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For the solo jazz pianist who desires to attain mastery of their craft it can be quite a challenge to gain traction, especially in the beginning. The obvious starting point is improvising over basic frameworks such as C blues or Autumn Leaves. In addition I think a third good starting point is completely spontaneous improvisation with no framework.

One of the primary initial challenges is authenticity. Especially for a tortured artist, they might receive many compliments, but never feel like their music is any good. For the passionate artist it is certainly normal to get overcome with emotion during play, and to follow these currents of emotions with little rhyme or reason.

Fortunately piano is a joy to play even for the beginner, because the hard truth is that the only way through is to put in hours at the instrument. Day after day, month after month, and year after year.

I think it is a blessing if the pianist gets to a point where they reject the entirety of their repertoire, and desires to start again, this time with much technical proficiency and knowledge of theory under their belt. Nietzsche calls this downgoing (or untergehen).

We learn a lot in failure, and this holds true for the artist. It is a lucky pianist that succeeds from the outset, but I believe the best artists don’t function this way. Lil Wayne had to shoot himself to become the greatest rapper alive.

To the problem of authenticity: the reason the pianist feels this way is because they don’t feel any degree of ownership over their material. If a pianist is to play for long enough, eventually they will find something of themselves in the instrument, and this will be the beginning of their repertoire that stays.

Once a pianist has a foot in the door, it is not long before they acquire more material.

In my view there are three categories of material for the solo jazz pianist.

The first is material with no name. An example of this is an improvisation in F Lydian.

The second is material named by someone else. Every knows countless songs.

Finally, the third is material the pianist names themselves. I.e. the wonderful field of composition.