How do I learn to improvise?

[DarkHorseJ27]

I've gotten to the point where my technique is good enough to where I can play most things that I'm interested in. However, I can't play something completely new off the top of my head, and its one of the holes in my playing that is bothering me. How do I go about learning to improvise?

[katopp]

 

I've gotten to the point where my technique is good enough to where I can play most things that I'm interested in. However, I can't play something completely new off the top of my head, and its one of the holes in my playing that is bothering me. How do I go about learning to improvise?

 

 

Sing along.

No joke, just sing along and inprovise by singing orhumming. You don't need no words, just sing/hum your lines.

Then, you need to translate that to the instrument you're using, but that is "just" mechanics, then.

[Pine Apple Slim]

Theory work:

Study up on your fretboard, learn where all the notes are.

Pick a system, CAGED is good. Learn the major scale and how it fits within the chord shapes, and how its altered to form other scales and so on.

Run thru some maj scales, minor scales, petatonic maj & minor. Try to visualize how they all fit togeher with the chords on the fretboard.

 

Actual Playing Work:

Sing, hum, or whistle, a simple tune or phrase. Find it on the guitar and reproduce it. Find it in another place and play it there, as many places as you can. Then play around with it. use hammers, pulls, bends etc, play it straight. Play it every which way but loose.

Try to relate this discovery to your theorectical studies.

 

Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

[Stackabones]

IMPROVISATION

 

Here are four areas to work on: melody, copy, creation, chords.

 

Learn the tune's melody on guitar. Let it be your guide for getting into soloing. I used to flip on the radio and just learn melodies and try to phrase the way the singer was phrasing. Once you learn the tune's melody, you can apply rhythmic variation and some of the ideas in Improv 101 below.

 

Copy other solos. Learn them note-for-note. You can also learn isolated licks inside solos. Eventually, you can make them your own by applying the ideas in Improv 101.

 

For the creation of your own ideas, here's a little primer ...

 

IMPROV 101

 

contains notes that will work in any soloing situation. If the song you are playing has an E major, then the notes in the E major chord work. Most know the cowboy E (022100). If you play those notes (one-by-one or skip strings), you can be sure those will work. Whether or not they create interest is up to the player.

 

 

 

Learn E major in at least three positions (including the cowboy, also learn x76454 and x79997 for example). This should be done with all the chords you know. Later you can do the same with minor, dom7, min7, etc.

[fastblueheeler]

+1 on the Pentatonic!

[Pine Apple Slim]

We all live and die by the pentatonic maj or minor.

They are great and you will do well to use em.

 

But melodies sometimes employ other notes in addition to the big 5.

The maj & minor scale is a nec too in my book, and its only 2 more notes to add in. Just so you can find those other melody notes faster.

[Terry Allan Hall]

Buy a copy of this book and go over the scales EVERY day...

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0931759595/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

 

Remember...all melodies are made from pieces of one scale or another, and as you learn various scales/modes (not just major, minor and pentatonic), you'll be able to put them into your improvs. For instance, in Gypsy jazz, Arabic scales come into play surprisingly often:

 

 

Music is language, so grow yourself as vast a vocabulary as possible!

 

Here's some simple modes to start with:

 

 

And here is a simple movable major scale...it is in "G:, but by moving it up 2 frets, it becomes an "A" scale...moving it over one string (or up 5) makes it a "C" scale (hence the term "Movable scale"):

 

 

The note that names the scale is in red, of course.

 

Correct fingering is key...notice how this scale covers 4 frets...most of us have 4 fingers on our fretting hand...the 1st fret utilizes your pointer, 2nd fret utilizes your "bird" finger, 3rd utilizes your ring finger and 4th fret utilizes your pinky. Correct fingering allows you to play fast passages effortlessly, which is why a lot of us run our scales daily for a half-hour or more.

 

Use all of 'em, including your pinky (which will be your weakest, at first, but use it along w/ the others, anyway, and it'll strengthen!)...

 

Hope this helps start you!

[DarkHorseJ27]

Buy a copy of this book and go over the scales EVERY day...

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0931759595/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

 

Whats funny is I saw that book at a store a few weeks back and was tempted to get it, but was broke at the time.

[BLUtunes]

Study jazz.

[katopp]

SCNR:

What is the difference between a rock guitarist and a jazz guitarist?

A rock guitarist plays three chords in front of thousand people.

[garthman]

, which is why a lot of us run our scales daily for a half-hour or more. Use all of 'em, including your pinky (which will be your weakest, at first, but use it along w/ the others, anyway, and it'll strengthen!)... Hope this helps start you!

 

This is very good advice ^^^^^

[brahmz118]

It might be useful for you to come up with your own working definition of improvisation first. One of my students wanted to improvise, after getting frustrated with the 'tedious' process of translating lots of little dots and/or numbers into sound. When I asked her to elaborate, she just said 'I want to play anything that sounds good, without having to look at a piece of paper.' Needless to say, that definition wasn't specific enough.

 

Chances are, if you want to improvise in a certain genre, or if you want to emulate a person's style, that certain musical conventions are being used. Once you've identified your musical vision, it becomes somewhat easier to identify the relevant musical conventions. Then you can focus on those building blocks and generate your own self-training exercises.

 

So if you want to learn to improvise a bluegrass break, scales and flatpick technique would be relevant building blocks, as opposed to jazz harmony.

 

If you want to play something with a rhythmic groove but no melody, muting / percussive techniques and chord progression theory might be more of a priority than scales.

 

Whatever your musical goal, I just think it's important to narrow down the options a bit. Certainly you could just practice random unrelated skills and creatively learn to incorporate them. But if you work on too many random skills at once, they might all be underdeveloped.

[acousticDave]

my 0.02:

 

1. listen to people known for being excellent improvisers: plenty of them live in the jazz & jamband genres, as well as the blues. watch them live in person.

 

2. play along to backing tracks (tracks that have a full band grooving, but no lead guitar in the mix), record and listen to yourself. miles davis was known for recording absolutely everything and listening to it immediately after practice to hear what sounded good and what wasn't working.

 

3. get out of your head, play more with your heart and your ears

 

4. if you hit a wrong note, make it a right note.

 

5. have fun!

[Danner]

Play more arpeggios.

[blue2blue]

I think Stack's perhaps talking about me, at least in part, when he talks about people downtalking pentatonic scales.

 

I should say that I think there's a huge amount to learn from looking at the pentatonic scale within the parent scale but that those who are trapped exclusively within pentatonic scales ultimately sound boring.

 

To say that Debussy and Parker used pentatonic scales should not be taken to suggest that that is all the used. Both were extremely harmonically sophisticated. And, God love Muddy waters, a fine singer and a real folkie of the first order -- but, yeah, I find his guitar playing somewhat less than really involving musically. It works for what he's doing, basically interjecting some emotive underlining to his vocals, but I would not want to hear a 32 bar solo from him in that modality.

 

In fact, I think the widespread lack of respect for blues guitarists is often predicated on the prevalence of blues players who allow themselves to stay within the comfortable, easy, modulation-not-required framework of pentatonia. But listen to the really sophisticated blues based players, and you won't hear them sticking within that 'safe' but boring framework.

 

To my way of thinking, pentatonic scales sort of represent the power nodes within the greater set of possible notes... I don't restrict myself to seven notes -- so it's unlikely I'm going to be comfortable stuck inside of five. As a song's harmonic progression evolves, I'm listening for the modulations within it, playing ahead of the changes in order to set up harmonic tensions that will hopefully resolve as the song progresses.

 

Scales and harmonies are the analytical constructs we erect trying to make sense out of the music we make -- but I think ultimately an improviser must move beyond thinking and mentally constructing solos from mechanistic or theoretical constructs and get to a point where he really is playing music. I've spent a lot of time watching myself play and learn -- as well as watching others -- and, I'm firmly convinced that those harmonic/theoretical constructs are the nest but that, ultimately, you've got to get out and fly...

[Chordchunker]

Keep your guitar in your hands..

[bruto]

For practice at home, I make a very basic drum and bass track on Acid and loop it. I then jam to it with my scale book open.

 

Most people start with pentatonic scales, but it's also hard to get away from them if that's all you play. I like mixolydian (Santana uses it a lot) and locrian scales (great for minor keys.) Lately, I've been working on jazz melodic minor scales over minor 7th and 9th chord progressions.

 

The Gig Bag Book of Scales is good and available at any Barnes and Noble for $13.

[sixgunner455]

... Certainly you could just practice random unrelated skills and creatively learn to incorporate them. But if you work on too many random skills at once, they might all be underdeveloped.

 

I just refer to that tendency as my personal musical ADD.

[blue2blue]

I don't normally recommend things that cost money... but over many years I've found that Band-in-a-Box can be a quite challenging 'jamming partner.'

 

Llater versions have 'song generators' that can generate fairly complex tin pan alley type changes, with a fair degree of customizability; depending on the package [like so many things, they tend to make a good chunk of their money, I suspect, through add-on style and other packages] they include a slug of typical blues progressions so you both practice your pentatonics -- and practice breaking away from and expanding on them.

 

Of course, even a simple recorder can allow you to cut a rhythm track to learn how to fit your playing into different harmonic frameworks and you can challenge yourself as much or as little as you want and are able to. I would strongly recommend including a drum machine, metronome, rhythm loop, etc, in with that practice, however, since you really want to get meter and rhythm firmly in your mind/body continuum.

 

 

 

EDIT: another thing, there's no reason on earth that you have to limit yourself to single stop soloing (one note at a time, IOW). Listen to the best of the really good pop and rock players and you'll note that many of them often expand on their basic vocabulary with double stop leads and chord leads. It's not just the province of jazzers. From Robert Johnson through Chuck Berry and on through guys like Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher and Richard Thompson, extending the vocabulary of the guitar often involves moving harmonies. (Of course, most of those guys didn't just stop with single or double stop solos but often play(ed) complex parts that incorporated both rhythm and melodic elements.)

[kwakatak]

Play with others in a jam circle?

 

+1 on humming out melodies and then finding where they belong on the fretboard though. It makes it much more right-brained IMO; music should be thought of as a language, not a code.

[TSMusic]

I learned a lot back when I got started by just playing with the songs on the radio (back in the day when there was good music on the radio). Not playing note for note but picking out other leads and just playing them to the song itself. Did get me into a bad habit, I'm pattern player more than a scale player and even though the brain want's to think scales, the fingers seem to fall into the same old grooves. But if you have that part beat then, I'd say just grab a couple of CD's and improvise against them.

 

Tony

[sixgunner455]

Try. Keep trying. Use all the tools people have mentioned. Get a backing track of a song you like, find someone on Youtube or something that you like their version of it, and copy the heck out of them until you can play that song cold.

 

Then switch songs and start trying to keep up by ear.

 

Leastaways, that's how I did it. Literally.

[fastblueheeler]

I don't normally recommend things that cost money ... but over many years I've found that Band-in-a-Box can be a quite challenging 'jamming partner.'

 

and a good learning tool..............and a lot of fun!

[acousticDave]

+1 for putting on a random song and trying to play along with it by ear. great way to really focus your listening skills. after all, improv is all about communicating with the people you're playing with.

[Terry Allan Hall]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0931759595/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used Whats funny is I saw that book at a store a few weeks back and was tempted to get it, but was broke at the time.

 

Well, as soon as you can, snag a copy! Worth every penny.