How do I learn how to improvise?

Listening to a lot of jazz!!! And practicing the rhythm patterns they play and then start picking up some of the easy riffs they play until you’re able to pick up more and develop your sound.

Get ONE soloing method book and only work in that ONE book until you finish it. Too many things at once is not good for a beginner

Jazz improv is more a skill in feeling than it is in theory. Theory is important for communicating your movements, but, the skill really blossoms from imitation.

Listen to: Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Horace Silver, Barry Harris, Hank Jones, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk, Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, George Shearing, Junior Mance, Sonny Clark, Vince Guaraldi …. There are many more, specifically a specific one whom I refuse to friggin’ mention because ‘everybody digs’ him.

Then quite literally and painstakingly, imitate what you hear at your instrument. Be sure to sing these solos out loud as you play… you’ll find your phrasing makes more sense when you sing, because you need to take breaks in-between breathes. This small factor is the difference between a good sounding solo, and a shit one that doesn’t seem to stop.

https://www.playbetterjazz.com/where-to-start-guide

Start with the 12-bar Blues, listen a lot. Listening is the most important thing you can do. Don't make the beginner mistake thinking Theory is the end all be all. Here's 5 things beginners tend to focus on too much vs. what they should instead: https://www.playbetterjazz.com/5-areas-beginners

Play notes and rhythms. Take note of what you like vs what you don’t. Rinse and repeat.

Barry Harris has a lot of good techniques/ videos

Take some lessons from a jazz piano player.

Just like hit the keys till it starts to sound good.

Standards. Solos on those standards from great players. Then enclosures, scales, chord scale theory

What everyone else has said is definitely valid as far as listening. I will add, trying to embody the notes and rhythms by tapping my feet, swaying to the beat, singing and/or whistling to try to replicate what is in my head did wonders for my ear to sound making connection? If that makes sense.

Listen to other pianists whom you like the sound of. Really listen to their improv and take note of what you like and try to replicate it. Learning by ear does help a lot, and at first it can be slow and daunting but once you get the hang of it it starts being more fun.

Practice a lot of technical stuff. Learn every major scale, then every minor scale, then the modes of the major scale. Then learn major arpeggios up to the 13, then minor arpeggios, and so on. The pentatonic scale, minor blues scale, harmonic minor scale, the diminished scales, whole tone scale, and melodic minor scale are all ones you should learn as well. Then arpeggios for all of those also to the 13. When you do this you are building muscle memory and hopefully taking note of the sounds of all of these. When you practice the minor blues scale in all 12 keys you will be able to hear and point out a b5 far easier and will have the sound of a b5 in your head for example, and can also get the sounds in your head and be able to play them instantly.

Learn basic chord progressions, the 12 bar blues is a great place to start and is incredibly common. Check out Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock, it's one of my favorite songs with a 12 bar blues (well technically it's 16 bars but it's the same exact pattern just extended at the end). Freddie Freeloader by the Miles Davis Quintet also uses the 12 bar blues in a different way, and has an amazing solo by Wynton Kelly. Backing tracks on YouTube are easy to find, pick on using the 12 bar blues that you like and play along and improvise. Don't overthink it, just play. Come up with a simple melodic line and just repeat it, and make variations and embellishments and responses to it. There is nothing wrong with repetition, repetition creates cohesion. Repetition is generally good so if you play something you like don't be afraid to keep playing it. Just play and don't overthink, when speaking you aren't overthinking every word you say and how, you just do. Treat playing music the same way. And most importantly, have fun.

As a bonus, if you can try to play with other musicians also. Improvising with other people is also really special and helps a lot more than YouTube backing tracks.

[Re-post of a comment I made in response to a similar subreddit]

You are not new to improvisation. We all improvise every day; our actions and words aren’t scripted. Every time you talk or walk, you are improvising. Improvisation is the act of attempting to satisfy a need with the resources you already have. In order to understand how this applies to music, I feel we should also define music at its most basic level. Music is an art form that uses sound and silence in real time without any specific linguistic component. Like any art form, it is largely intended to communicate emotional content.

So, based on these broad definitions, musical improvisation is the art of creating emotionally-communicative sound and silence in real time with the resources you have on hand. The criteria used to judge whether an attempt at musical improvisation is successful or not is largely subjective and situational.

Let’s start with the absolute basics of playing over a band or recording. In the jazz world, we tend to use lead sheets - a chart with the melody written out and chord symbols over top of it - or just a chord chart. This is pretty daunting to the novice, but it needn’t be. Without getting into deep theory, I’m going to give you some high-level pointers to help you start. These are my basic rules for improvisation:

First rule of improv: you can’t use what you don’t have. You might want to play a maddeningly impressive stream of scales and arpeggios, or crazy high notes, but if you don’t know how, or don’t know which apply to this situation, you can’t.

So the first thing you need to do in learning to improvise is to take stock of what you have. What instruments do you play? What range can you play on each? Have you learned all the notes? Can you play multiple notes in a row? What musical theory can you understand? Do you know how it applies to your instrument? Do you know how it applies to the music you need to play? Do you have any skill at scales, arpeggios, chords, etc.? Have you analyzed and transcribed other performers playing similar material? Do you have good ears ie can you play a note on your instrument that you hear played on another instrument, or that you hear in your head? How developed is your sense of timing and rhythm? These are your resources. Once you know what they are, you have two objectives: learn how to apply them; and learn how to broaden them.

Most players start with very few resources, but that doesn’t mean they can’t improvise; it just means they can’t play impressively technical improvised solos. You can play an effective, entertaining solo on a single note if you choose the right note and use it wisely.

Rule number 2: the easiest and hardest resource to use is silence. It’s the one resource we all have from the very beginning, but it’s amazing how many players seem reluctant to employ it.

Imagine you have a series of chords to traverse, and one of them is a GbΔ7#11 chord, but you have no idea what that is or what notes to play. The easiest solution is to let that chord go by and play nothing. If you’re playing with a band or a background recording, this gives you a chance to hear the chord in context. As you develop your ears over time, that might be all you need to figure out what to do with it, but in the beginning you won’t have that skill, necessarily. Silence is a crucial component of music, so don’t be afraid to use it if you have no idea what else to play.

Rule number 3: if you have a chord chart, you know at least one note that will work on every chord: the root/bass note. As much as we do not want to step on the toes of the bass player if there’s one in this situation, the bass note is a reliable choice. Take the last example: we know that Gb is part of that chord, even if we know nothing else about music theory.

Rule number 4: if you have a lead sheet, or know the melody, start from there. You can start experimenting with simple improvisation by taking the melody and creating variations to it. If you were to go out and listen to a dozen recordings by different artists playing the same standard out of the American songbook, you would discover that they each approach the melody a little differently. Different performers choose to vary rhythms or add grace notes. In many cases, this is improvised. If you listen to enough pop music, you’ll start to realize that a number of soloists are really just quoting the melody and improvising around it. This is a great place to start in terms of learning to solo melodically. Make the melody your own. Being able to hear the melody in your head while playing through the chord progression is also a great way to avoid getting lost during a solo, so it’s a valuable skill to practice.

Rule number 5: use your ears. If you think a certain note doesn’t sound right when you use it over a certain chord, you’re probably right. Maybe it’s not a good note choice, or maybe it’s just how you’re using it. If you were talking to somebody, you might want to use a specific word, but if you weren’t sure it would work in context, you wouldn’t use it (and if you did, you could expect others not to be impressed if you used it wrong). If you aren’t sure, and don’t want to chance a total clunker, trust your intuition, and stick to what you know will work.

Rule number 6: confidence matters. In western music, the nearest right note is generally only a semitone away from any wrong note. If you inadvertently play a “wrong note“ you can slur into a note a semitone above or below, dependent on which you think would sound right, or you can just lay into the wrong note – double down - and try and make it work. It is possible to play completely outside of the key in some situations and still make it seem musical. Take chances when it doesn’t matter anyway - particularly when practicing at home on your own - and it will help you develop greater skill in the long run.

Rule number 7: never stop adding to your resources. Even the most advanced improvisers never stop learning, looking for new ideas and developing new skills. The journey matters. Keep studying. Take lessons. Find instructional books and videos. Listen to everything. Practice. Transcribe your favourite artists’ solos. Commit to expanding your knowledge and skill perpetually.

Rule number 8: have fun! Musical improv isn’t supposed to be a painful chore, nor is it generally life-or-death; it is supposed to be a valued means of self-expression and interaction, and it should move you. Yes, expanding your skillset can be frustrating, but the same can be said of any skill you might endeavour to develop, be it subsistent, academic, or recreational. Think of all you have learned to do so far in your life. Nothing you have accomplished that has any intrinsic value was accomplished by accident, and you failed many times in the process. There was a time you couldn’t sit up, or eat. You learned. You learned to talk by making incomprehensible noises, you learned to walk by falling on your backside. In fact, you had to fail first in order to learn to succeed. Skill is not developed by accident. You will make mistakes when you improvise, but they are a valuable part of the learning process. Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from trying.

Good luck with your first forays into musical improvisation. You're going to do fine!

Start with the pentatonic blues scale. Then learn how to use the so called “half”-diminished and “double”-diminished scales, and see how they mesh with your blues scale.

Start playing along with whatever genre you want to play, you ears will catch on eventually. Easiest to start with the blues form really, often done in jazz pedagogy.

After you’re done with blues I would play over autumn leaves in A minor in your key. Playing any note in C major/A minor is mostly “legal” through the majority of the song so you can play around with it

get good at your instrument as if you were speaking your first language.

Learn a tune and the play it differently

Practice with a group. Start with simple charts, maybe ballads, and just play. Learn to interact with the group and the music and practice, practice, practice

I studied jazz trumpet. This is what jazz students do when starting improvisation: Get yourself play-a-long books by Jamey Aebersold. They have a CD or mp3 download with a trio playing several rounds for you to play the head and then improvise over (the recordings are made so that you can cut out the piano in the mix and just hear bass and drums). In the books, they show you scales you’ll need to learn so you can play over chord changes. I would start with “Nothin’ But the Blues.” You’ll learn the basics of blues which you need to know to get further into jazz.
https://www.jazzbooks.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=JAJAZZ&Product_Code=V02DS

Having even the most beginner sense of music theory is a huge plus but as others have already said, listen to yourself, others, your instrument, and what you want to hear in your head.

Improvisation, for me, is using music theory/knowledge/technique to more easily communicate my emotions.

The first thing you got to do is stop thinking just let something flow out.... I personally think it's better to improvise off other musicians so as much as you can play with other people the better off you're going to be just my two cents old from the wise

It’s all about the changes and how to transition a line into the change. Cliche, I know, but listen to Miles on So What and hear how his movements stay melodic and yet move right into the change.

There's only one answer here and you may not like it.

You have to start improvising. Every day, for like at least an hour. Sure, you can apply whatever theory you're studying at the moment, and you should.

But the only answer is to improvise. Every fucking day. At least an hour. At least. Mostly.

Hate to be that guy. But if you have to ask you'll never know.