Advice for making my improvisation sound more melodic

What's Hot
Hi there.

I am struggling a bit to try and get my improvisation skills up to scratch.

I have made a concious effort to learn the major scale, minor scale, blues scale, minor pentatonic, major arpeggio and minor arpeggio for each of the five CAGED shapes and can connect them up, with little problem, over the fretboard.

However, when it comes to improvising, I sort of freeze up and cannot really play anything worth while.

I have found a really slow ballard backing-track to practice with (Am, G, F, Em) but I still sound like I am noodling over the top and not really complementing the backing.

Any tips to try and fix this would be much appreciated.

Thanks
0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom

Comments

  • sev112sev112 Frets: 2739
    A really good suggestion I read (from here ?) was to record yourself doing that every day for 5 minutes, but you have to do it every day. Then after a month or so, start listening back to the early days, and compare them to what you would then be playing.

    you don’t have to deliberately change, but when one (and many are) in your current situation we always think we don’t notice how over time other things that we have picked up or heard, or played in something else, or just some weird imaginative things that kick in on Wednesday nights, etc start appearing in your play.

    good luck,  many people are in your same situation :)

    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • BradBrad Frets: 658
    Play what you sing
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 7reaction image Wisdom
  • vizviz Frets: 10646
    Brad said:
    Play what you sing
    Got there before me
    Roland said: Scales are primarily a tool for categorising knowledge, not a rule for what can or cannot be played.
    Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • RolandRoland Frets: 8590
    viz said:
    Brad said:
    Play what you sing
    Got there before me
    Play the melody, if there is one. If not then find a chord sequence which you know a melody to. Am G F Em has a strong descending bass line, and you could borrow some of the melody from Feeling Good by Nina Simone, which has been covered by many people including Muse.

    Step 2. Focus on how you can play the melody: How you enter a note - slides, bends, hammers. How you leave the note. What you do while you are holding the note - vibrato, squeeze, early mute to cut the note short. This is more important than it seems. I've seen Clapton play a whole verse varying how he plays one note.

    Step 3. Add incidental notes - for example, play a quick G before the A note, or play a trill on B C B before the A.

    Step 4. Add fills between lines of the melody, or as you change chord. These can be a few notes from a scale, or arpeggio, which take you from one chord to another. For example, to get from Em back the Am you could run up the Am scale, or you could go up the Em arpeggio and down the Am

    Step 5. invent a modified melody

    Tree recycler, and guitarist with  https://www.undercoversband.com/.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 3reaction image Wisdom
  • HAL9000HAL9000 Frets: 9551
    Chord tones - you’re welcome.
    I play guitar because I enjoy it rather than because I’m any good at it
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 8reaction image Wisdom
  • BradBrad Frets: 658
    edited October 2021
    HAL9000 said:
    Chord tones - you’re welcome.
    +1

    @elsmandino ;Further to my initial point, this is really important. Actually learning information and where it is on the fretboard will help inform and develop your ear, improving your melodic playing. 

    Even just knowing where the 3rd of each chord lives will help give you somewhere to aim for, a direction of travel melodically speaking that will help connect chords. 

    You have to take it slowly and internalise the sound in your ear though. Keep things simple, playing what you sing forces that. If you start “noodling”, check yourself and start again. Over time, you’ll start hearing these (or any) notes before you play them and you’ll have better control over how you want to use them. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • vizviz Frets: 10646
    edited October 2021
    Btw, the first 4 notes of the ascending Am scale go very nicely with the descending chords. If the 4th chord were E not Em, then the next 4 notes would too (except the last one which must be 1 fret up, not 2)
    Roland said: Scales are primarily a tool for categorising knowledge, not a rule for what can or cannot be played.
    Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • kelpbedskelpbeds Frets: 181
    Playing 'out of the chords' will really help you as it will mean that you are targetting chord tones more efficiently. I explain how to do this in the vid 
    Check out my Blues lessons channel at:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBTSHf5NqVQDz0LzW2PC1Lw
    1reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 1reaction image Wisdom
  • YorkieYorkie Frets: 1451
    What a superb thread this is becoming. Lots of stuff to learn from. 
    Thanks @elsmandino for asking.
    Adopted northerner with Asperger syndrome. I sometimes struggle with empathy and sarcasm – please bear with me.   
    My trading feedback: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/210335/yorkie

    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • BeexterBeexter Frets: 597
    Isn't this what the Tom Quayle Solo app was designed to help with? Might be worth looking at some of their YouTube content to see if it may help?
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • BarneyBarney Frets: 614
    edited October 2021
    The scales .arps ect are just the raw materials ....just try and play what's in your head ...iff it's not there don't play it  ...do things slow and just use a few notes at a time and see how many ideas you can get altering phrasing...timing ect ...then just build on that 

    The nature of scales and practising them is from low to high then back down ...that's not really music unless mixed up a bit 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 1reaction image Wisdom
  • bbill335bbill335 Frets: 1368
    edited October 2021
    listen critically to different genres, different players, different instruments. music ain't all guitars.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 3reaction image Wisdom
  • Play arpegios and add passing notes
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • GreatapeGreatape Frets: 3491
    'Chord tones' is imho fundamental. 

    Learn all your three-note triad inversions on strings 1,2and 3 and 2,3, 4. Forget scales for now. Play them in scale order - this is the most musical way of learning keys. Later, you start to voice lead through them along the string set e.g. C, Am, F, Dm,  B dim, G,Em, C,etc. Arpeggiate and sing it. Within those chord shapes are all sorts of useful intervals. 

    Chord tones are connected with diatonic scale tones or chromatic passing tones. 

    Then you learn that for say C7, you can use E dim, which is the triad at the top of the chord. Then you can just keep stacking thirds to see how the triads in the key relate to the stated chord. You find that some relate strongly, others less so. 

    Don't forget the melody.

    Motivic development: create a motif and DO NOT ABANDON IT. Develop it rhythmically, melodically. Etc. This is probably the most important bit. 

    Scale practice.... generally not helpful for making music. I mean yes, you've got to do it at some point but eventually it's counter-productive. 

    And on it goes. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 1reaction image Wisdom
  • NerineNerine Frets: 1971
    I will vouch for the Tom Quayle app. It is excellent. It seems a bit odd to begin with and you’re not really sure what it is actually accomplishing, but once you understand what it’s doing, it’s quite genius. 

    I found myself playing lines that I wouldn’t have dreamt of simply down to the heavily focussed interval training. 

    He has some great content about it on his YT channel. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • kelpbedskelpbeds Frets: 181
    edited December 2021
    Learn all these triads as this will really help you become more melodic. I've set all these out using the CAGED system so they are all built around those CAGED shapes and are therefore easy to remember.

    https://ibb.co/JvcspTf
    Check out my Blues lessons channel at:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBTSHf5NqVQDz0LzW2PC1Lw
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
Sign In or Register to comment.