Originally posted on the "Guitar Discussion" thread.
Kinda rhetorical, but...
I've practiced scales EVERY day for the last several months and about have the Key of "E" down cold. A silly question, I know, but how do I begin improvising?
A little backgorund. I've played rythm off and on for the last 18+ years, but never had a desire to learn leads until last year. I have used the Software program "Guitar Scales Method" (GSM) religiously Since last December while learning to play other various songs such as the leads to Hotel CA ~ "Eagles", Nation Wide " ~ ZZ Top", While My Guitar Gently Wheeps ~ "Beatles", and several other great leads. Now I want to improvise my own riffs.
For the last month I've been practicing the five main grids (as taught through GSM) and the 7 arpeggios for each grid in the Key of "E". They are all about memorized now. I'm getting bored and need to be challenged again. Any ideas how I might begin improvising from where I am now?
Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Sport
Improvisation is music. Scales are not. If you have been practicing your scales all over the neck for the past several months but never used it to make music you're on the wrong track. Improvistion consists of two parts: hearing a melody in your head, and playing that melody on the guitar. What you need to do depend on where it goes wrong. If you don't hear anything in your head, put down your guitar and start whistling and humming along to songs and backing tracks. Form ideas. If you can't play it, then spend your time doing interval ear-training and learn where all intervals are on the guitar. When you got those to aspects you're ready to roll.
Note this is a long process of learning and there is no shortcut. You cannot improvise well if your musical hearing ain't well, and you can't improvise well if you know your scales but not the intervals and how they sound. So look for yourself what your problem area is and fix it.
Arjen, Thanks.
I have begun 'playing along' with several rythm tracks teaching myself to hear the melody. It's good to think that I'm following your advice intuitively. Because it is a long and arduous task, I thought I was doing something wrong, but your insights clarified much of what I was thinking.
A quick question though,
could you explain or point me to a link that describes what you mean by "interval". The best I can grasp what an interval is is the time between notes, but I get the feeling your not referring to half notes, quarter notes, or the like.
Thank you again.
Interval is the difference between pitches of notes. C - D is one interval. C - E is two and so forth. I believe this is what Arjen was referring to. My answer if VERY basic. Hopefully someone else can explain further.
Jim
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” - David Russell (Scottish classical Guitarist. b.1942)
What Geoo said: An interval is the difference in pitch between two notes either played simultanously or after each other.
You have these intervals, using C as an example:
C-C Unison
C-C# Minor 2nd
C-D Major 2nd
C-D# Minor Third
C-E Major Third
C-F (perfect, spare me the debates ;) ) Fourth
C-F# Tritone
C-G Perfect 5th
C-G# Minor 6th
C-A Major 6th
C-A# Minor 7th
C-B Major 7th
C-C Octave
So the Minor 2nd above F is F#, the perfect 5th above Bb is F and the minor 7th if E is D. Now what you want to do is be able to 'hear' every interval in your head, know how it sounds. You could do this initially by linking each interval to a part of a melody you know. For example, an ascending perfect 4th interval (for example, C-F) would be the first two notes of 'I wish you a merry christmas'. You can practice it using this free practice software:
http://musictheory.net/trainers/html/id90_en.html
Start easy, just enable the octave, unison and perfect 5th. Then when you can keep them melodically, both descending and ascending, and harmonically you can add more. Only add those in the right collom, so unison, M2, M3, P4, P5, M6, M7, octave. When you got that start adding the intervals of the left column. Don't force yourself, try one or two new intervals a day if possible but don't add new stuff if you don't have the current intervals firmly remembered. When you got all intervals you can hear what notes are being played as long as no jump larger then an octave is made. Knowing this all will help your improvisations tons.
IMHO, and take that with some salt, your best bet is to do 15-30 minutes of interval ear training each day, and the same ammount just spend playing over backingtracks. Remember licks you liked and try them again, see how licks sound over different chords. It's a fairly slow process but you'll be amazed where you'll be in a matter of months.
