Taking The Guesswork Out Of Improvisation
Published: Mon, 10/25/21
It's not the greatest idea to tutor your own kids, and they seem to have pretty happening math teachers this year, so I don't get called into the room as much in years past. But I remember that sinking feeling of "ok, I'm basically guessing right now." It's the same reason I oozed out of doing any kind of real job within my first couple of years in New York – any time I was in an office, proofreading or word processing or copy editing, I felt like I was guessing, too.
When it comes to music, improvisation can be one of the vaguest aspects of learning to play. It's tricky enough taking a single-note solo with the accompaniment of other musicians; once you start improvising as a solo fingerstyle guitarist, the stakes seem to escalate exponentially. Most people teaching improvisation assume you play electric blues, or jazz guitar, so to make any kind of headway as a self-accompanied soloist, you have to find a way to adapt those ideas to open-position acoustic guitar playing, and then factor in the self-accompaniment part on your own.
That's a lot of translation. So if you play fingerstyle blues, improvising may feel just as remote as algebra – like you're just guessing. But you can learn a tangible, repeatable approach to improvising fingerstyle blues solos, and this past weekend's live stream was a step-by-step lesson on how to start improvising on the eight bar blues "Nobody's Fault But Mine." If you missed it, you can catch the replay on Youtube, along with last week's opening lesson on Groove. The accompanying tab booklet is still available for download, too. It's all free, and you can find everything at the links below:
Play Better Fingerstyle Blues, Part II: Improvisation
Play Better Fingerstyle Blues, Part I: Groove
Download The Tab
More soon,
David
P.S. Tomorrow, I'll present Play Better Fingerstyle Blues, Part III: Arrange, on how to take the melody of the tune and a simple solo and develop them into a complete, performance-ready song arrangement.