Improvisation?

Improvisation is just creating a melody, riff, or some sort of line on the spot. Different styles of music dictate how exactly this will happen, wheather it be full on free form improvisation you would find in progressive and experimental music, or a more structured improvisation that you would commonly find in rock, which consists of generating a line that fits the key based on what chords/notes/shapes that the improvisor knows will work in a given piece.

A few suggestions for those beginning to improvise:

Learn them scales! Being proficient with some common scale types gives you a vocabulary to work with. The major, minor, pentatonic major/minor and blues scales are a great place to start.

The second thing I would say to do would be to start listening to the radio, and try to play a few notes that harmonize with the music, maybe write an alternate bass line for a song, be creative. Developing a strong natural sense of harmony is definitely one of the most important things you can do when you're beginning to improvise.

Whoops, I missed the most important thing! Talk to that guy who was improvising! Ask him about this thought process as he improvised. It doesn't pay to be shy when it comes to seeking out new knowledge!

Slipper,

Undercat is correct that's pretty much what you need to do. I am in the early stages of trying this myself.

What I do is when I get together with some other players they just play the rhythm and I will try to improvise in that key using one of the scales I know.

What happens is that at first all the improvising sounds like scale runs but eventually you'll start to get some cool riffs, etc.

It takes time to develop and definitely knowing your scales is a great building block. I can do a half way decent job when I use the minor pentatonic scale but whenever I use a major scale it almost never sounds right. Not sure why yet.

Chris

Everybody knows about the importance of scales and harmonic relationships. But most seem to forget about creating interesting rhythms, using space ("breathing") and dynamics (accenting different notes.) Many great solos and the players who play them use only a few notes very expressively. During improv, there is very little time to think about anything. Until one can play what (s)he feels or hears in his/her head automatically, I recommend concentrating on a few notes and using these to create interesting rhythmic statements. Learn to do this and no one will care if you are "just" using pentatonics.

-Greg

I can do a half way decent job when I use the minor pentatonic scale but whenever I use a major scale it almost never sounds right. Not sure why yet.

Chris

It might be that the pentatonic scale doesn't include the 4th and 7th that the major has; you know those two half-steps between 3 and 4 and 7 and 8 (octave). And those are probably the notes that stick out because they're actually harder to fit in. The thing is, just because the 4 and 7 are part of the scale, it doesn't mean you have to use them. Just leave them out next time and have fun with the rest. :)

I was wondering what improvisation really is and how you go about learning how to do it...

...What are players actually doing when they improvise? How can one get started learning how to do it?

Music is all about communication between two things - the inward and the outward. The inward, inner feelings and ideas and thoughts of the musician, being brought outward to the world, and the outward world affecting the inner part of the musician. Reading music, as in sight-reading, or learning a song from a record or tab is the outward trying to 'get in' so you'll learn and know what that music is.

In improvising, the musician has to have certain skills, a certain dexterity and technique, but more than that, the musician has to be aware of what's going on inside their head. They have to realize that imagination is even more important that knowing a certain scale or riff or pattern. In other words, there has to be something 'inside' in the first place, before it can be 'brought out.' And there's something there in everyone, even non muscians. It's an 'inner music' that's there already, it's just that most people don't focus on it and lots are not even aware that it's there.

Add to that an obsession in some people towards musical knowledge and technique (which is not a bad thing in itself at times) and you have people playing really really well, but saying nothing, because they're not hooked up to the inner music. It becomes one long scale exercise.

To counter that and to 'play what you feel' some people set their instruments down for a little while and simply try and 'hear' what tune or melody is going on in their imagination, in their mind. They record chord patterns and changes and then listen back to it and hum something - anything - and just keep going with it until there's a sync between what they hear inside and what they're bringing out with their voice. Without this connection the music has no inner strength to it, no passion or even inventiveness and once again becomes a scale excercise but now over chord patterns.

But when the connection is made, even if it's rudimentary and simple at first, everything else can start to fall into place. You start to realize that music, the real music, isn't just about scales and riffs and patterns and technique (though those are important to keep developing!), but goes beyond them by combining them and leaving them out and letting them become less important instead of all-important. If you eventually learn every scale and chord and inversion and picking pattern and arpeggio and one day you're sitting writing a song and the most beautiful melody comes to mind that has four notes in it, then everything else you've ever learned has to take a back seat to it in order to do justice to that melody. It's not like throwing knowledge out or even cutting its value, but it's about being able to choose, and then being able to 'choose' the music over everything else.

Next time you jam, trying humming along a little. Your mind will always give you at least the first note to hum, and then just see whatever else pops into your mind. Where does that first hummed note lead to? Up? Down? Then where, down more, or up again? You start to 'see' shapes of melody, and might even hear things you can't even hum, but the connection's made and you can go find the notes on the guitar later on. The really great players have got it (technique, knowledge, theory, etc) to the point where anything they can imagine at any given time is suddenly there at their fingertips. Just remember, inspiration and that sort of connection doesn't necessarily mean hundreds of notes per minute either. :) Some of the greatest melodies are simple, and as gnease said, blending both melody and rhythm; those are the ones that stick in your mind and those are the ones that people remember.

Soloing shouldn't be a separate issue from melodic thinking. It's not like 'the song's melody is simple and the solo has to be complex.' It's all based on the same thing really.

Take care :)

Thanks for the great replies. I'm beginning to understand now.

So here's how I see it starting out. For me, I have just started learning the Am pentatonic scale, in what they call the box position (you know, root note on the low E). I can do that sccale pretty well both up and down, at I dont know, well over 100 beats per minute. A book I have (The Everything Rock & Blues Guitar Book) has a few examples where they alter the sequence of the notes some (like for instance, do the two motes on the low E then skip a string to the D, play those two notes, then back one to the A, then skip to the G, and so on). I've played around with those examples and can heandle them OK.

So, what I'm getting for me to perhaps do is make up some patterns of notes out of that scale (riffs, if you will) that sound good to me. Maybe I should develop a few of them, kind of like a little personal library or toolbox, and then have those available and then try to play them along with some songs on CD to see what sounds good where.

I suppose I'll also have to learn how to discern by ear what key a piece of music is in so I know the right scale to play.

Am I on the right track?

And, of course, continue to work on the scales themselves

Yes, it's like a toolbox with all the things you've learned over time. That's a good way to look at it. Patterns - like scale-wise or melodic sequences - and stuff you come up with.

And as far as the ear thing, yes to that too. Usually (but not all the time) a piece of music will start off with the root chord of the key it's in. Find that note and that will be a good place to start. Then do a major scale from there and if that doesn't seem to fit, try the minor version. Your ear will develop along with everything else.

Take care :)

Slipperman,

That's pretty much what I've and there are a few other things you might try.

First you can either record yourself playing a chord progression for a few minutes and then play it back and improv over it or you can buy a jam track CD and play over that. I've found that some slower blues was the easiest to start improving to and that sounded good. Alot of bending etc.

I find the faster stuff still difficult to improv, plus you can almost always use the minor pent scale for blues improv or the blues scale itself.

I'm not quite to the point of what Demo mentioned. I can hum an improved solo, melody whatever to almost any progression I just haven't been able to get what I humming out to my fingers yet.

Sounds like your on the right track though just keep experimenting.

It might be that the pentatonic scale doesn't include the 4th and 7th that the major has; you know those two half-steps between 3 and 4 and 7 and 8 (octave). And those are probably the notes that stick out because they're actually harder to fit in. The thing is, just because the 4 and 7 are part of the scale, it doesn't mean you have to use them. Just leave them out next time and have fun with the rest. :)

And as you become more experienced with improv, you may very likely find you have "naturally" learned to fit these (4th, 7th as well as other, non-major scale notes, e.g., flatted 5th) into your playing in the right places, often as bends and passing tones. It comes as one's ear and personal style develops.

Everyone has posted excellent responses, anything I add would be redundant. What the hell...here's my 2 cents :roll:

I started over a year ago learning my scales. I have the ability to play by ear, "figure songs out" by listening so I definitelty agree with some of the replies regarding that "inate sense". You couldn't really explain/describe it. It just comes out of you in a natural way sometimes. But before scales, improvising was a mystery. I'd spend time writing down notes from a guitar solo off a CD, memorizing it, how to play it. Heck I don't need to now. Learning scales and their patterns and memorization of notes on the fretboard, once I have the right Key, I can take the right scale over top of the song, or other musician playing the chord progression.

You still use that "instinct" on solos, but the knowledge of scales greatly empowers you. You can't hit a wrong note, you're bulletproof. Just play within that scale, all up and down the neck. I tell you, you're just taking it away and there is no better feeling.

Now I just need to be more creative with solos, learning those important "pauses", holding onto notes, sometimes less is more.

You still use that "instinct" on solos, but the knowledge of scales greatly empowers you. You can't hit a wrong note, you're bulletproof. Just play within that scale, all up and down the neck. I tell you, you're just taking it away and there is no better feeling.

Eventually, you will be able to play even those "wrong" notes and learn to recover in a way that musically works and can be even more interesting than always playing the safe notes (pents and similar). It comes with time and practice. The important thing one learns is to listen to the whole of the piece -- all the parts and instruments, analyze it to understand/feel one's own part and instinctively decide where one wants to move -- in or out in terms of the harmony. Instinctively knowing where "in" is ("right" notes) can help one move from "in" to "out" and back "in" harmonically as desired, creating musical tension and release, which is a large part of what makes music interesting. There are rhythmic relationships that are important to develop here, as well. One of the simplest is this: Playing "out" notes off beat and resolving to "in" notes on beat is very satisfying.

Excellent suggestions guys.

Just for my understanding, so in order to improv on a song, do we just find out the key of the song (key of the song = last chord of the song) and try the minor/major scale with it? Is it really as simple, at least theoritically?

Many Thanks
Vic

An excellent soloing resource.

http://www.accessrock.com/soloinglessons.asp