What To Do When You’re New To Improvising
By Matthew Chanway
As a guitar teacher, one of the topics I see students become overwhelmed with the easiest, is learning how to improvise on guitar. It’s very easy for students to watch videos of accomplished and famous guitar players stringing licks together, and think that it’s a talent that one must be born with, and that there’s not a methodical way to unlock that skill for oneself. Not true! Today I will outline a plan that will get you improvising in a liberating, musical way.
Step 1: Learn The Minor Pentatonic Scale In Root Position
If you’ve been playing guitar for a while, you most likely have this covered already. Unfortunately, a lot of guitar players stop here with their mastery of improvising, but it doesn’t have to be this way for you. The best way to get started is just to learn this simple scale pattern:
Shown in A Minor here. Make sure you can play it comfortably ascending and descending with alternate picking (since it is only two notes per string, this is not an article on picking technique), without looking at the tablature.
Step 2: Learn The “Key Notes” Within This Scale Position
So, we know the pentatonic scale. So do a lot of other guitarists. What we want to do next, is find the strong notes within this scale, also referred to as stable scale degrees. Tons of guitar players will just run up and down this scale in one position, landing on random notes within the scale and hoping for the best. If this is you, you may notice that some patterns you play sound OK, and some do not sound that good at all – they just sound like a scale. Here is your solution. We want to be able to clearly find three distinct tones within this scale. They are the:
• Root note (in this case, A) • Minor 3rd (if A is your root note, this would be C) • Perfect 5th (if A is your root note, this would be E)
Although I could write out which notes in the above tablature example are these intervals, it will yield much better results if you do the legwork and find out these scale tones yourself. Here is a hint – in the above tablature alone, there are 3 root notes, 3 minor 3rds, and 2 perfect 5ths.
Step 3: Begin To Improvise Emphasizing These Key Notes
Now, our improvising can begin to have some direction. You’ll notice right away, that if you’re able to play some notes in the scale and end on one of these 3 key notes each time, your licks will begin to sound like they are actually going somewhere and have direction, as opposed to just rambling up and down the scale. Your licks will begin to sound more focused. Playing solos without control over these key notes is almost like speaking with no inflection or emphasis in your voice. Not a flattering sound.
Step 4: Develop Specialist Guitar Techniques To Embellish These Notes
A lot of guitar players will have done this already, but we want to sharpen these skills to maximize what we can get out of these notes. Be able to bend any note in this scale up to the next scale tone, be able to slide up to and down to any note in the scale. Be able to execute hammer-ons and pull-offs (make sure you are using the correct pull-off technique, and not just doing a hammer-on in a descending pattern). These techniques will add stylistic flair to the positive direction and focus your improvising is taking already.
Step 5: Learn The Same Scale In A New Position
Now we want to be able to play the same scale in a different spot on the neck (ie, the A Minor Pentatonic scale, but starting on the 8th fret of the 6th string or C note). Once you have figured out the fingering, you want to repeat steps 1-4.
Step 6: Begin To Experiment With New Scale Tones
Finally, now that we have some direction and structure to our lead playing, we can begin to add some extra tones to this scale – for example adding the 9th and flat 6th to give us an A Aeolian mode.
Although this has been just a brief overview, without an in-depth look at all of the scales and modes described – this step-by-step plan is an excellent way to develop your lead playing and your ear. If you follow these steps, you’ll be surprised at how quickly your improvising develops.
Matt Chanway is a professional guitarist and guitar teacher residing in Surrey, British Columbia. If you are interested in taking guitar lessons in Surrey, visit surreyguitar.com.