After about 1 year of playing guitar...

Should I be able to improvise music pretty well by now? It seems like I can pretty much only improvise basic melodies that sound ok I guess, but nothing like a hardcore jam-out. I know 1 year isn't very long to get a real good feel for the guitar, but it still feels like it's harder than it should be to me...

 

hey man, if you're looking to truly develope a good improvising style, and just get good at groovin around and really connecting with the jam, i suggest listening to live allman brothers! being suchh GD fan, i always used to play along to grateful dead, but for the last long while, i've been practicing to one of the Allman's Instant Live cd's, and i notice how much easier i really connect and jam for, goodness, just jam, time isn't really a factor... i dont know how much you try to stay in scales and such... i know the major scale, and that's about it... but i learned that if you try to focus the sclaes too much, your improvising is barrier WAY too much... i've been playing for about a year too now, i mean truly just picking up that guitar and jammin around - as funky and out of keys and crappy it sounded, my friends didn't mind it much, even over the GD or allman's playing... over time - and you'll REALLLLY see how much you GROW in skill - you'll find yourself just jumping straight into proper key, and realllly getting better at just jamming in harmony with whatever music is playing, truly man! good luck, and much love. peace ~Ethan

 

it'll take time to improvise really well on any instrument i think, unless you are really that talented, or have somehow crammed all the knowledge of chords, various scales etc...it'll take time..but you'll get there one day!

 

improvising is something you can never really master. you can always do it better, and its never a goal that you can reach and forget about. there are factors to consider, such as:

1) staying in key, unless you're intentionally playing something to sound out of place, for that jazz-effect, or the whole randy rhoads method of playing a riff while sliding your hand up the guitar to move in chromatics

2) tasteful note placement. this means playing the right notes at the right time, in the right order. for me, this is all about feeling the music and knowing your instrument, but i'm sure there's an advanced music theory explaination for which notes sound good at any particular nanosecond in music

3) rhythm. playing accents on the 2nd and 4th beat of a measure for 40 measures gets boring. you have to learn to throw in rhythm changes at the spur of the moment to keep it interesting and change the flavor

4) voicing yourself. playing a scale or a riff has its place, but the most priceless skill in music is to have such a feel for your instrument that you can feel something and play it, or play something and really feel it. you have to be able to express a variety of sounds and feelings. the difference between a talented musician and a well-practiced one, is that the talented one plays like they're reciting poetry, while the well-practiced one plays like they're reading off a document about the stock market. color/flavor/charisma/passion is everything.

also, after a year of playing, don't expect to be steve vai. just have fun with the instrument, play what you feel, and keep an ear out for how you can improve. also, keep in mind where you're heading, where you want to end up, and whether or not they match up.

 

some very good advice there.....all i can say is don't put yerself on a time-deadline thing, just enjoy yer playing.....the improv skill will come

 

Do you know your pentatonic scales? That combined with easy chord combos can allow for some fine jamming. One simple pentatonic is the following fingering:


1---4----- (light string)
1---4-----
1--3------
1--3------
1--3------
1----4---- (heavy string)

The fret you base your first finger on is determined by the primary chord your partner is playing, but if youre solo, you can base it on any fret, just to practice with it. You can probably find more complex instructions on the pentatonic scale (and more permutations of it) by doing a google. If you improvise the order of these notes with someone who is playing a chord progression, it sounds quite nice, and is fun and easy to do.

If you already know this stuff, though, ignore me

 

to improvise well you should learn modes and which chords they work with

heres a start:

lydian mode and pentatonic scales work with major chords
dorian/aeolian/phrygian modes and blues scales work with minor chords
mixolydian mode and whole tone scales work with dominant chords

 

I've been playing for 3 years and I still suck. I played every day and I still do.

 

i've been playing for almost two years, my advice is learn other peoples' stuff, scales, and random licks. this will help you improve your speed and let you steal little bits from other peoples' songs to make you sound better.

i'd say i was relatively good at improvising from following that..

although, don't get too tied up with improvising though because what happened with me was i improvised so much that it just made I think I was shit at playing because I'd heard myself improvise too much..

 

The best thing you could do is not worry.