"Another Piano Improvisation Idea:
What's It All About Alfie?"

This piano improvisation lesson invites you to take a walk with Alfie and me as we explore yet another piano fill that you can instantly have fun with. Ahhhhh, so that's "what it's all about," Alfie - fun!

I'd like you to become familiar with the term motif. A motif (pronounced mo-teef) is a simple musical idea (short in duration) that you can use to your benefit in an endless number of ways...

Let's look at the first four notes of the song Alfie (by Burt Bacharach and Hal David):

1) down a scale step

2) down another scale step

3) up a scale step (back to #2 above)

This simple 4-note motif can be adapted to virtually any musical situation. Although the first four notes of Alfie are sixteenth notes, the motif can be played as quarter notes, eighth notes, etc. My example in the video demonstrates playing it in eighth notes.

The direction of the notes (down, up, etc.) and the distance they move or "walk" (one scale-step at a time) is what is relevant for our purposes here - not the fact that it starts on G. Any combination of four notes that follow the "down 1 scale step" - "down one scale step" - "up one scale step" sequence is what we are talking about here.

A few examples follow (presented, this time, as eighth notes):

Three examples, as they are played in the video, look like this:

Again, I've enjoyed this lesson and look forward to many more sessions with you on the topic of piano improvisation!

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