I'm not a big fan of change. Mostly, it bugs me when I've learned how to use some tool – a web site, a piece of software – or I've woven something into my schedule, like what time some kid's school day starts – and then it changes: the web site gets bought, the software gets an "upgrade," the school tries something different.
Pretty weak, I know, for someone who gives as much lip service as I do
to things like creativity and improvisation, both of which require a significant dose of flexibility and resourcefulness. But I like flexing those skills within a stable framework. Or maybe, if I'm more honest, I like to be flexible when I feel like, not when I have no choice.
People who teach creative skills like to assure reluctant students there's no lasting damage if it all goes south: "No one kicks the bucket if you blow this performance." I'm sure I'm guilty of
dishing out that cavalier advice as well. But it still sucks to crash and burn, especially in front of other people, as you attempt to do something that actually matters to you.
One of the reasons roots music appealed to me so much as a kid is that my first practicing and performing experiences involved classical music. If you had to dress up to get onstage, and the notes were all written out ahead of time, there was clearly a right and a wrong way to do it. And since only a
robot could do it all perfectly, once the music started, the only place I could go was down.
But with other kinds of music, not only could you wear what you liked, as long as you could keep the chord progression straight and not drop any beats, there was so much more lattitude as far as what constituted "playing it right." Once I started playing music that involved coming up with your own parts, and improvising when necessary, I bid farewell to the classical tradition
and hardly looked back.
Over many years of teaching, however, I have come to appreciate that, for a lot of people, improvisation is the most intimidating aspect of playing American roots music. I get it – I have experienced my share of intimidation along the way as well (hello, bluegrass tunes taken at 30 million beats per minute).
In an effort to render improvisation less scary and more accessible, I have spent a lot of time trying to clarify what the guard
rails are and how they work. Instead of just handing students a scale and a chord progression, I try and help them work backwards from the result – say, a complete 12-bar solo – to something more modular and useable, like a vocabulary of licks that work specifically over the I, IV or V chord.
The nice thing about this approach is that it works for anything: single note soloing over jazz chord changes, fingerstyle breaks on traditional blues tune, or even taking a
slide solo in open tuning. In today's Youtube lesson, I go over the first few steps in this process for anyone wanting to get started with improvising with slide over an alternating-thumb groove in open D tuning:
Fingerstyle Slide: Start Improvising!
My next workshop, Slide Improvisation, is a deeper dive
into this topic. This two-hour live stream will take place next Saturday, May 18th. You can get all the details, watch a short trailer about the workshop, and sign up, at the link below. And as ever, you don't have to attend live to take part – everyone who signs up gets access to a complete on-demand replay of the entire class, plus the downloadable PDF, for an entire year after the class takes place.
Slide Improvisation Workshop
More soon,
David