Improvisation - How To Make It Sound Like Music

As a professional guitar teacher I teach players of all skill levels how to improvise. If you have the goal of becoming an improviser, it is important to start out by doing so even when you are at a beginning stage of your guitar playing. I find that a lot of students who are new to improvising will make basically the same mistakes, when first starting out. This article dives into some things that are easy to implement and guaranteed to make your improvisation sound more like music.

Guideline number one: Play less notes.

It is very common for beginning guitar players to play a lot of notes in the beginning stages of they improvising. I am not and advocate of the “less is more” ideology that is often preached on the internet, but if you can’t make three notes sound great, playing ten notes will not make it sound any better. So we wanna control what we play and when we can do that, we can play as many notes and as fast as we want and we will be able to make it sound great. A great way to achieve this is simple by reducing the number of notes you play. I personally like shredding, but I also enjoy a good melody and in my opinion, the best shredders is the ones that are able to incorporates the good melody into their shredding. You need to play less notes in order to gain control of what you are playing and to give your mind the time it needs to actually think about what you are playing. Most beginners will have to reduce the number of notes by as much as 50-80 percent in order to get their improvisation under control and make them sound like music.

Guideline number two: Hitting target notes.

Hitting target notes is one of the things that makes great guitarists stand out. In order for you to hit the target notes your have to have a mental surplus so to speak. Not only do you have to think about what to play, but you also have to keep track on what chords are playing in the background. In order for you to get this under control, it can be a great help to choose a very small area of the fretboard to improvise on. Very often I see players simple trying to own the whole fretboard, when they are not ready for it. This always ends up in kaos, and the guitarist ends up feeling bad about the improvisation. To see how this is done, watch the following video:

Guideline number two: Learn your fretboard well.

Knowing your fretboard well is absolutely key if you wanna become good at improvising. It is also an important factor in hitting target notes as discussed above. Think of this question; what other instruments do people play, without knowing what notes that are playing? The answer is zero. Guitar is the only exception. I will not start a discussion on why this is the case, but it is absolutely certain that if all other instrumentalists needs to know the notes they are playing on their instruments, guitarists needs to do the exact same thing. For a quick way of of knowing how to navigate the fretboard and find all the notes, watch the video below:

Implementing the advise giving in this article will make instantly make your guitar playing sound more musically. The best thing about it is, that is all pretty easy to implement.

About the author:

As the founder of the Guitar Academy of Vejle Janus Buch teaches students of all levels ang all ages as his profession. No matter what you current skill level are you can and will become the guitar player you have always dreamed of becoming, if you choose the best Guitar Lessons for beginners in Vejle.