Simple soloing/improvisation lesson

Improvisation and the ability to solo is one of the most sought after and eagerly desired skills in the music world. In order to take your musical improvisation and playing style to the next level, you need to understand 3 simple things.

1) All music is made up of scales

Probably 95% of every single piece of music you have ever heard, learnt or played has been derived from a scale. What is a scale? A scale is a sequence of notes. Technically it doesn't have to sound good at all but the two scales that most music seems to be built upon is the Major and the Minor scale. You may not realise it but near enough EVERYTHING comes from these scales. Every standard chord, A major, C minor 7, Gsus4 and so on is built taking notes from these scales and playing them at the same time.

We need to understand that if we want to solo, we need to play in the right scale!

The major scale can be defined as being major because of the distance between each note next to each other. On the guitar, as we play up a fret we move up the distance of a 'semitone' - a technical term for distance in pitch. In the same way as a person is measured in metres or feet and inches, pitch can be measured in semitones or tones (2 semitones)

Lets take the C major scale for example, arguably the easiest to write down:

C D E F G A B C

If we were to work out the distances between each note we would see this pattern.

T, T, ST, T, T, T, ST (where T = tone and ST = semitone)

ALL major scales have this pattern. If you start at any note and play up the fret accordingly, you will have just played its respective major scale. Well done! :)

2) Improvisation = playing the right notes from the right scale at the right time

There's no use playing in the key of A major (aka using the notes from the A major scale) if the song you're playing along to is in D major. Find out what key the song is in by listening or by googling to find tabs and chords.

Improvisation in its simplest form is about playing along in the right scale but it is also about playing the right notes at the right time which leads us on to our last point...

3) Start simple

There's no need to play every single note from the scale all at the same time. Improvisation is about playing with meaning and purpose not trying to fit as many notes in as possible. I'd much rather hear a solo that had only 4 or 5 notes deliberately played than a mash up of 200 notes in it. Learn to hear which notes go best with each chord. Try playing them along to each other and experiment by finding just one note that works. Then try playing that one note in conjunction with another note. Then you can try and adapt the rhythm... and so on.

It is a step by step process. Happy soloing!

Another article will be coming in due course with more info about scales but if you are in the Sheffield region looking for one and one guitar lessons then check out http://www.dynamictuition.co.uk/