What to do to start improving in improvising?

[Sayonil Mitra]

I feel like many players struggle with improvising. I am no virtuoso myself. But I believe I am better at improvising than I was a year ago. To do that, I had taken a tactical way and so far, it is working fine for me at least. So I thought I should share this in case anyone else finds this useful. So lets start from the beginning.
COMFORT ZONE:-
Every player has a “comfort” zone for improvising. Since improvisations are generally done with backing tracks having a combination of chords, “comfort” zone generally means a certain kind of backing tracks. Some players’ comfort zone are jazz backing tracks. For some its a single chord. For some its a blues style backing track. First you have to find YOUR comfort zone.
HOW TO FIND YOUR COMFORT ZONE?
At first, play with different genres of backing tracks (e.g. Rock, Blues, Jazz etc). When you play spontaneously, without thinking, that’s your comfort zone. It does not matter if you play a single note or a complex melody, as long as you are not thinking, that’s your comfort zone. You just know that whatever you are playing works for that progression in your comfort zone. That’s how feel the comfort.
THEN WHAT?
After you find your comfort zone, just keep playing with those backing tracks.Again and again and again. First you will play maybe simple 2-3 note melodies. As you keep playing, your brain starts to figure out more possibilities of combining different notes to make different melodies. Then one day you will start playing 5 note melodies. Then you will start playing more complex melodies. Then you will get bored with your comfort zone and will try to expand it. You will explore new genres of music to improvise with and so on.
So, its a long process. Reaching a point is not the target. Playing again and again to improve is the target.

 

[Isaac Moss]

Great advice man, I love what you said at the end about improving! One thing I do is I come up with a little lick and keep working on it till I’m happy with it and find different ways to try and play it. It’s kind of like what you said about coming up with more and more complex melodies and stuff over time. It’s like you start out smaller then are able to play better solos and licks.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

If you go back a few pages I recently posted my first year improv video.. it also contains a playlist of all my improvs of that year.
Basically if you watch them.. you’ll see how slow I started. Using octaves Mainly. To simple acoustic melodies. And eventually started slipping in the triplet runs. I have found my “comfort zone” and I’m trying to expand on that now (arpeggios and small sweeps soon).
The progress at first seems slow. Then when you watch your videos again you realize theres small licks in there you didnt think you could ever do. Good example of this is my synyster is secret video. Theres a few runs in it that blew me away. Jak is pretty good at finding those in your videos too. Lol those are you confidence boosters.
Who cares if the improv is bad.. you’ll find stuff I there you like. And you’ll expand on those ideas in the next… goes from there. The progession is real.

 

[idssdi]

Improvising is effectively writing a solo on the spot. This basically means that it’s essential to be able to play what you hear in your head on the spot whether it’s your comfort zone or not(improvising is easier though). Usually when I don’t hear anything in my head over a backingtrack I just stop playing or don’t solo at all. The easiest way to do this is by paying down attention to ear training.
Please make sure you don’t rely on patterns because that tends to sound really boring and not that musical.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

I don’t think you get what im saying by my comfort zone. But that I’m saying I have strong sides and flaws and I normally find myself taking the same paths to get to the spots I want to. Which is essentially my comfort zone.
What you hear in your head is normally a rather simple melody and usually you take a path you are comfortable taking to get there. You can easily do that and still play what’s in your head. Usually what’s in your head you’ve done to some degree before anyways.
Everyone starts somewhere. I definitely didnt sit down and think about what I want to play. I literally just play and let the song lead me to where I want to go. Dont over complicate it too much or else it sounds too intimidating to attempt. Just play.

 

[idssdi]

I guess we approach improvising differently then

 

[Isaac Moss]

Hey Ids I haven’t really approached improvising that way before and that sounds like it might be a really good way to do it. Not only are you working on ear training you’re also practicing being creative in new ways. I think I wanna try that actually, so normally do you just wait till you hear something and then keep going with it?

 

[idssdi]

Not nescecarily keep going with it but hear something in my head and play that and then come up with new ideas as I go.

 

[Isaac Moss]

Oh okay thanks man I’m definitely gonna try this!