How do you go about improvising?

JR#97

JR#97

New member
As I stated in the suck mode thread, I've come up with some of my best work on the fly. But I am so damn inconsistant when it works and when it doesn't. For exaple, I have a little jazzy tune that is the easiest thing to jam to. I've had people blow my mind while improvising over it. Yet I seem to only play within my zone, which is normally pretty small. A few nights ago I was trying to lay some tracks with it and I screwed up 3 notes in, so I said to hell with it and just let my fingers fly. I'm glad I got it on tape, but I can't re-create it. Happens to me all the time. So how do you guru's go about improvising? Do you play what's in your head or do you play off what you're hearing or is it a combo of the two? Do you think scales? Positions?
 
I try to play over the changes. I figure out what notes are dfferent between the chord currently being played and the next chord. Once I figure this out I try and make the difference stand out. This gives the illusion of "leading the listener." I try to avoid leading off with the root of each chord...too predictable. Beyound that, it depends on the song. If its blues, I'll play some recognizable riffs in standard blues scales to get the listeners attention and mix that in with my own riffs. If its jazz, I tend to play more scale oriented stuff...not good at jazz. Rock is similiar to blues only in a faster and less dynamic maner.

-ajm
 
It depends.... There's different stages...

Mostly I start with just some basic licks in the scale. You don't play scales, you think of them as a pool of notes you can play. I don't really think of them as scales either. And there some additional notes and tricks that I know that work.
(This is also the stage in which I experiment with new scales, tricks etc....)

When I get into the tune, I know what works and I don't think of the scale. I just play what I hear, or try to play that. I don't think of notes, by this time, if I'm familiar with the scale, the sound is directly linked with the physical motion to play it...

And a third stage is get that last bit of consciousness out.... I'm just playing. Not thinking about what I'm playing, really not thinking at all. Kindof playing from yer subconsciousness... Kindof like you are eating, you don't think about bringing a piece of food to your mouth using the fork, you just do it.... Well... So you just play... No thinking. Everything just happens. This is awesome.
I've had that just a few times. And I followed a workshop with kenny Werner about this (effortless mastery). You really gotta know your instrument to do this... The ultimate goal... But it's worth it...
 
my best solos/improvs come when I sing, and play what I'm singing. (you don't have to sing loudly) it has a much more organic feel, and it gets me out of my head as far as scales and chords go. it really helps you play what you hear; and that's the real trick. it takes practice, and maybe you don't consider yourself a singer, but listen to Keith Jarrett groan along with his piano, and you'll hear some playing...
 
rahja said:
my best solos/improvs come when I sing, and play what I'm singing. (you don't have to sing loudly) it has a much more organic feel, and it gets me out of my head as far as scales and chords go. it really helps you play what you hear; and that's the real trick. it takes practice, and maybe you don't consider yourself a singer, but listen to Keith Jarrett groan along with his piano, and you'll hear some playing...
Click to expand...

damn, i forgot about that little technique... I saw a video of John Mcglauchlan doing that. I'll give it a try tonight. I'll probably be too self consious for a while though to be really effective, but I guess that's what practice is for.
 
rahja said:
my best solos/improvs come when I sing, and play what I'm singing. (you don't have to sing loudly) it has a much more organic feel, and it gets me out of my head as far as scales and chords go. it really helps you play what you hear; and that's the real trick. it takes practice, and maybe you don't consider yourself a singer, but listen to Keith Jarrett groan along with his piano, and you'll hear some playing...
Click to expand...

Cool idea!..You know Ive never even though about doing that!You learn something new every day!



Don
 
i'm not really a guitarist but i think this still applies...
when you're trying to recreate a solo or a jam/improv you're not going to unless you got ears to transcribe note for note. each jam/solo whatever you want to call it, is gonna be unique each time. Whenever i take a solo and i'm thinking about it, i fuck up, but when i just play and in my head say fuck it, i play very well(at least i hope so). so just play, don't worry about it. keep the changes and flow going in your head and that's all you need to worry about
 
All of my guitar solos are improvised, and I wish that I could reproduce them. I might do 3 to 5 solos per song and keep 2. There is usually a dominant hook or progression that I return to for each pass, but it is never planned or rehearsed.

Also, I rarely get a tune or melody in my head first, and then reproduce it on guitar. I doodle around until I find the *bones* of a melody and then I let the fingers do the talking. I find it works for me...

/DMM
 
I'm not sure how I do it. I just kind of "go into the zone" ya know what I mean? If anything I try to play simply, economy of motion and not overplay. Sort of like what C7 was saying about Garcia, give you the straight melody and then start to play around it.
 
If it’s jazz or classical then I start off with scales trying different notes in the scale as a starting point for runs. The transition idea and leading the listener were mentioned above and are great ideas. Reverse scales are always a good way to loosen things up. Once you have the scales memorized you can pretty much let you fingers do the talking.

If it's blues, rock or country, there are only 5 cross the neck patterns in most keys. I pick one of the 5 and go from there. These are where I kind of get clichéd into using an amalgamation of everything I've heard since I began playing. Most of the famous blues licks are found in these patterns.

If its bluegrass i.e. flat-picking hang on, these tunes can go anywhere. I just try to keep up with the music ex. Doc Watson

Try working out some open string runs like Jerry Reed, these are always interesting.

On the esoteric level I turn on the music, then the recorder and just have at the music. I review the tape and memorize the things I like.

Most of the great guitar solos are a combination of notes and tonal sound. You can play a great riff and if the tone is not there, it falls flat. The opposite is also true. I know a guy once who had the Jimi Henrix sound down cold. He know exactly how to reproduce the tone. Trouble was, he had no style and his renditions were flat. All of this is true except for George Benson or Earl Klugh. They can make any guitar sound good.
 
i think it's becaue your guitar was out in nature where it was born. seriously, though... i usually take my $200 korean jobber camping and it sounds awesome up in the mountains on a clear night around the campfire. might have something to do with the night time air. less dense, cooler molecules might transfer sound waves better... who knows.

I'll have to try that round side of the pick technique. Dan Crary kicks ass and I use a lot of open strings when I'm soloing on the acoustic.
 
c7sus

You reminded me of my rock and roll days. I always played with the blunt end and use to purchase Mel Bay picks by the dozens because they had the rough sided patterned grip. It produced this great scratching sound off the strings for those Les Paul crunchy, punch you in the face, lead solos. I still have a few of those old picks around.

I mostly use jazz picks now as they increase the speed but still have that blunt end sound due to their thickness.

Regarding playing outside, if you think about it, this is truly the ultimate flat frequency environment. No walls to bounce off those high transient unwanted frequencies. That's why singing and playing sound so great outside. Also the sound of your voice and guitar sound proportionally better as you consume more beer. Just one of those life experience things.
 
Middleman said:
c7sus
Regarding playing outside, if you think about it, this is truly the ultimate flat frequency environment. No walls to bounce off those high transient unwanted frequencies. That's why singing and playing sound so great outside. Also the sound of your voice and guitar sound proportionally better as you consume more beer. Just one of those life experience things.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I was going to also make this comment.

Indoors, if you're lucky, you get good reverb. However, generally you can be in a bedroom with carpeting and crappy square walls. Good tones can get absorbed and crappy, diffused ones bounce back. Outdoors is much better for your natural tone.
 
I think melodies or improvisations start with a basic idea. Like when I was at work, I start singing an idea in my head... as soon as I got home I played that Idea over and over. When you have the fundamental melody down then you can start working with passing tones and create a mood. I try not to think too hard when I create.... then I can get into a groove where stuff rolls out of you... I think thats when your soul speaks
 
JR...

For improvisation, I'll solo over a progression over and over, until some lines that fit are uncovered. All the while, the guitar neck is wide open... Once all the positions within any given scale are committed to memory (pentatonic or diatonic), the positions meld themselves into one big pattern... that shifts across the fretboard, depending on the key and mode the song is in... One cool trick I stumbled upon early on, regarding 'seeing' the BIG pattern, was to utilize the easier bridges between the positions. For instance, if there was a 1-3-4 fingering on both the 3rd and 4th string, it was a given that 'next door' would be the 1-2-4 fingering... That is, the 3-4 of the first position became the 1-2 of the next position. These were eye-openers for me in understanding the modes. I used these obvious 'bridges' to familiarize myself with what was available; it got to where I could see not only the position I was in, but the ones in back and in front... It wasn't long before all possible bridges were learned, and the breakthrough of having the neck just open up was there. I didn't have to think about scales; the big pattern was committed to memory, thereby allowing me to focus on the feel and vibe of the song. This helps tremendously for improvisational skills, in any musical styling. As far as remembering what was improvised... That can be a chore! I've layed down solos that I actually had to sit down and learn... It wasn't too difficult, because I remember half of what I did and the other half is familiar enough to find; but there's always that one run...:D That's just me, though, because I always liked to learn the solo I tracked in the studio, and either keep it, or try to expand/improve on it for live gigs.
Always born from improv ideas...

Hope this helps.:)
 
Henri Devill said:
Cool idea!..You know Ive never even though about doing that!You learn something new every day!
Click to expand...

Agreed. I like that idea... I may have to try it some time...

*rocks out to "Burn" by Mad At Gravity while being pissed at his video card not working in anything but 640x480x16 colors with his new mobo.* arrg. hehe.
 
As far as my improvisational skills go... They're limited by my lack of speed and clutziness hehe. But... I used to regularly jam at the local Blues nights, both guitar and bass, I used to be much better.

In a rock/band situation, my solos were still mostly improvised... I'd have an idea that I liked perhaps from the take before in practice, and just build on that... As far as guitar goes... "Why?" and "I Can't Pretend" had what were originally improvised solos... "I Can't Pretend" ended up sticking as a regular solo, and "Why?" i still kept ideas for certain parts of the solo, but improv'd the rest... i do that a lot...

When I'm playing bass, i end up improv'ing a lot more, oddly enough... "You" is basically one big improv for me. Of course, after recording it I solidified it as having real solo parts and the verses were still off-the-cuff, buuut... That was written basically before hitting the studio (as was "I Can't Pretend"). "Dark Angel" and "Conscience" (Goddamn I love that song!) were totally improv for me, every time I played them i played almost all of the solos differently, and they rather sucked. The recordings, however, were nearly completely improvised in the studio. Usually when recording, I'll just do my favorite thing... Fuck around until something sounds non-crappy. Two or three takes later, got a kickass solo that stuck around as a real solo.

Now that I read this, I don't know if it's really important... I'm just rambling. But I wrote it so it's getting posted. hehe.

I guess I don't have a real method of improvising... My theory has basically gone out the window while being in a band for two years. Some stuck, but most went byebye. I just kind of started playing with my heart more than my head. In other words...

I just fuck around until something sounds non-crappy. ^_^
 
This has been a really interesting thread lot great info here, I do combinations of most of this stuff the singing thing works good even if you can't play what your singing you end up playing something that you wouldn't have played if you weren't singing.
Something to keep in mind is that no matter what the changes are every note can work if played correctly for example if the root is A you can play A# on the up beat as long as you come back to A on the down the A# will work if though it is not in the key. what I'm trying to say is it's the phrasing that makes the solo not the choice of notes. Playing leads is a matter of creating tension then resolving it certain notes cause this feel for example the fifth creates tension or another way to say that is when you hear a fifth played against a chord you are waiting for the next note playing a root note would resolve it. notes that don't do either of these things tend to be like stepping stones for example if we are in A and you play an E note for a beat an half (creates tension) then play the A# as an eigth note (stepping stone) then play A as a quater note (resolves). Obviously you can't think of all of this while your playing, my point is all the notes work if you find a way to phrase them right so instead of thinking of what notes to play all the time think of the phrasing or timing if you will of what you want to play.
 
When I improvise a solo or write music, I try to play in a way that describes the way I feel at that exact moment. During this time, I'm not really thinking about what scale and what position I'm using, I just go where I feel like going. Also, I try to experiment with new licks and play notes that would not usually be played over a particular chord change, sometimes I encounter these licks be accident. But anyway, I use the music to express my feelings basically.
 
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