Improvisation Tips

[Eoghan Walsh]

Anyone have any tips on learning to improvise over chords?

 

[Dustin Stevens]

Start by learning the major and minor scales and have a basic grasp of the different key would be a good start. You have to memerize the scale positions for each key down the whole neck. Once you do that then learn some licks and playtime in context of a band or a backing track.

 

[William B.]

Could arpeggiate the chords with nuance and embellishments, they have the notes.
Phrasing and motifs or like trying to sing a song but with guitar some stuff I've been trying to keep in mind as well

 

[Lindsey]

Once you have the chord patterns down and can play some licks you should try the caged system. The videos here helped me a lot. It makes it a bit more interesting even if you only play basic stuff. Combine it with phrasing and you'll get very far.

 

[Chris Johnston]

Hey Eoghan,

There are so many entry points into soloing over changes. However one that helped me the most was really delving into understanding how Triads are layed out on the Neck and how they relate to one another.

I'm planning on making a short video discussing Major & Minor Triads soon so I'll send it your way once it's up

The easiest way to conceptualize the Triadic approach is that your Triads are highlighting (usually) the Chord tones of whichever chord you're soloing over - these will be the most stable notes to choose to support the chord.

If you understand that a Major Triad comes from the wider Major Scale, then you eventually come to realise that you can use each the Triad as a base point and find other notes that aren't in the chord, but are in the wider Major Scale - these non chord tones can be referred to as colour tones (as adding them to the chord will give it extra colour etc)

The idea is that you work with these small Triad shapes and expand on them. I tend to find I get more melodic results from using them as I'm not tied into a huge scale shape

Hope this helps and I'll try and get a video up soon