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4 Steps to Better Guitar Improvisation (and more confidence in yourself)

Sometimes, it's easy to get swamped with ideas and concepts that you have been practicing for days, months, or even years.

The most important element is to go with "what you know". Keep working on those goals and lifelong concepts that you aspire for, BUT know who you are NOW and use that information to guide you to better creativity in your songwriting and improvisation

1. Choose a Scale

When you are going to improvise or write a solo, it's best to think about 2 things:

1. Which Scale Is Best For The Situation?

2. Which Scale Am I Most Comfortable With?

These two questions will help you best choose your scale. If you don't know a lot about scales, you will simply need to use what you know, or learn more about scales and scale options to expand your knowledge to enhance your creative options.

2. "Meander & Destination"

For me, there are two things to use to when soloing:

Meandering is your ability to use the entire fretboard (or as much of it as you know) as roadmaps to move around and explore the sounds and diversity of the guitar. This is similar to getting in your car and simply driving around.

Sometimes you drive fast, sometimes slow.

Sometimes you go for a long scenic drive, sometimes you don't have a lot of time.

And if you live in North Dakota, sometimes you go off-road and sometimes you stay on paved ones (especially in the winter).

Yep, welcome to North Dakota

The point is, you are simply exploring the pathways as you see fit. When soloing, you use this creative element to create by improvisation.

When you "feel" the need for something solid and impactful, you move to "Destination" ideas, and these can include many concepts, including:

1. Licks and Patterns

2. Chord/Note Emphasis

Think of Licks and Patterns as elements of comfort for you: You have been driving around, but now it's time to go to your destination (school, work, store, etc.)

When you have been meandering (moving around creatively), and you move your way to a guitar technique or concept you have been building, it enables you to then create something that is "repetitive" for your listener, and can build tension and intensity in your solo, and most important, give your solo some sort of "purpose".

The meandering gives you creative freedom to explore, and when it strikes you, you learn to add foundational "Destination" ideas to make impact.

Chord/Note Emphasis means, again, you are coming to an end of your meandering, and you decide to make impact by emphasizing a note or group of notes that coincide with the chord that is currently being played.

The more you learn to respond to the chord progression being played, the more your solos with have an "authentic" element that users long to hear.

Emphasizing chord "tones" from the current chord being played is how melody is created, and if we can organize this, we can create a repetitive melodic idea from this.

So, if you think of it this way:

1. Start with "Meandering", then go to a "Destination", then repeat as needed.

2. Start with a "Destination", then add "Meandering" as needed.

Once you start getting the idea, then it's onto the next step:

3. Build Foundations

In order to add structure and purpose to your solos, you cannot simply meander forever, as your solos begin to sound pointless (and this is what many guitar players do when they learn to play a solo), so you NEED to learn to add "Foundation" ideas to your solos, and the way to do this is by:

1. Study

2. Practice

You need to find those elements that work best for you (learn licks and/pr patterns, learn theory, study CAGED, etc) to further develop those elements that give your guitar solos meaning and impact.

Again, avoid simply learning a scale and moving/meandering around that scale. This is a great practice tool, but it's not enough to give your solos authenticity. The more "Destination" options you have, the more powerful your solos will be.

4. Listen to the Music

Here is another obvious element that often gets lost in the mind of a practicing guitar player. Sometimes we are so lost in thought by what is going on in our brain, we forget to "listen" to the rhythm, the groove, the chords, the changes, really, the vibe of the song, so we aren't really "creating music", we are merely "practicing".

Now, don't take that the wrong way. We need to practice, and we can use this platform to practice "Meandering" and "Licks" and "Chord Tones" and anything else, which is awesome! BUT at some point, we need to take the best of what we know, and what we can do, and begin making music with these elements.

We need to learn to listen and respond to the music. Music "styles" can ask for vastly different approaches as well. If you solo over a "metal" progression, you might approach it differently that when you solo over a "folk" chord progression. Or, when you solo over a blues chord progression, your approach might be FAR different than everyone else who simply uses the basic tools of soloing.

It's all up to you, but please always remember that the journey of a guitar player literally never ends; there are new ideas and concepts out there that can change the way you "see" and "approach" the guitar, so keep learning, practicing, studying, and stay positive.

...and when the road gets rough, grab a slice of pizza and watch TV for a little while and remember that it's only Rock and Roll :-)

Put It All Together and PLAY

Created By
Steve Stine
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