What kind of music do you improvise to and how?

Been tinkering with some fancy jazzy chords, so this is just something I'm throwing out there:

Edited by Dayvenkirq - February 16 2016 at 10:50

It was difficult in the 70's when I was asked to improvise in the studio. I would be improvising on guitar and pulling off something that would cross between Jean Luc Ponty and John McLaughlin over top of a definite Funk groove and I would be told to stop. I would cut the fast notes, rearrange in my head what I wanted to do in the solo, and add in more of what the guitar players on Steely Dan albums often produced and they still didn't like it. The musicians in the band loved it, but the recording engineer and the people in the control room did not. 

I'm not sure how to post this without it sounding like an advertisement, but it's entirely relevant to the thread. There's a pedal out now, the Digitech Trio. I just bought one. You play a chord progression into it and it creates a selection of 12 base & drum lines to go with it based on your chord progression. I've been able to play some pretty unusual scales over it. Ultimately I don't like how it limits you to 4/4 and 3/4 time, but it's an excellent practice tool.

1) The thing is improvisation is not even the main goal in my process. My main goal is harmonic exploration. One of the reasons why phrasing can be hard is when you overthink key notes so it's better to go by ear. Your ear could not be ready to hear it but the way I do it, it is because I keep exploring until I am familiar. It's probably not very satisfying if you "WANT TO IMPROVISE, AND RIGHT NOW GODDAMMIT!" but since it's not my goal I don't mind, it just helps a lot I think. Regarding the last part, I suggest you learn all inversions of minor, major, 7th, M7, m7, diminished(lol), augmented chords on strings 3-4-5-6 and 2-3-4-5 (4-5-6, 3-4-5 and 2-3-4 for minor and major). That way it will open what potential you see on your neck as well as help you know more quickly where your "anchors" are. Also, if you want to play something else than arpeggios over chord changes, you have to use non chord tones. :) Remember that you are the one who sets the rules in music.

2) I play some metal but I used to be into melodic skatepunk when I started playing guitar and I always wanted music to be faster and faster. Then I discovered shredders. I don't particularly like shred albums because too often they consist of pop chord changes with fast solos but that part was very useful to hone my technique, trying to play Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Angelo Batio and Bumblefoot stuff. Trying to understand what the f**k was happening in jazz helped me too because most shredders are not very adventurous harmonically speaking. If you play jazz lines, your fingers become used to patterns of fingering that you wouldn't do if you played only "simple" typical 80s shredding. I use whatever technique I feel like using. There are always at least 2 ways of playing things. It's a good exercice to play the same riff using different techniques. I made a guitar arrangement of the left hand of Chopin's Etude #12 Opus #10 and couple of right hand of Bach suites. Playing non guitar music on guitar forces you to think outside the box and find a way to be able to play the unplayable. You can get that too by arranging video game music. You can practice whatever technique you'd like to use. I don't use chicken picking and am rather very bad at playing like say, Adam Fulara. I didn't feel limited enough to practice that and it doesn't matter. You don't HAVE to be able to do everything.

3) All the freedom I want. Sometimes there are rules, sometimes not. I don't consider choices based on taste as rules. Remember I mostly to this to explore and eventually write music, not to improvise or play solos as an end.

4) Sometimes I try to play everything at once (without a pick) and other times I just record tracks and experiment. I do have a band but the only songs that have solos have a very basic harmony and are meant to represent a certain sound so I don't experiment a lot in those.

Also maybe 10 years ago sometimes I would compose solos. I would take riffs that I like and play bits of solo and figure out what I wanted to hear and in the end you can play a pre written solo. It's also useful to figure out what you like to hear and play.

Hope that helps!

I usually don't play until I feel compelled to because I have an idea of a type of mood I want to explore. Then I mess with the scales and create some random riffs in various octaves. Then I think of the types of chords and scales implied and I try to find musicality in those in a way that I hadn't thought of. I do this until I feel familiar with the type of harmony I'm currently working with. You know how for example when you think about things in major or minor you can spot various moods depending on how you approach it since they are so common. What I try to do is make these things feel more common through exploration. By the time I start writing riffs I already have a good hunch of what I personally want out of a given harmonic approach so when I start improvising over it I test a couple of possible stronger notes hat match my vision and start from there. Eventually I become more comfortable going from a place to the other but I'm not playing a lot. If I wanted to get better, I would just loop some of these riffs and play over them over and over again until I can be as fast as I want. This is not going to happen though, I'm really not dedicated enough to guitar playing. I have lost the flame a long time ago. Luckily even when you lose 95% of the flame, you still keep at least 75% of your technique.

^ Yeah, you are talking about developing motifs/riffs/licks. So many ways to develop an idea. Larry Carlton has some great ideas on how to solo. He's in a few videos that were recorded over at the Guitar Clinic (?).

He also has a great video on how to familiarize yourself with the fretboard. Start by finding and playing the roots of a chord all over the fretboard. Then add the fifths and repeat the process. Do the same with other tones, sticking with that root. Great video. It should be much easier for you to recall the shapes and positions of a scale on your fretboard since a four-string bass in the standard E tuning doesn't have the B- and high E- strings. The pattern of relationship between tones on the board is consistent throughout.

Five years? ... Son of a gun.

^ Hey, as long as I'm still alive, it's never too late to post.

Interestingly enough, most of your notes match with some of mine that I've written over the last couple of months. I tweeted a lot about that. You can find my notes under the #AndysImprovNotes hashtag.

I keep reading things like "Play with other. It will definitely help you become a better musician." Two things:

1) Unfortunately, the Reno music scene isn't interested in progressive/jazzy/classical/folky improvisation. Let's hope that the Daytona Beach scene (I'm moving to Port Orange in a month and a half) doesn't have it that way.
2) My jamming palette is ridiculously small. Let's hope that I will get better at playing lines, running rhythm changes on spot.

I will definitely listen to your stuff on Soundcloud tonight.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - April 10 2015 at 14:57

^ For a moment there I was thinking "wazoo music", read "I use my nose", and couldn't put the two together.

I was influenced by a great number of guitar players. The thing is: they come from different schools and play solos in different styles: melodic crossover/soft rock, hard/blues rock, and jazz rock. So, I had to pick a street. I went with melodic crossover and technical bluesy stuff.I've gone to the Guitar Center. Remembered how to effectively use legato (hammer-ons and pull-offs), slides, alternating slow, melodic and fast, technical phrases. I was very pleased with how things turned out. Nailed pretty much every phrase from Fripp's solo on "Night Watch", which is how I learned how to come up with melodic arpeggios.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - March 26 2015 at 23:52

prog-influenced crap that i usually put in on the drum set. some heavy metal tones with the double-bass. mainly just many time signatures, some tempo changes.... organic sh*t and the usual.