Help me better understand Improvisation

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by guitarjamman

...1.) Do you hear the notes in your head while soloing?
...4.) Any tips on how to break out of my current scale runs?

Hi gj...

I do hear the notes in my head and sometimes sing them in unison as I play them.

A further tip to free you from scale runs is to learn the melody of the song you are playing and be able to play it simply and cleanly on your guitar. That takes a lot of discipline. Raise and lower it an octave (if possible), and see if you can play it in octave-unison. Good musical ideas can keep some focus on the melody.

Good soloing doesn't have to just go-nuts and play a million notes. Sometimes simple phrases well played make sense to a listener (not to mention the one playing them). My 1812 Overture advice is don't fire all your cannons in the first couple phrases of a solo.

I confess to being a bit traditional in wanting to tether to melodies. I heard an arrangement by a gypsy jazz group from Europe the other day on Sweet Georgia Brown, and they presumed we all knew the melody, and in 10 minutes of jamming and soloing they never once played anything that resembled the melody.

Lots of notes, but no context other than to say "Now we are playing Sweet Georgia Brown". I spent the entire time listening for something which never happened. Was not my favorite song in their lineup. Kind of received a 'golf clap' too.

[Mellow_D]

Originally Posted by JanVigne

I don't think Clapton is either. Of course, he always said he played that solo wrong when it became a hit and people had come to expect him to always make the same mistake. Listening to Clapton play his great hit, however, is a somewhat interesting exercise in day to day feelings about a well known solo. It didn't take long for Clapton to begin altering that solo to suit his mood and over the years that same solo has taken many forms while remaining essentially true to the fortunate mistake he had made decades earlier. Dissecting his many takes on the same song might be an interesting lesson in how to create what you hear in your head today and what you might want to change tomorrow.

Just out of interest in the history, what mistake are you talking about that Eric Clapton made when he did Crossroads?

[posternutbag]

I tend to agree with Larry with regard to soloing melodically. I hear far too many solos that are just random collections of tones taken from a scale or chord.

I have no idea if this works for everyone, but I began learning to really solo by going back and learning to play relatively simple melodies.

This is a technique outlined in the "Flatpicking Essentials" line of books. You learn a simple melody; I started with "You Are My Sunshine". I learned to play it backwards and forwards, literally. I learned it in two open position octaves of C, two open positions in G, then closed positions in C and G. Then I just started transposing it using the closed position, A, D, E, Bb... you get the point.

I did the same thing with other simple melodies. In addition, I learned the chords that these melodies were built on.

Then, a funny thing happened. I stopped thinking about the individual notes and chords and thought of the intervals beneath the chords (I also stopped thinking of chords by name and starting thinking of them by number and by use. For instance, the Dominant 5th chord has specific uses, it is not just thrown into a song to add random variety). At this point, I began playing around with the melodies, adding intervals, taking away intervals, changing them around, building new melodies over the chords of the song.

Finally, I reached a point where I could keep the melody outline, but change the underlying harmony, or I could keep the underlying harmony and alter the melody. In practice this works very well because I am almost always soloing within the framework of a song with a given melody and harmony.

I believe that in a solo, you need to either hold the melodic intervals relatively constant, or hold the harmony constant, otherwise, the music just sounds like chaos to the audience. They need something, melodic or harmonic, that they recognize, even if it is just a brief statement of theme before launching into the solo.

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Since it's improvising, almost by definition, everyone probably does it differently, thinks differently, etc. But one analogy I've found useful may help with a few of your questions. That's simply "talking". Every time you have a conversation with someone, you are "improvising". You're probably saying something you've never said before, exactly. Yet, you are almost certainly using words, and even entire phrases that you've said many times before. You may even be expressing an idea you've expressed before, but perhaps not using the exact same words as the last time. So, compare this to some of the things you're asking. Are you thinking a few words ahead while you're talking? Are you hearing what you're going to say before you say it? Maybe, at a certain level. but it's probably subconscious in most cases. You may even be surprised once in a while to hear what comes out of your mouth :-) But you may have a few stock phrases you use, idioms of speech, maybe even a few pre-rehearsed sentences if the conversation is about something important enough that you've planned it out ahead. But mostly, you're saying something on the fly, yet, probably using even full phrases you've used before. Just scanning this paragraph, I know I haven't typed this exact message before, but lots of phrases leap out: "on the fly", "some of the things", "idioms of speech", so those are "licks" I have memorized, groups of words I can pull out without having to think about each one individually. One thing we don't do when talking is stick to prescribed sequences. We don't recite the alphabet, or read the dictionary, or practice a series of nouns or verbs. You had to learn all that stuff, and just like learning scales, it's useful to know. But reciting the alphabet or conjugating verbs relates to having a conversation about the same way as being able to run scales relates to improvising music.

So ideally, to me, at least, improvisation is like having a conversation. How do you get there? I'd say pretty much the same way we learned to speak. Some formal study, learning to diagram sentences, or how to organize a speech, or have a debate, or give a presentation is useful. But the real key is tons of real world practice, both talking yourself (and being corrected when you're a kid), and hearing others talk. We pick up phrases, words, and ways to use them all the time. You can do the same with guitar. A great exercise I recall reading about from someone (Lee Ritenour, maybe?) was to take a simple lick you like. Could be three notes. Learn it. Now learn it in 12 keys. Now play it backwards, upside down. Try it against different chords. Change the rhythm, keep the rhythm and change the notes. Play it fast, play it slow. Make it bluesy. If its major, see if you can create a minor version, and vice-versa. That 3 note lick quickly becomes 100s of licks. Do that every day for a year, and you'll know thousands and thousands of licks, to the point that they all blur together, and you can't even recall them all, but they become your "vocabulary", just like the vocabulary you use for speaking. And of course, just as you studied a bit about language in school (what's a noun, what's a verb, sentence structure, etc), studying a bit of theory helps, and it can help to figure out how theory applies to that lick each day. What chord does it go against? Why does it work and why did you like it enough to pick it out to work on? And so on. Do all that for a while, and you won't even be able to say if you're thinking of notes or scales or chords, or thinking ahead, or singing what you plan to play. You'll just be playing the same way you talk.

Enough rambling. Hope that helps

This is a great post.

[JanVigne]

"Just out of interest in the history, what mistake are you talking about that Eric Clapton made when he did Crossroads?"





“It’s so funny, this,” Clapton says. “I’ve always had that held up as like, ‘This is one of the great landmarks of guitar playing.’ But most of that solo is on the wrong beat. Instead of playing on the two and the four, I’m playing on the one and the three and thinking, ‘That’s the off beat.’ No wonder people think it’s so good—because it’s wrong.” [laughs]; http://tab.guitarworld.comnwww.tab.g...s-eric-clapton



http://www.bluesguitarinsider.com/bl...rossroads-solo

[JonPR]

That's interesting. I'm probably being dumb, but can someone confirm which solo is supposed to have the "mistake" in it? I can't hear any problem in either of the versions on that second link above. Are they talking about a different live version?

If it is one of those, exactly where in track is he supposed to be out?

Of course EC knows what he's talking about, but (if it is one of the above versions) then his phrases work regardless of what beat he thought he was on. He certainly comes back in seamlessly with the vocal in the right place.

Originally Posted by JonPR

That's interesting. I'm probably being dumb, but can someone confirm which solo is supposed to have the "mistake" in it? I can't hear any problem in either of the versions on that second link above. Are they talking about a different live version?

If it is one of those, exactly where in track is he supposed to be out?

Of course EC knows what he's talking about, but (if it is one of the above versions) then his phrases work regardless of what beat he thought he was on. He certainly comes back in seamlessly with the vocal in the right place.

The "Wheels of Fire" recording is the version that contains the famous "mistake". He gets the beat turned around in the third verse of the second solo.

I have a lot of affection for that solo. Thirty years ago I had a power trio that did a lot of note-for-note covers of famous guitar tunes, and that was one of them. I always loved playing that solo, trying to capture that lovely vibrato. The so-called "mistake" is just rhythmic inversion that's actually fun to play.