HOW TO IMPROVISE
A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

By Randy Torno.

As a teacher of guitar, mandolin and banjo, I am often asked what the end goal is....after all this practicing and learning, what am I aiming at? How will I know when I get there? When can I really feel that I can play this thing?

The instrument we choose to play dictates the answers to those questions.
If I played an orchestral instrument, like a trombone or cello, then my aim would be the mechanical mastery of the instrument and strong sight reading ability.
The Instruments I choose to play, however are considered folky, and the styles of music less structured than an orchestral score. In fact, unlike orchestral players, we are expected to memorize an entire repertoire and play it off the top of our head. Whether you play Blues, Bluegrass, Folk, Gypsy Jazz etc... the common element to all these styles of music is IMPROVISING. So it seems to me that on guitar, mandolin or banjo, the ability to improvise should be a final target.

 Improvising encompasses biomechanical ability, musical theory, rhythm, ear training and lots more. It uses all your musical abilities to produce something that is new, fresh or different while staying within the boundaries of the musical style that you are in. In other words, when it’s your turn to take a solo you don’t play note-for-note what was recorded in 1952, but, staying within a certain musical style, you create something your own, something improvised.

Another aspect to this is getting yourself out of musical trouble.....being able to play a solo when you really don’t know the material, or haven’t worked out something beforehand. Since I often play in different types of jams I am constantly confronted with songs that I don’t know, or I may have heard but have never played. The ability to improvise allows me to stay with the song and hopefully create something that is stylistically correct and musically meaningful.

So what is involved in improvising and how can you learn to do it?
There are two main structural elements to any song... the musical part and the rhythmic part.
The musical side of it involves melody, harmony, pitch, key etc.
The rhythmic part determines the tempo, sets the rhythmic style (a hornpipe, a waltz, etc) and structure of the piece

The first step is to know the melody of the tune, or at least a close approximation of it..... close enough to know how many bars of what chord makes up the song.
This is where the theory and ear training comes in. Just as you have to establish conditioned mechanical reflexes in your fingers to play, you have to train your ear to hear the key and chord structure to songs....and the only way to do that is by repeated listening to the music in the style you are playing. 

Knowing the chord structure means that, more or less, anything you play within the scale that makes up that chord will fit. Here’s where the theory part comes in. Some notes will fit better than others, but that’s what separates bad music from good. One way of looking at is it is that you are creating a new melody that fits over the rhythm and chord structure of the song you are playing. Ideally you should be able to hum this new melody to yourself while it is being played, but sometimes your fingers find new combinations that are as surprising to you as to those listening. This is all part of the conditioned reflexes.

Now that you know the notes, you have to be able to find them almost automatically on the instrument’s neck and this is where the biomechanical training comes in. If you repeat ANYTHING correctly often enough your fingers will learn how to do it... the trick is in knowing how often “often enough” is..(this is different for every person). No matter how common or obscure the scale, if you play it enough times you WILL learn it. Having the mechanical ability to actually play the notes as fast as required is a function of how many times you have repeated them correctly. The metronome is your best friend for increasing speed and staying on beat.

The next step is the rhythmic part..... Your ear training must include instant recognition of rhythmic patterns and the tempo of the piece. Not only do you have to find the notes instantly but also you have to play them within the tempo and style of the music being played. Each style has it’s own unique rhythmic patterns and a solo taken in the style of gypsy jazz, for instance, would be out of place in a Bluegrass jam.  So listening to the rhythms, picking up the tempo, recognizing the patterns are all part of improvising. Since you are often playing with other people you can’t alter the tempo or rhythmic style in your solo or you would be out of time to the rest of the crowd, but you CAN change the notes you are playing, and that’s what makes for an interesting solo.

When I analyze my own improvising, I realize that I usually make two choices that determine the overall style of my solo. What note am I starting on....and what direction am I gong to go. The starting note depends on the melody and style of music you are playing but you usually can’t go wrong starting on the tonic or root note of the chord (C chord – start on C note).  Since each note can be found in several places on the fretboard it gives us a chance to alter the solo depending on exactly where we start. “Last time I played this solo in open position so this time I will try it up the neck somewhere”. Once you have your starting note you only need to choose whether you go up or down the scale from there and the rest of the solo will be created according to the principals I have mentioned.

So what makes the difference between a good improvised solo and a bad one? It’s the sum total of everything written here. ...knowledge of music theory, knowledge of your instrument, knowledge of the style of music you are playing and the basic biomechanical ability to play the instrument. Top all of that off with a LOT of concentrated listening, with instrument in hand, and you can begin to approach improvising in an orderly way. By studying improvised solos performed by the founding masters of a particular style, we can begin to understand the thinking behind the musical structure and can utilize these techniques in our own solos. Also, by being able to reproduce a recorded solo you always have a safety blanket to fall back on, if your improvised solo is about to crash and burn or you just aren’t feeling inspired.

Does this sound complicated? Although everyone can write there are very few WRITERS out there (the difference being what they have to SAY, and how skillfully they say it).... so too with music. It’s not easy but everyone can learn to improvise using these principals . Improvising truly is the culmination of musical experience on a particular instrument and should be your ultimate goal.

Randy Torno
www.musiclessonsource.com