A.  I started serious piano lessons when I was six but I've always had the need and desire to play by ear. My father played pop music by ear and that's where my interest began. I loved to spend time at the piano making up music, like daydreaming. I'd listen for things and try to imitate them and play around with them. I've always led with my ear because that came easiest to me. I don't have natural piano fingers and I've had to work extremely hard for the technique I've developed but I do have a good ear, so I've emphasized that part of my musicality.

Q.  Is playing by ear and improvising the same thing?

A.  No.  Playing by ear is taking somebody else's melody and finding a harmonization for it. Improvising is creating new material, which I do by starting with harmony and spinning a melody out of it.

Q.  When we think of improvising today we think of jazz, not classical music. Improvising, however, has grown from a strong classical tradition.

A.  During the Renaissance and Baroque periods most notably, improvising was important for all musicians. Bach taught his students figured bass and four-part harmony before letting them attempt counterpoint, which starts with two-part writing. During the Renaissance, instrumental and keyboard players were expected to improvise lines around popular tunes, and manuals were available to teach them how to make a simple line florid. This ability was part of their training and expectation. They improvised with peers and encouraged this ability within themselves from a very early age. Today, jazz musicians come closest to imitating the tradition of classical improvisation.

Q.  Must you have a good ear to improvise?

A.  Having a good ear is helpful but it doesn't automatically mean you can improvise, just as not having a good ear doesn't mean you can't. There seems to be a separate component, something creative about it. Maybe it's the desire to do it; the time spent getting to know the keyboard and encouraging the interest within yourself. Everybody can hook into their improvising self and often it is only a question of being shown a few ways of creating basic harmonic materials.

Q.  People think they don't have this ability and will never be able to develop it.

A.  Everybody has something to work with in order to create beauty that is connected with their inner musicality. My approach is keyboard harmony, working with one chord at a time so the melody is generated from the chord. Freedom of the individual line comes from basic chords. If you simply play notes in the right hand that are in the left hand chord, you'll have notes that work. The right and left hands become one unit when they are based on harmony. Gradually, you learn how to shape things in interesting ways, and to embellish with non-chord tones, such as passing notes, suspensions, neighboring tones and various other elements. On the other hand, if you start with the melody, complications set in right away. The simplest melody has many possible harmonization's and to find the one that works best can be very difficult.

Q.  What steps can we take to start improvising?

A.  I find that simple harmonic progressions work best. A useful progression is I - IV - V - I, or even simply I - V - I. Chopin created a gorgeous melody in his Berceuse with only the I and V chords. Harmonic progressions in eight bar phrases are how chords are often used in music. Create an eight bar phrase that makes good harmonic sense. There are also some wonderful harmonic progressions that invite continuous repetition, such as Pachelbel's Canon in D and the Pagannini Caprice that Rachmaninoff used in his famous variations for piano and orchestra.

Q.  Once we have mastered the basic vocabulary of chords, where do we go next?

A.  The best starting exercise is to learn the inversions of all of the V7 chords and to resolve them comfortably to the tonic in major and minor keys. Inversions of V7 chords allow lots of latitude and you can create a sophisticated melody at the bottom of the left hand if you know how to use inversions. Bach and Chopin always did this to make the bass line interesting.

Q.  Which composer developed the art of harmonic progression to its fullest?

Since 1980 Richard has given improvisation concerts and seminars for the Yamaha Music Education Foundation in the United States, and has been invited three times to Tokyo to perform and teach. He has also been a featured performer at two national Piano Pedagogy conferences and was twice invited to teach master classes in improvisation at the Oficina de Musica Festival in Curitiba, Brazil.