feckin improvisation

nickp

I quite like "proper" guitar practice - say scales to a metronome, or targeting my shite execution of picked arpeggios for example.  nice definable goals.

I also like learning songs for the band.  And I can generally come up with a solo that works.

now I'm trying to start to learn blues and improv.  firstly it just feels like hours and hours of bollocks noodling.  secondly it is difficult.  Thirdly I can't measure or identify significant progress - albeit that I've only been doing it for a few practice sessions.  I am clear that it isn't about running up and down the blues scale but is about targeting the "good" notes - so I'm focusing on playing or widdling around the root of the underlying chord.

I find it difficult to keep track of the underlying chord progression - which is clearly fundamental and should be easy I'd have thought with only three chords to keep track of.

actually I'm practicing over stormy monday which obviously contains a bit more than just three chords - but you know what I mean.  I have done the first bit which is learn the progression and play along to the song quite a few times so I'm familiar with the progression.

I'm kinda focusing on the BB King blues box idea at the mo to restrict the notes I'm playing to stop my habit of just bombing around the minor blues scale

do you think it is just a question of persevering?

Any tips?

convince me that i'm not wasting time!!

ta (again)

Nick  

digitalscream

Improvising is really in two parts - automatic and off-the-cuff. The automatic parts are playing stuff you already know in a different context, and off-the-cuff is actually making it up as you go along.

Rob Chapman had a good bit of advice for this - every day, try to come up with a new lick and record it on camera, once at speed and once slowly. Keep all the videos in a folder on your computer...once a week go through them, pick ones you like and play them a few times. Eventually, you'll have a pretty good library of licks in your head - improvising then becomes a case of assembling them together. To join them up, you use off-the-cuff improvisation.

Do it enough, and yes...you'll start to hit the chords underneath in a musical way.

Does that help, or not at all?

nickp

@digitalscream - I am also starting to work on some "good ole blues licks" - 50 of the greatest blues licks ever kinda stuff - which is kind of where you were coming from I think - I am taking the "lick" (strange name really) and playing them over the song as well as playing around with the one phrase rather than just learning it verbatim.

so I'm kind of doing that but nicking better players ideas (if you think that clappers for instance is a better player than I am) in good ole time honored fashion.  they need a lot of repeating to become instinctive!  I think that is a problem associated with learning licks from a book/video or whatever.  If i was learning them by nicking them direct from the recordings by ear I think they would be more ingrained as the concentration and focus has to be much higher to get the phrasing and notes right to play along to the recording (but it takes even longer!!!)

I guess. 

digitalscream

Yes, that's exactly the idea - play around with them if you can, though, and record them on video once you've made them your own. That's how you develop your own style.

The point is not to make them instinctive right away - just have them in your library. This isn't a quick process, so don't try to push it; it should take a good few months.

Don't worry about making "mistakes" with them, either. I used to panic about that, but I realised that it's the "mistakes" which lead to your own unique vocabulary; your fingers won't naturally want to fall where the book says they should all the time, but that's what makes it you.

Some of my best songs came from utterly failed attempts to play a riff by somebody else.

octatonic

True improvisation is a bit of a myth- most players cannot improvise freely without playing things they have played time and time again.

This is why transcription is so important.

Transcribe daily and from a wide variety of sources.

When improvising you are joining the dots together between the harmony you are playing over and all the bits of music you've learned over the months and years of your playing.

Roland

Please pardon a bit of waffle because it leads to a very simple learning mechanism.

 A lot of musical melody is about creating and resolving tension. In blues playing there are a couple of obvious resolution points, corresponding to when the underlying chord changes. Between these you can play as little or as much as you want, depending on how you want to create tension. Resolution can be to the root note, but you can also use the 5th, major and minor 3rd, and minor 7th. So one method of learning to improvise is to play only the resolution notes against a backing track. Having a backing track is essential, otherwise you can't hear the harmonic effect of the resolution. This brings a feel of how the different resolutions sound. It also helps to build an unconscious understanding of when the resolution happens. 

After this you can start putting notes and phrases into the gaps. I don't mean "filling" the gaps, but putting in whatever creates tension, and leaving breathing spaces. It is amazing what you can get away with, because your resolution points will always make it sound planned and controlled. So you can squeeze in all sorts of weird scales and arpeggios. You can also mess with timing. Somewhere there is a video of Clapton playing a whole 12 bar chorus on one note, just varying the timing, attack, vibrato, string used, and the way he slid into or out of the note. 

As everyone else has said, recording what you are doing is also useful so that you can learn from your mistakes. Listening back can be excruciating, but you learn very quickly what not to do, and reinforce your memory of what works well.

frankus

@Octatonic is right, in my opinion - to a degree.

Transcribe licks, drill the licks, THEN mess with the licks, make your own - don't make the mistake of simply transcribing licks from people you like... far better to begin with to decide to rip off some guy you've not heard of... why?

1) No fanboi syndrome (sigh I'll never play it like him)...
2) You'll be more discerning about the licks you lift.
3) You'll disect the licks into proper phrases instead of sentences (i.e: "you don't care for me" "I don't uh care 'bout that")
4) You'll tweak them more readily ending up with more licks from one source.
5) It'll sound more original - who hasn't spent a jame night listening to well known ripped off licks.

Transcription to notation is a good idea because timing is a really important aspect of licks, people bimbling on about note selection are largely blind to rhythm and it's importance or they'd STFU

When licks are in your head, and you've tried them all kinds of ways then you'll be able to put them together (those are the bits you don't improvise - and don't feel too bad about that, imagine an improvised talk made of words you've never heard before "glutamen scarab mocassin, people!" how can you add dynamics to that, it has no meaning) and occassionally make deductive leaps "I can play this lick and that lick from that key and I reckon it'll work".

That is improve, this specious notion that knowing the spelling of modes unlock improvisation needs crushing remorselessly, by all means understand the context of a lick but the notes are often far more versatile than one mode

So find one of your idol's idols and get stealing..

EricTheWeary

I know I'm heavily paraphrasing but Eric Clapton said he starts a solo with a Freddie King lick and takes it from there and when he listens back after the best bit was the Freddie King lick.

One of the interesting things about Tab is that if you start looking at blues licks that way you can see the patterns on the paper probably more clearly than you can hear them. So T Bone Walker ( and his version of Stormy Monday is 3 chords!) was using the same notes in the same places as Freddie King as Clapton as SRV but you then start moving the phrasing, the tone, pace, vibrato, context,etc, it starts evolving into something else.

I can't recall the number but Otis Grand said he knew X number of blues licks and every solo was choosing which ones and recombining them in new ways. And by this he means whilst ' improvising' and not as a worked out exercise. Of course the fast route to blues improvisation is to play the same solo on every song and just stomp on a different pedal each time... ">

octatonic

frankus said:

Transcribe licks, drill the licks, THEN mess with the licks, make your own

Good point- I tend to assume people will do this anyway but you'r right, there are plenty of people who just cop licks and don't take the next step.

ThePrettyDamned

So much wisdom - @frankus mentioning the timing and rhythm. This was my downfall until I saw a Paul Gilbert video where he plays a one note riff - and makes it sound good! It was not note choice, but rhythm - he then applied it to a solo lick which was a double then a triplet iirc (difficult to play in theory) - but when you thought of it rhythmically the slightly odd timing (compared to just one or the other) makes sense, and became easier to play than one or the other.

Lots of words for a simple concept, but hopefully the video is out there somewhere.

Note choice can be important but my favourite solo (admittedly it's a short one) has a slow, 1 1/2 tone bend because I hit a bad sounding note and immediately started bending it until it sounded good. Luckily, it was recording at the time and I was able to learn it!

My improv actually sucks - but after working at a song progression, I tend to be able to eventually come up with something that draws from players I like, but doesn't sound like any of them. So technically they're not composed solos, but they might as well be!

GuyBoden

Whatever method you use, you've got to be hearing the improvisation in your head and how it fits to the song.

Play a simple song and sing the improvised line that is in your head, then try to play it on the guitar. Eventually, with diligent practice, you will be able to play what's in your head on your guitar.

It helps if you can you recognise basic sounds, Major thirds, minor thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths etc without your guitar.

I can do it, so with enough good practice, I'd say that anyone can.