Your approach to the Improv lessons

[Bill_Brown]

Hi again @MiRu , I can’t help you with the ‘Slice and Dice” improv that you’re talking about, but as I commented to you in yesterday’s Daily Challenge, there is 1 Goldberg Improv video available to watch now, and more will be coming. Perhaps you can use this improv as a platform to begin to see what others are doing with this particular scale and technique, since you’ve already tried it yourself. As I alluded to you yesterday, some will do things “outside of the box” to get something that is satisfying to them. To do these Wednesday improvs, you don’t always have to adhere to the techniques and scale patterns as presented in the lessons.

Best of luck to you on your guitar journey🎸

[MiRu]

Hi Bill, aah, nice. Thanks for commenting.
Unfortunately you don’t get a notification when somebody replies to that kind of comments. So I wasn’t able to see it yesterday.

I think its pretty hard to keep up with Lesson Comments as you rarely go back to your previous lessons. Also, I don’t seem to be able to go back to yesterdays lesson :-/
A pretty weird Comment system on this site unfortunately. So please accept my apologies for not having read your kind comment.

Kind regards

[Bill_Brown]

No apologies needed here ever @MiRu 👍 I see that you’ve already commented on some of the improv videos, so now you get what I was talking about. Improvs are way harder to do (and sound good) than it appears on the surface. Be patient with yourself and don’t give up trying. Eventually things will click for you.

[MiRu]

Yeah I found the video after your comment 🙂

And I think Improvs are JUST as hard to do and make em sound good as they appear. At least to me. (I always considered that neigh impossible to me) ;-P

And yeah, I sincerely hope I don’t give up this time 🙁

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  MiRu.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  MiRu.

[N-lightMike]

Hey @MiRu ;

I don’t think it is necessary to “approach” the Wednesday lessons any different than Tony suggests. Learn the “scale” pattern he shows you and play around. Just play it over and over till it’s ingrained in your fingers. Then play it against the backing track as long as you want and are having fun. You can literally do this for hours. Find different rhythms, different articulations, etc.

Remember you need to have some kind of pattern, or “motif”, something you return to that our ear becomes familiar with. Also, not too much repetition or it will sound boring. But not too much unique or there won’t be any “order”. So find something “cool” and play variations of that. Don’t go all random, but don’t get stuck in a rut.

Just play around. That’s the ticket. Until you find stuff that sounds good. Another thing to remember is that some notes sound good when you land on them and hold them, and some don’t. Use the notes that don’t sound good as “passing” notes, just hit them and move on. You need both kinds of notes to make a solo sound good.

Anyway, have fun.

MG 😀

[Kitman]

Hi @MiRu ! first – welcome to TAC! It is great to hear about your guitar journey with TAC and the fun you are having along the way. Don’t get too wrung out over the improv challenge. I find some days an improv comes to me pretty easily and other times it doesn’t. There are no right or wrong ways to do them – they are improvs and spontaneous. Sometimes a particular backing track also doesn’t click with me. No biggie – improv to your own stuff!

That said, I had another look at the Slice and Dice lesson and backing track (I went through the 5 Day Skill Challenge myself not too long ago) and have a couple thoughts to offer:

1. On the improv backing tracks you are able to change the speed of the track. In the lower right corner of the tracks video look for a “1x” or a gear symbol. Clicking this will bring up a list of factors by which you can change the speed of the track. Sometimes if I slow the track down a bit it helps me to ” hear” what is going on in the backing track and therefore helps with my improv.

2. Somewhere in one of the lessons Tony suggests listening to a backing track and playing some of the notes from the improv scale provided to see what sounds nice to you. This is something that always helps me.

3. In another one of the lessons Tony also said the improv doesn’t need to use all of the notes from the scale. You may find a few you really like and use the throughout the track. Find the groove that speaks to you and work it!

4. Don’t feel like you need to fill up every beat of every measure with your improv. This is a trap I fall into in particular all the time. Let the backing track “breath” a bit during your improv. “Sometimes less is more” as the saying goes.

I will record an improv sometime tonight over the Slice and Dice track and post it here in 5his thread.

Hope some of the above was helpful. Keep on playing guitar and having fun! 😎🎶🎸

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by  Kitman.

[jumpinjeff]

My method: Step one, learn the scale. Step two, play the scale in time with the backing track. Step three. Identify the changes and see what works in context with the change, just listening to what sounds good when and what doesn’t. Step four. Take the root of the scale and work rhythm of that note over the scale, playing whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, 1/4 note triplets then back and forth between the triplets and eighths then 16th notes and finally moving from 1/8th to 16ths then 8ths to triplets and back. Step 5. Add in just one more note. Take the root of the scale and the second degree and go between the two and see if you can rhythmically keep it interesting while changing the phrase from being centered on the first degree to the second degree, and then change it back. The next two note combo for me is the 3rd and 4th degrees. Then I start connecting the two, adding the note between while still controlling where the phrase is centered, meaning, I make the 2 part of the 3,4 combinations and then make the 3 part of the 1,2 combination. That is how I build the foundation of improvisation. Let me know if you get lost in the explanation and I will try to clarify as needed. Overarching all of this is having fun. Have fun!

[Kitman]

Hey @Miri , great input here from JumpinJeff, Mike G, Bill B, et al.

Here, with all its warts, is an improv on Slice and Dice. I slowed the backing track down to 0.75x the original. At some point, I tried to use all of the parts of the scale provided in the lesson. Also, you will notice I used some notes that were not in the scale – sometimes on purpose and sometimes by mistake! 😎 Note: sometimes when you make a “mistake” you may find something totally cool that works with what our are doing now or later. Don’t sweat it – embrace it!

Stick with the TAC routine, keep checking out the Skills courses and above all else – have fun!

https://youtu.be/iB3oMH0jcY4

[MiRu]

Nice. Thank you 🙂