When I discovered for the first time the amazing effect of how to play outside when playing jazz piano, I was really blown away!

First of all: To play outside normally means that you change your harmonics and improvisation lines to something “outside” the normal harmony.

My first real meeting with the concept of playing outside: I had been to many jazz concerts already. This was about 14 years ago. Weekly, I would go to concerts in Bergen (my hometown) where I used to listen to Dag Arnesen (my first real jazz piano teacher) as well as many of the other boys playing jazz – week in, and week out.
Most of the times, jazz musicians plays inside and adds altered notes. (For example, you are playing a G7, then playing the altered notes such as the b5 (C#), #9 (Bb) etc.) 
But this time, I listened to the boys playing some lines that was really pulling the improvisation from the original harmony in such a clever way that they literally blew my harmonic ears away!

I call it: My first jazz experience outside.

After this experience, I was determined to discover how I could play outside too. It was not easy to make it sound good. It wasn’t enough to just add some “wrong” notes every now and then.

To make a long story short, I cracked the code – and now I’m gladly sharing some tips to anyone interested in this topic.

Here are the videos on how to play outside when playing jazz piano that I did together with my “brothers”:

To play outside when you’re playing a Jazz Ballad is normally something you should not do so much. However: My first Jazz Piano teacher showed me how you could play outside and make it sound interesting. The specific example that I showed in the video is when you play a Bb13 (with 11). So: While the bass player is playing a Bb, you play a B13 in stead of the Bb13.

When you do: Be careful! This sounds strange, and you should “get inside” as quick as possible. In my experience, it works very well to do this.
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When you play for example a Cminor7 chord, you could play a pentatonic pattern. To get the outside- feeling, you simply need to transpose the pattern (as well as your chords) up a half-step. And: Just like when you played the ballad, you should get back inside. This trick is a lot used when you play funk- style jazz, as well as up-tempo jazz.