have to be difficult or scary, and it certainly isn’t reserved only for the “gifted” players out there. You just need to know some fun scales and how to apply them in a way so the notes compliment one another.

To help you get started, we’ve got this lesson on how to play a piano solo which uses the blues scale as a template for your solos. This is my favorite scale to use for soloing because it sounds good with most genres AND once you’ve got the formula memorized, you can play a solo in any key.

Let’s look at this in the key of D minor. In the key of D minor we have:

D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C-D

Let’s assign each scale degree a number:

D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C-D

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1

The blues scale uses certain notes or degrees from the scale. It uses the 1-3-4-5-7 progression. It has one bonus note which is the flat 5. This means that you take the 5 (A in this case) and flatten it giving you scale that uses 1-3-4-flat5-5-7. If you were to play the blues scale in the key of D minor you would play D-F-G-Ab-A-C. Now here is the fun part. Take any of those blues scale notes and play them in any order or pattern and you’ve got yourself a solo!

Watch the video to see how it all comes together. Have fun soloing!

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Lisa Witt has been teaching piano for more than 20 years and in that time has helped hundreds of students learn to play the songs they love. Lisa received classical piano training through the Royal Conservatory of Music, but she has since embraced popular music and playing by ear in order to accompany herself and others. Learn more about Lisa.