Learning to improvise by ear, rather than with scales.

carlos

Sheet music is for nerds people who get paid!
Usually very little and/or doing music I have no interest in doing myself so sight reading is a skill I don't mind keeping at mediocre.

viz

My own personal view is that the best tunes do not come from the hands or the brain, they come from the heart. You are most likely to come up with them subconsciously while you’re on a cliff walk, or in the middle of a go-kart race, or just commuting to work. I did actually once write a song whilst go-karting!

Rachmaninov got all his tunes while strolling around the luxurious gardens in Ivanovka. He would then rush to his piano and work them out properly and orchestrate them. He can’t remember what he called that process but they were VERY distinct phases of creation. But he said music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart. That’s the trick: scales aren’t very musical - you want to write music that overcomes or bypasses the limitations that your fingers and your brain throw up. 

You will probably get half-fledged fragments of harmony and melody, which is fine; the difficult bit is to remember them and put them down on paper, or work them out on your guitar so you can remember them in the part of your brain that stores that stuff. The likelihood is that your melody will fit very nicely to your harmonies - ie you will have subconsciously done pitch axis theory, as per octa’s post. 

The thing is, how to get good at it - how to recognise it when it’s happening, how to remember it, and how to develop it. 

One thing is to get better at listening to music, not just let it wash over you but use active listening where you are consciously trying to work out what it is about it that affects you, and how / why. Another thing is to avoid listening to the same stuff over and over. Broaden your musical exposure. The best composers took everything they’d heard into account; and / but to prove the point, you can always tell the epoch a composer lived in by his/her music - it’s the combination of what’s gone before plus some individual addition. So, the more they listened to and experimented with, the more the boundaries of music were expanded. Another thing to do - and this starts to get a bit more mechanical and cerebral - is really to try and think of the message you want to convey. Agressive? Happy? Peaceful? Joyous?, and think about how you could convey that with ingredients such as speed, flow, use of modes (ie major or minor), use of various notes in the scale such as the tonic. 

Also you can think of harmonic writing vs melodic writing. I personally write melodically not harmonically. I can put a tune onto a chord progression, sure, but when I’m out absent-mindedly whistling something, it’s almost always me thinking melodically (obviously!; though I can whistle 2 notes at once but that’s beside the point!). Whenever I try to write on the guitar I seem to switch to thinking harmonically, which is fine, but I don’t seem to get those gorgeous heartbreaking (to me anyway!) tunes. 

Anyway there’s a few thoughts for you.

Coldfingers

In my dreams, I can do this for all chords in all keys...

And then I wake up :-)

GuyBoden

True improvisation is very rare, most amateur players repeat their stock licks and even worse, whole improvisations.

So, I'd just play what ever you want and enjoy yourself.

DrJazzTap

Three things that really helped me

1) horn breathing, when you start a phrase breath in. As you run out of breath end the phrase. Guitarists have the ability to just widdle and widdle, whereas horn players physically cannot.

2) Scat singing, really develops your ear. Granted you might feel like a bit of a knobhead, and its not something i do outside the house.

3) Restriction, limit yourself to either one or two strings (say the top E and the A string) and play along to a backing track using just those. This also works well with limiting yourself to one string. Or you could steal from Larry Carlton and restrict yourself to a set triad of notes. And play using just those 3 notes.

Also think of familar melodies that you just know, for instance as simple as it sounds "Happy Birthday" or the imperial death march. And sit and try and figure those out from memory.

A lot of it is familiarity with your instrument, it can sometimes take a while for your ear/confidence to just accept playing something atonal for instance. 

I find especially with the more outside sounding stuff, you just go for it.

As others have said the key is to try and learn as much as possible and then forget it all! I am certainly guilty of pattern playing and boils my piss.

Roland

The three things which helped me:
1. Not being able to play very well, so my fingers couldn’t sustain long runs of notes. That limited me to short phrases with breaths in between.
2. Working off chord shapes. So from any note you can visualise the chord shape around it. 

3. Realising that although the chord notes might be safe they often weren’t interesting. In fact the less safe the more interesting. This lead very quickly to exploring the blue notes which fall between the 12 notes in the tempered western scale.

elsmandino said:

Any tips on what to start doing would be much appreciated.

A useful exercise is to start with the minor pentatonic scale, and experiment with each of the notes which aren’t in the scale. Find out how they sound and feel in different songs. You can do the same with the major scale, but more of the notes are already filled in for you. What you find are some interesting musical ideas which can add colour to your playing. You also find that each off-scale note can be resolved to something sweeter by bending or sliding it by one fret.

After a while you find yourself incorporating these into your playing. Whether it’s your brain or your finger position which leads you to do this doesn’t matter. An example is when playing a major third you slide into it from the minor third, which is one fret below

HAL9000

octatonic said:

But put some sheet music in front of many guitar players and watch them crumble.

https://youtu.be/QeIxJzdPD0A

Rocker

A lot of good suggestions @elsmandino, mine is slightly left field.  But it might work for you.

You seem to be a guitar player that has discovered that there is more to music than mere learning of scales.  A bit like the golfer who (finally) realises that there is more to golf than the act of hitting the ball.
 
I have always found 'backing tracks' to be boring.  In fact I usually call them 'boring tracks'.   My suggestion is to improvise over actual recorded songs that are played through your hi-fi/computer system or whatever.  The songs I have in mind are simple country songs - songs without complicated arrangements.  Garth Brooks, don't scoff, has released any amount of suitable songs.  I have spent many an evening trying to improvise, and hitting the mark sometimes,  over a song of his called The Dance.  That song is in the key of G and offers endless possibilities to work on what you want to play.

blobb

Get a Trio+

Train it with a random chord progression.

Suffer the beat and bass line it comes up with, but try to match up a nice chord progression on the looper to go with it.

Then you can play over the top of it as much as you like. Get it right great sounds good. get it wrong who cares?

The more you do this the better your ears get at playing along with randomness. What I do now is  use a capo. I train it with capo in one position, then move it to another and try to play along. The change in base key makes you play according to the sound and feel rather than saying to yourself "this progression will work with this scale" etc... Sometimes I will train it and switch to a second guitar in a different tuning. 

Basically, set up a constant interesting background and add variables to create colour and texture.

The other part of ear training is to listen. Absorb as much of the music you love in the way that you love it as possible. Then, when your subconscious is trying to give you options when you are jamming they fall easier to hand. Your only one fret away from where you should have been anyway so get fluid and incorporate mistakes into the movement, slide around rather than being static.

Record everything you do. Listen back and be honest with yourself, some ideas are rubbish, others are worth investigating further. They both have equal value as training tools. After a while you start to find the same tricks repeating, so find a quick way of moving from one location to another, count the moves and break up into patterns (1,2,3 & 1,2 on the up, 3,2,1 & 2,1 on the down) .

Trio only does 3/4 or 4/4. You can set a loop up based on 5x4bars (20beats before it loops) then play 5beat patterns over it. This was how Egg did it, pattern freaks - each of them playing different time sigs until eventually the pattern resolved itself (even if the drummer did have to put the occasional one beat phrase in to make the numbers work). 

Honestly, Trio is the best training aid I've used, if you put it to work.

hollywoodrox

elsmandino said:

Thanks guys - I am slightly confused, however.

Whilst those tips are really useful for helping my improvising to sound more musical, am I not still basing it on scales?

What I really want to be able to do is kind of sing a melody (in my head) over a backing track and then play that melody on the guitar.

Is there any way (other than ear training) to practice that or is it simply the case that it will eventually happen with lots of playing?

The reason I ask - I started out, originally, researching how to make my improvising more melodic.

Whilst there was a lot of advice about modes, phrasing, accidentals (though never came across the pitch axis theory, which sounds really great), a lot of guitarists seem to suggest that playing what you want, rather than what scales dictate, was the key.

Hope that makes sense.

I thought a super fun way to practice is by playing vocal lines from songs ,it’s fun, relatively easy and addictive 

Rocker

As I understand music, all of it is based on scales.  Of one type or another.  Otherwise it is random noise.  When you 'hear' a tune in your head and try to play it, your decisions amount to questions like 'is the next note lower or higher than the one I just played?'  And you use your judgement to find that note.  In doing so, you are playing notes from some scale.

If what I know is wrong 'works' then it can't be all that far wrong.  It served me well for around fifty years.  And counting.

Blueingreen

For me it's a false dichotomy.  One way of learning to improvise by ear is by using scales.  Noodling with the appropriate mode of the melodic minor scale against a dominant 7 chord in a 2 5 1 will teach you how altered 5ths and 9ths sound in that context.  Once you are familiar with these sounds it will be easier to use them when "improvising by ear".  It's not the only way of doing it, but it works.

Barquentine

hollywoodrox said:

elsmandino said:

Thanks guys - I am slightly confused, however.

Whilst those tips are really useful for helping my improvising to sound more musical, am I not still basing it on scales?

What I really want to be able to do is kind of sing a melody (in my head) over a backing track and then play that melody on the guitar.

Is there any way (other than ear training) to practice that or is it simply the case that it will eventually happen with lots of playing?

The reason I ask - I started out, originally, researching how to make my improvising more melodic.

Whilst there was a lot of advice about modes, phrasing, accidentals (though never came across the pitch axis theory, which sounds really great), a lot of guitarists seem to suggest that playing what you want, rather than what scales dictate, was the key.

Hope that makes sense.

I thought a super fun way to practice is by playing vocal lines from songs ,it’s fun, relatively easy and addictive 

When I was first trying to teach myself blues I was lost trying to work out what my guitar heroes were doing. Then I started listening to the vocals and that's when things started to fall into place. 

sev112

DrJazzTap said:

Three things that really helped me

2) Scat singing, really develops your ear. Granted you might feel like a bit of a knobhead, and its not something i do outside the house.

^ this
i do it in two ways
first sing a riff then try to replicate it in the next phrase

then sing and play at the same time

just doing those over a scale or pentatonic really makes quick steps forward

Danny1969

I think one of the things that hold back guitarist more than other muso's is a lot of guitarist learn to solo by playing shapes rather than bothering to learn where all the notes are, what intervals make which scales and how to apply that to solo's.

To be able to play instantly something you hear in your head isn't hard if you follow these basic rules. 

Learn where every note is on the fretboard. 

Learn how to make the major and minor scales using the basic formulas of Tone, Tone, Semi etc or  Tone, Semi etc 

That alone is enough to keep you in key when solo'ing and will also allow you to transpose keys easily. 

Then if you want to instantly play what you hear in your head you need to be able to recognise the intervals between notes. If you can recognise the move from one note to another as an interval you can apply it straight onto notes as you solo. When teaching I turn my back on the student and start on a given root note, then the student has to name the interval I've moved to such as a minor 3rd or 5th etc. In this way they quickly learn how these intervals sound and because they know all the notes on the fretboard they can easily start to play what they hear in their head directly on the fretboard. 
I've got a 13 year old student doing this very well at the moment but he had to learn the fretboard first and the formula for building scales first. Once that was done moving forward is easy. 

Sometimes I think certain things like tab and YT videos, being told to play pentatonic shapes and CAGED etc actually makes something that's actually very simple more complicated then it really is. I'm really glad I learnt to play in an age where there was none of that. 

viz

Danny1969 said:

I think one of the things that hold back guitarist more than other muso's is a lot of guitarist learn to solo by playing shapes rather than bothering to learn where all the notes are, what intervals make which scales and how to apply that to solo's.

To be able to play instantly something you hear in your head isn't hard if you follow these basic rules. 

Learn where every note is on the fretboard. 

Learn how to make the major and minor scales using the basic formulas of Tone, Tone, Semi etc or  Tone, Semi etc 

That alone is enough to keep you in key when solo'ing and will also allow you to transpose keys easily. 

Then if you want to instantly play what you hear in your head you need to be able to recognise the intervals between notes. If you can recognise the move from one note to another as an interval you can apply it straight onto notes as you solo. When teaching I turn my back on the student and start on a given root note, then the student has to name the interval I've moved to such as a minor 3rd or 5th etc. In this way they quickly learn how these intervals sound and because they know all the notes on the fretboard they can easily start to play what they hear in their head directly on the fretboard. 
I've got a 13 year old student doing this very well at the moment but he had to learn the fretboard first and the formula for building scales first. Once that was done moving forward is easy. 

Sometimes I think certain things like tab and YT videos, being told to play pentatonic shapes and CAGED etc actually makes something that's actually very simple more complicated then it really is. I'm really glad I learnt to play in an age where there was none of that. 

Sooooo true

mgaw

/\  great suggestion    one thing that can get overlooked in all this chat.....play from the heart and make those notes mean something...thats way more important in my mind 

brooom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB1UZhiZMYw

GuyBoden

brooom said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB1UZhiZMYw

Yes, great stuff, an excellent example of learning how to improvise without using patterns and licks.

tanihhiavlt

Hands up who learned the alphabet (especially the order) before learning to speak? I didn't - I still don't know what a split infinitive is either. It has somehow, not crippled my eloquence or ability to communi-cake (nor your ability to understand).

I can probably go a whole day without using the letters Q and Z - so maybe all letters aren't created equal? (Professional Quiz contestants and Quiz Masters YMMV)

If I can go whole days without using letters, can I go a whole song without using certain notes? I think so - pedagogical music books (like all manuals) provide equal coverage on all topics - but it can be misleading. Some notes are just grace-notes. 

I don't think you need to know where every note is on the fretboard, to quote my youngest son, when he was six as we jokingly tested his near perfect pitch "it's the note between G and A, I haven't learnt that one yet.". It's good to know them, but a lot of our heroes hung out on a handful frets... and get this - if you know one double octave scale (any of the CAGED patterns) - you've got as many notes as Miles Davis has on a trumpet... he never struggled for more notes. 

Improvisation is about providing a narrative that leads people through a progression possibly pointing out great interactions or motifs - seems to me that has more to do with idioms, licks, patterns, and all the shit that sticks in your amygdala. Which is great news for you and the people following your solo too (unless they're what Theodore W. Adornos called 'jealous listeners' - they're not here to be entertained) . I think if you want to improvise you'll need to find and learn a lot of stuff you like listening to.

100% of mammals experience stress and excitement in the same way - to some degree the frontal cortex is shut down - which is where "yer book learnin' lives boy!". Experience may reduce the extent this happens but if you haven't nailed it into "muscle memory" it will not help you at this point. Let's call it "The crunch".

Improvisation is chunked information (this bit) and (this bit) but in the style of (that bit) - there is not time to deconstruct page 71 of Reg Smith Brindles book or Slonimsky's waddyamacallit when the singer or trumpet player nods at you to take a solo - early solos were simply variations on the main melody - and this is still a good place to start creating original lines from.

I think good improvisation is identified by it's sensitivity to the music, melody and harmony, rhythm, personalities of the different parts and you get that by exploring the song. Jazz standards are templates people can go and woodshed. If you want to hear improvisation listen to Tommy Flanagan's piano solo on Giant Steps - that is someone thinking on their feet! (Coltrane practised it for 3 months and on the day shoved the music under the bands nose in the recording studio - apparently)

What we think of Music Theory are generalisations and systems taken from their habitat/context, given a narrative (often in the absence of rhythm). They're observations, sometimes low-res'd by acquisitive zeal and the need to anonymize the source of  inspiration. The difference is comparable to being "good boyfriend material" or a pick-up artist. 

If good artists steal - you can bet your ass their stealing lick and patterns - timing makes a big difference.