improvisation

[darkstar54mm]

okay, anyone know any tips to get a self tought person leaning in the right direction for improvising ?

[airfall]

i'm having a lot of trouble improvising too... root, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th notes sound good with a chord. i drew out all these notes and learned the patterns that include those. hope this helps

[The User]

Get to know your instrument and then play what it tells you to.

[LesPaulStrat]

Improvisation is a fairly important part of playing music.

I studied with a very reputable jazz guitarist and he taught me various ways of doing it.

The best way to learn how to improvise is to learn what scales work best with what chords and how to phrase things that you want to do. After you have learned basic shapes,scales you should try to start learning melodies that you hear on the guitar.
For example if there is a stupid jingle on some televison Commercial learn it as best you can using your EAR. Build as many melodies as you can doing this and then try to put them into use with chord patterns. Don't straight out copy the melodies but try variations. It's important also to come up with your OWN melodies.

I am very tired so I can't type anymore but another way of doing it is to learn the notes by name (it's easy) and then play digital patterns using different feels and timing.
Find out what notes work with each other using your ear and then try to figure out why they sound like that.

A really good book on the subject is "The Jazz language" by Dan Haerle.

It covers basic music theory (so dont just think its about jazz) and its a very good book to start with about composition and Improvisation.

Theory and knowledge of music helps immensly.
I used to get called a "nerd" at school because i could read music and would write music but in the end I had the final laugh. The people that gave me crap thought it was "cool" to be a bad player, it was "cool" to just play open chords with as much distortion as they could get.

Feel is important ( you don't want to sound like a robot ) but the study of music theory is also important.

Have fun.

[skip tracer]

Originally posted by LesPaulStrat

For example if there is a stupid jingle on some televison Commercial learn it as best you can using your EAR. Build as many melodies as you can doing this and then try to put them into use with chord patterns. Don't straight out copy the melodies but try variations. It's important also to come up with your OWN melodies.


I do this when my fiancee is playing video games..figure out the music in the game, then improvise something off of it. Its really fun and silly.

Someone once asked me how they could get better at improvising and all I could say is "I dunno..you just..do it."

The fretboard almost becomes like your voice. When you sing, you don't think about how you have to move the muscles to produce a certain note, you just do it, and the note comes out. Likewise, you just put your fingers on the fretboard and let it happen.

[pardo]

All good pointers!

Something else that hasn't been touched on is HOW you play something rather than WHAT you play. You can make the same succession of notes sound radically different by playing them differently. It becomes about expression. I'd spend some time working on how to phrase the same notes different ways.

True improvisation means you don't play any "licks" that you've already learned. Thats pretty freakin hard. You can improvise by stringin together licks that you already know.

But yeah, hummin something in your head and finding that melody on the guitar will help break down the barrier between your brain and your fingers and help you find your true voice on the guitar.

The short answer is to just spend as much time with the guitar as possible and have fun!

[Welladjusted]

learning the intervals between the seperate strings works for me

[Ryan_77uk]

Put a record on you know and find a note that fits with the song. Then another one. Play with those two, add another, and another. Thats what I do. I can jam along to pretty much anything, I only realised I could do this after about a year. You develop a god ear aswell, and when got go for a jam its great... you've already been jamming, it doesn't feel new.