I have been playing on and off for over 5 years. I can play chords and do lots of cool little tricks within that area, I can finger pick in several patterns pretty well, and I have an excellent sense for beat and rhythm. I know very little music theory. My main interest is to be able to improvise.
How to improvise on guitar?
by joey | Nov 17, 2016 | Music Theory | 1 comment
Hi, Joe
In order to improvise you need to know what improvisation is. In a nutshell from a group/band perspective improvisation is choosing a selection of notes that work great when combined with other musicians. In order to achieve this there are three key elements to master.
1. Know the fret board really well, i.e. know every note. This is great however can take years to master. You can achieve this by learning scales on all positions of the guitar
2. Patterns. There are lots and lots of patterns such as patterns for the pentatonic scale or the Guitar Modes. These are great as the only notes you need to know are the root note/starting point
3. Chord Arpeggios. This is similar to the scales and modes however teaches you a selection of notes you can play over any chord.
In your case I’d recommend option 2. starting with the pentatonic scales and working your way up from there and once understood learn other patterns. In order for this to work you’ll need to know the patterns and their starting point which can be easily found on the web. for example if you’re playing the pentatonic scale/pattern for the G chord you’d start on G (starting point/root note) to get the right notes and keep changing the starting point depending on chords played
Other useful suggestions are as listen to what you’re playing and feel etc. however I won’t go into detail here
And finally, nothing replaces a good teacher. It might be time to invest in a few lessons 🙂
Hope you’ve found this useful!!
Mike