Could someone share an improv roadmap?

Harmony & Theory
#1

Hello:

I have been playing for about 20 years (off and on, only seriously for the past 5).

I am OKAY at improv, but I seek that “enlightened” state where I can just flow over anything I hear.

I’ve recently began to study improv, and for an hour or so each day I work on:

Triads (Major, Minor, Diminished)
Learning every interval from each root (Tom Quayle’s method)
Pentatonics (adding 9th, 11th to each Pent. shape)
Building Chords from shell voicings (specifically 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th chords from 5th and 6th string roots)
CAGED positions, and outlining chord changes with arpeggios, triads etc.
Modes (mostly digesting the Lydian, Dorian, Mixolydian, and Phrygian modes)

I know this stuff takes time, but I don’t feel like I am advancing as quickly as expected.

Is this just one of those things that will take many years? Should I keep sticking to these concepts and hope for the best?

Or can someone offer me a better “roadmap” of things to work on?

Thanks!

#2

Start with one note over a drum groove, or metronome and work from there.

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#3

Here’s a quick and dirty:

  1. Locate all the chords for a given song in one position on the neck, as close together as possible. Don’t use power chords that slide up and down the neck. All chords must be in the same general position, a few frets away at most. So you will have to change chord shapes to get each chord.

  2. Learn and memorize one lick that works for each chord, in the same spot on the fretboard as the chord, so that whatever spot your hand is in for the chord, it is in the same spot for the lick.

  3. Fire up the track / song, and play said licks one after the other when each chord arises. Make small tweaks to said licks so that you can connect them together without stopping.

Success! You have soloed “through the changes”.

Yes, you only have one lick per chord to start with, and they are all memorized. That’s how you bootstrap into this. Over time, you can augment the licks with more free-form “semi-memorized” or subconsciously partially memorized information like scale shapes and fragments of licks, anything you can throw at them. The goal is to build the largest possible memory palace of assets (licks, phrases, fingerings, fragments, patterns, melodies, etc.) for each chord shape. Doesn’t matter which fingering is involved, it just matters that the phrase is physically close to the chord shape and matches the harmony.

The chord is functioning as a mnemonic device for rapid recall of the asset. As you might imagine, given the large number of chords you can play on a guitar, many of which are the same chord just in different fingerings and locations, this means learning lots of assets. This is where the work comes in.

I get that this sounds mechanical — it’s because it is. Improvisation is a filing system problem which is purely mechanical in nature. There must be a way of determining which of the myriad things you know can be played at any moment, given the chord that his happening, and given the location you are at on the neck. The recall must be instantaneous with no thinking.

Most people know plenty about music, they just don’t know how to access the lines on the fly on the fretboard. This is how it is done. Call it CAGED, call it whatever you like. I think all these approaches are essentially the same thing. Solve the filing system problem, you can improvise.

Edit:

Here’s a lesson I like, of jazz guitarist Henry Johnson explaining the same thing. He called the chord shapes “areas of activity”. Same thing. Chord type that matches with phrase fragments in the same area of the fretboard:

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#4

Why not do what your teacher tells you? And if you don’t have a teacher, why is that? :grinning:

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#5

To me that is a lot of stuff to tackle all at once. I’d pick one thing, maybe pentatonics, and explore that for a while first. See how different chords relate to them, see how you could use certain basic pentatonics over different chords to give them particular flavor (for example, playing B major pentatonic over an A major chord will give it a Lydian sound, since the intervals become major 2nd major 3rd aug 4th maj 6th maj 7th - the takeaway is to play major pentatonic a whole step above the root of the chord you’re playing over for a Lydian sound), etc…

I think the first step to being a great improvisor is having an awesome level of control over a small quantity of things, and only adding to that once you feel very comfortable.

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#6

I’ve never been good at improv. I haven’t devoted much time to it and I actually prefer most players that are ‘worked out’ so that was sort of always my excuse for being bad at it.

Your roadmap looks great though and it’s the exact opposite of what I tried by intuition back in the day. My approach was more like “Oh here’s all the scales/modes/arpeggios in every key. When the chords come up I know which ones I need, AND I have to smoothly connect them at the changes so it sounds more like a line”. Fail.

I know all the stuff to do, I just could never call it up quickly enough and I ended up with very uninspired sounding blah stuff…so instead I’d just compose stuff that fit perfectly. Your approach sounds like a ton of fun though. Maybe there’s hope for my improvising yet, and I just needed to hit it from a different angle.

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#7

Excellent, thanks Troy! That is a really interesting and unique system. Very specific too which I like - as it’s a lot easier to follow than someone just telling you to “look into soloing over chords”. Will be adding this into my practice.

Ha, it’s funny you mentioned that, because when I came to the forum today, my initial purpose was to make a post in the Teacher’s Lounge. I may be interested in a few lessons from a teacher who is really advanced at improv to get me on track.

Great tip! I think you may be right in that I am trying to tackle too much at once. I do feel like I am progressing but its extremely slow.

I think pentatonics would be a good place to start as you mentioned. One of Jack Gardiner’s big lessons is based around the pentatonic scale - nearly everything he does derives from it. I didn’t realize how important it was until I saw that!

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#8

Yes, that is exactly what I did when I first got into learning this stuff!

These days though, I am going by Tom Quayle’s method. You basically ditch scales and note names (aside for the root note of each chord you are in), and use intervals to build solos.

So instead of thinking about it as G to B", you would just think of it as G to the major 3rd. The issue is just that it takes a really long time to get to a point where you can seamlessly utilize this while improvising (a bit like how you said yuo had trouble calling it up quickly). But it’s supposed to be very liberating once you do!

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#9

That makes sense. I’ve never tried that either. In theory that gets us to the end goal of associating, let’s just say “some type of movement”, with the sound we hear in our head. Most people can sort of sing phrases in their mind or even audibly that would technically be improving.

Playing the exact notes on guitar that we hear in our mind’s ear…that’s a different skill altogether than knowing what scales we’re allowed to use on which chords. I think if I’m understanding the way you’re describing the Quayle method, that’s where we’d end up. Even if I’m misunderstanding it, I like my interpretation lol! It seems like it would help promote melodic improvisation.

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#10

I wrote a couple of articles about how I saw improvisation. There’s much more to how I approach improvisation, but it’s a good entry point. They’re from a very, very long time ago:

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#11

This is the main problem. Especially when you hear the “in every key” thing. This isn’t piano. On a guitar tere’s no difference between G and Ab.

There is a simple reason most people can improvise fine on keyboard instruments, commensurate with their interest and effort in doing so. While on guitar you still have tons of very experienced players who think “playing through the changes” is some kind of magic act, and yet can’t articulate why.

Making matters worse is that any discussion of improvisation tends to go off the rails with philsophical discussions about creativity and how it’s supposed to work, playing “the sound you hear in your mind”, and so on. This is not helping people whose primary issue, whether or not they even know it, is the mechanical one.

Yes, exactly. However the key is, it’s not that unique. I’m convinced at this point that what I have outlined here is what most great improvisers actually do, whether or not they describe it that way. You can watch our Olli Soikkeli interview where I specifically try to draw this out of him, and eventually he starts talking about “positions” which I’m certain he means chord shapes. So he either doesn’t think about this consciously, or, he might even think it’s obvious to outsiders when it’s not.

One really nice exception is bluegrass. It is very clear to me that most bluegrass improvisers do in fact think about linking phrases to chord shapes, because there are tons of YT clips on this very topic. It is super common for bluegrass players to talk about playing “in G position”, or “in C Position” — by which they mean, licks that fit under an open G chord or open C chord. They also mean this to be true even when the player is capoed up. The licks travel with the chord shape.

Here’s one such video from Zeb Synder:

I think this is just more obvious in bluegrass because so many songs are either in G or C, and they learn so many stock phrases that fit those two chord shapes specifically. Jazz is basically the same thing, just lots of more chords, and covering the fretboard. So if you like, you can think of bluegrass improvisation as the intro version of this concept. and jazz as the next level of it since it’s not linked so much to open strings.

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#12

Well, I was aware that I only needed a few shapes and could easily move them to different places and I’d magically have them in the new key for free. So that cuts out a lot of ‘stuff’ to need to memorize. I basically kept the shapes of all 7 modes in memory, and major/minor/dominant arpeggio shapes.

Still, I think that was part of my problem though because that creates this very linear view of the fretboard in the context of playing through jazz changes. Rock stuff I never had problems where I’d be at a loss for what to play. Keeping largely in one key I could even see pretty much the whole neck (in that key). I just never really liked the results compared to what I could compose.

In the jazz changes realm, I definitely felt overwhelmed and like I was flying by the seat of my pants to make each change that was coming up. Your idea sounds little more vertical in that it stays in one area of the neck. More importantly, since you’re saying to just make a ‘lick per chord’ I love that because rather than shape driven it’s ‘melody’ driven. I was thinking shapes the whole time and hoping that within those ‘right’ notes for the given chord, that something cool might by chance happen. Fail.

Thanks again for the insight! Your suggestions are always awesome.

#13

Ah, you said the Q-word (Tom Quayle)… does this mean that you’re also tuning in 4ths? As you already know (given that you cited him) the intervals have only one shape on a guitar tuned in 4ths, so it’s not really very hard at all to find things, particularly if you’re looking for a relative difference.

#14

I have been playing for way too many years to adapt to a new tuning lol.

Standard tuning is definitely more of a challenge of course, but that doesn’t seem to be the thing that I find most challenging personally. For me, the big hurdle is just putting it all together since there are a large number of interval positions to deal with when you’re trying to improvise.

Also, is Tom not liked or controversial around here? Sorry I don’t really know the history of the Q word haha

#15

Not familiar with any anti-Tom sentiment. I don’t know him but he’s friends with Martin so I assume by default he’s a nice guy.

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#16

I’ve only heard good things about him; he seems to be quite intelligent, although I remain mystified about why he tunes with EADGCF (instead of everything a semitone flat).

Indeed, and they both have Ibanez signature models, where they were interviewed together:

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#17

Ah gotcha, good to know. When I heard you say “The Q word” I was like ut oh! And yeah, he’s one of the only people I know who uses 4th’s. It seems very convenient, but has some downsides and would be too big of an undertaking for me.

And yes, I ALMOST bought the Martin Miller MM1 last year on a whim. I still have never played one and would love to know how it feels. I ended up going with the Guthrie sig which I love, but the MM1 remains on my radar. If it was SSH I would have nabbed it, as I need more single coil in my life.

Tom’s sig seems awesome as well.

#18

It is. All you have to do is translate it to the guitar.

Off subject a bit, but I have always have heard whole pieces of music in my dreams. Sometimes (probably more often) it is right before I wake up, so I run to the guitar to try and get it down only to find the pitch not quite right or it starts to fade away. Oh well.

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