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Hey, I've been playing for 3 years now and its been over a year since I've been learning how to improvise, due to my discovery of Jazz.
I go to a community college in Sacramento and I've made more than 3 new friends whom are new to guitar (1-2 yrs.), they wanted to learn how to improvise. So they came to me!
ahh! I'm relatively new as well! But I don't want to leave them hangin'. They have good intentions, and I don't want to seem like I'm holding back anything. I want to help steer them in a rather good direction. Everything I know about improvisation was learned in a very indirect and unstructured manner, so I don't know how I know as much as I do. haha
Where do I start?
But I've noticed that many developing musicians have problems learning improvisation.
It is probably due to:
1 A lack of exposure to artists with a well-developed rhythmic sense.
2 Tension in the body(poor coordination and relaxation).
3 Technical difficulties with the instrument. Lack of control, as if a barrier is blocking them from expressing themselves.
What could I do to direct my now unofficial students? lol my guitar teacher makes it look so easy! lol
I had never actually thought of those three points as being specifically important to improvisation. I think, musically, before you can even consider rhythmic sense, you need to know about note choice. I think the second point is relevant to all aspects of playing, ditto for point number three.
But, I'm certainly open to hearing why you think these are the three main points to consider. Can you expound?
Those are some interesting observations you have made.
As for number 1, I am not sure how much of a problem that is in learning to improvise but that seems like something you could offer on your own.
I agree with Kirk the numbers 2 and 3 are relevant to all aspects of playing.
So the questions are:
1. How do I maintain relaxation and good posture while practicing/playing?
2. How do I develop technique and control on the instrument?
1. If you practice with awareness you can maintain good posture and become aware of and eliminate areas of tension in your body. In college I had a great classical guitar teacher and we worked on this constantly. Practicing in front of a mirror can be helpful as well.
2. Developing technique and improvising skill is an ongoing process. Players that are highly skilled have been developing their craft for years.
Any kind of routine that requires daily repetition will help build technique.
If I had to pick one place to start I would say start with the major scale. If you learn it well you can get to anything else you need.
Don't just run the scale up and down though. If you listen to music you might hear a scale played in that manner from time to time, but you have to break it up.
Play it in intervals, practice the arpeggios that are in the scale and above all, learn the number locations for each note. If you do this you will be able to manipulate the scale to fit all playing situations.
Another important aspect is training the ear. Try to pluck out simple melodies like Happy Birthday or TV themes etc. This will help them train the ear and get used to finding melodies on the guitar.
2 could be caused by many other aspects of life that interfere with a persons 'guitar time'
3 is purely a lack of experience and technical ability.
im not sure what you can do yourself as i dont know how much you know yourself and im a firm believer that improvisation simply cannot be taught .
its a process that arises from experience that takes years to learn , let alone master .
i guess you can teach em a few licks and riffs based upon the blues scale , and see what happens , at least with that sort of thing , you cannot go wrong .
Ok, I think I miss the point here. I don't think (personally) that improvisation itself has anything to do with that. These things are general guitar playing.
For improvisation you need notes which sound good together, and then you choose between them (hope this doesn't sound a bit stupid).
In my opinion - the most important thing in meaningfull improvising is being able to play on the guitar what you "hear" in your head which means that you need to know where are the notes on the guitar and how they sound and being able to fret them correctly and on time.
oki270, I agree ... the ultimate goal is to be able to play on the instrument what you hear in your head. What you hear in your head, not what a scale mode pattern or 'blues box' lets your fingers play mindlessly. That's something else. It's not a bad thing ... I just don't see that as 'improvisation'. So long as your twanging away and enjoying yourself, it's all good, but the real challenge is more than that: it's creating real melody, on the fly, to whatever set of chord changes is thrown at you.
oki270, I agree ... the ultimate goal is to be able to play on the instrument what you hear in your head. What you hear in your head, not what a scale mode pattern or 'blues box' lets your fingers play mindlessly. That's something else. It's not a bad thing ... I just don't see that as 'improvisation'. So long as your twanging away and enjoying yourself, it's all good, but the real challenge is more than that: it's creating real melody, on the fly, to whatever set of chord changes is thrown at you.
Well, why not..if you can make your head to use only 5 notes, then improvising in pentathonic scale is fair deal improvising, isn't it? Anyway, human brain is much better to think in chromatic scale as far as I know. I find modal approach pretty interesting but haven't done anything yet on it.
The thing is that you always use the same notes - using movable pentathonic, other scales, modes or chord tones but there is a thing that stays unchanged - you MUST know how it will sound before you play it so most important would be "able to play by ear". I think I have a long road to achieve this - I still have a lot of problems to tab something I hear.
It's just my opinion, oki270. I just always found that confining myself to 5 notes when there are 12 to play with severely limited the melodic possibilities and by doing so, the scale itself was doing most of the deciding for me. These days I let the chords show me the multitude of melodic paths and I do the deciding, using all 12 notes.
But, as I say, it's just my opinion. Many, if not most, disagree with me.
It's just my opinion, oki270. I just always found that confining myself to 5 notes when there are 12 to play with severely limited the melodic possibilities and by doing so, the scale itself was doing most of the deciding for me. These days I let the chords show me the multitude of melodic paths and I do the deciding, using all 12 notes.
But, as I say, it's just my opinion. Many, if not most, disagree with me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oki270
Well, why not..if you can make your head to use only 5 notes, then improvising in pentathonic scale is fair deal improvising, isn't it? Anyway, human brain is much better to think in chromatic scale as far as I know. I find modal approach pretty interesting but haven't done anything yet on it.
The thing is that you always use the same notes - using movable pentathonic, other scales, modes or chord tones but there is a thing that stays unchanged - you MUST know how it will sound before you play it so most important would be "able to play by ear". I think I have a long road to achieve this - I still have a lot of problems to tab something I hear.
Comments?
Actually, you guys are doing the same thing, there's no need to argue. It's just a different approach.
In both ways you know what it's going to sound like, so in both cases it's improvisation. Maybe some will struggle more to make it sound better, but finally, if done ok, it's pretty much the same - same 12 notes used, maybe even same result, but different approaches.
Pentatonic has only 2 notes more than a chord, so it's really close to it. If you hit the chord tones inside it, it will bring the melody
However you turn it, chord tones will make it interesting, that's how I see it.
So, it really doesn't matter what you think, if it suits you, and you end up with good melody.
The other aspect that I always forget to bring up in these discussions is that (what I call) improvisation isn't just playing single note lines, it's combining lines, harmony, chord fragments, double stops -- all the elements of music -- into a "part". I'm not sure how easy that is just thinking scales/modes, but I do know how easy it is thinking chords. You're always looking at all those possibilities when thinking chords. An example (I just used it in another post) is this 12 bar I did where there are all kinds of things going on:
