To learn the latter quickly, I find it easiest to build a catalogue of music you like listening to, and then figure out how to transcribe it (by ear) on your piano. Maybe just the most overt melody lines at first, before you can grok chords all that well.
In time, you start building your own internalized library of "licks", little musical gestures that are automatic, and to achieve what Marc is doing, is to just string those gestures together. It sounds musically complex but when you're doing it, it almost feels like cheating, because you're leaning so hard on these "tropes" that you've built up over time.
I posted this on HN a while ago but it sank without a trace:
I know the "music is a language" troupe is tired, but it really does help me explain. It's sort of like muscle memory, but with a musical vocabulary.
Look up basic Chord theory, then look around youtube for theory videos on the kind of music you like. After a while, you remove thinking from the equation, and then it gets kinda hard to explain in a comment