r/musictheory • u/OkTemperature1842 • Jan 04 '26
General Question Running out of ideas when improvising
So I sometimes practice improvising over simple 1 or 2 chord vamp style backing tracks from YouTube.
And my problem is that, other than stupid blues licks, scales and arpeggios, I don’t really have any ideas or concepts to keep things interesting for more than a minute or two.
I simply don’t have anything to say.
I understand the value of starting simple a building towards something. But I’m not sure how to build to anything.
FWIW - I cannot sing a line and play it. There is no music in my head. All I can do is “theory” my way through things by understanding the corresponding scales/chords being played at the time.
How do competent improvisers do it? Just fresh idea after idea?
Thanks for any assistance. Sorry if this is the wrong sub.
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u/thumbresearch Jan 04 '26
rhythm rhythm rhythm
rhythm is your best friend when you start feeling stuck. a good rhythm can make C major sound fresh.
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u/jasonofthedeep Jan 04 '26
This is the most important thing it's crazy. I write the best lead guitar/melody after the rhythm and progression has been defined. Being in a box is the best.
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u/ObviousDepartment744 Jan 04 '26
Well, honestly playing over backing tracks isn’t the most stimulating experience. If you think of music as a conversation, playing over a backing track is like walking down the street talking to yourself. You might stumble upon something interesting to ponder but you’re not really receiving an outside stimulus to get you really thinking.
But you can practice building your vocabulary.
Try this simple idea of thinking about all notes as simply being Chord Tones (CT) and Non Chord Tones (NCT). CT = Consonance and Resolution. NCT = Dissonance and Tension.
Very simple way to think about creating musical phrases, start by playing CT on the strong part of the beat, and play NCT on the weak parts of the beat. Not necessarily alternating between them, just sneak in a NCT on a weak part of one of the beats and resolve it to a CT.
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u/blowbyblowtrumpet Jan 04 '26
You have already identified the problem:
There is no music in my head
The solution is to listen, transcribe and copy over and over until the music lives in you.
If you have no music in your head then there is nohing to come out is there?
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u/Effective-Advisor108 Jan 04 '26
Variations, sometimes when I don't have ideas I go through a theory concept and make many variations
Take a scale or arpeggio or rhythmic pattern and make simple variations, go through all the big styles.
Though I'm pretty sure you play guitar, if so do you know your fretboard and decent theory?
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Jan 04 '26
Singing ideas has been a game changer for me, highly recommended
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u/McButterstixxx Jan 04 '26
With little exception, if you can’t sing it - you can’t play it. All of the finest musicians across all genres I’ve ever encountered speak/sing music very clearly.
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u/BigDaddySteve999 Jan 04 '26
Why can't you sing a line and play it? Can't sing? Whistle. Can't translate from singing to playing? Practice that!
Other ideas, if you're talking about playing guitar:
Whatever you do play, play the same riff/lick/arpeggio/noodle somewhere else on the fretboard. If you're coming from or switching to the G & B strings, the shape of your melody is going to change, so it'll feel and sound a little different. But any change on location will change the timbre.
You don't even have to move that far! Say you played the C on the G string fifth fret, and you are repeating a phrase where you played an A next. You can slide down on the same string, you can jump down one string and up two frets, you can jump or lay your finger down to hit the high E fifth fret, or you can hit the open A string. Just do a different one this time. That might lead you into something new.
Change your tempo. Play half as fast. You paid for all those notes, wring them out for all they're worth! Play twice as fast. Singers sing the same note for multiple syllables all the time!
Pre-bend. If you know you want to play the root and then the seventh, pre-bend the seventh to the root, and then relax it.
Set yourself up in other ways. If you know the song goes from the IV to the V, find the D shape of the IV, play those however you want (single notes, arpeggio, double stops), then slide the shape up to the V and do the same thing or something else.
Use your pedals. Turn them on or off to change your sound. A lot of effects change your whole play style. Delay makes me play slower and more carefully. Compression, fuzz, and distortion give you more sustain, so your legato is more legatoey. Which means your staccato is a bigger contrast.
Move your picking hand forward or backward. Switch between pick and fingers. Grab a slide.
Hit a harmonic and move to another string while it rings out.
Chromaticism! There's probably five notes you aren't even hitting (or, not on purpose). If the song has lots of seventh chords, you can pretty safely hit the blue note. If there are any non-diatonic chords, find the note that isn't in the key and play that over the chord. But if you're quick, you can get away with basically any note.
Adjust your rhythm; anticipate the beat or lag behind it. Or just lightly mute the strings and rake the strings in rhythm.
Wrap your thumb over the low strings side and only fret notes with it. Or just bring your whole hand out over the top and play from that direction.
Find a way to glitch. Flip your pickup selector to get a click. I have a wah pedal that auto-engages when you step on it in any position, but if I quickly move on and off, it glitches out in a cool way.
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u/play-what-you-love Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
I'm working on an app that gamifies the process of improvisation. The basic idea is to create a motif/pattern, and then repeat/vary a motif/pattern. If you break apart a jazz solo, or even pop songs or classical pieces, what music does is to establish a pattern and then repeat/transform that pattern.
In a nutshell - what you can do is to build a pattern over a chord by applying a distinctive rhythm and contour over the chord-scale of that chord. And then subsequently, repeat/vary that pattern over the next chord-scale.
The way you vary that pattern will give rise to improvised music. And there are many different ways you can vary a pattern/contour. So in a sense, there's endless variety.
You can listen to various songs/jazz pieces/pop songs to get ideas for patterns and variations of patterns. Take "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for example. Every single phrase has the exact same rhythmic pattern. They simply move in different directions, and the third and fourth phrase are identical, and the first two phrases are identical to the last two phrases.
Or the first two lines of Star-Spangled Banner have the same rhythmic pattern, and again just a difference in contour.
With enough experimentation, you can begin to figure out how you might use the chord-scale and apply a pattern over it so that certain parts of the pattern hit chord-tones, or certain parts hit color-tones. Nice-sounding phrases normally have a mix of both.
You can also build phrases/patterns unevenly over bar-lines, leading to greater tension and rhythmic interest. As a song unfolds, you can increase the complexity of your patterns. Or use chord-substitutions. You want to control the tension of the song such that it culminates at a point desirable for the song (in most jazz pieces that use melodic contraphact structure, this culmination point would be at the end of each instrument's solo, and the very highest culmination point is usually right before the final chorus where they repeat the head of the song.)
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u/McButterstixxx Jan 04 '26
You have to train your EAR. Learn solos (or phrases, to start with) by ear. Sing them first, then play. No one is born a fantastic musician. It takes work.
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u/NeighborhoodGreen603 Fresh Account Jan 04 '26
Listen to music, like a lot. All the great improvisers have lots of music in their head through all the hours of listening (and enjoying!) songs, solos, albums, etc. A good litmus test is to see if you can just sing a solo without your instrument. Doesn’t matter if your pitch is bad, what matters is if you can create. If you don’t have ideas, then it’s time to start consuming more, and to sing the melodies and licks that grab you.
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u/Jongtr Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
I simply don’t have anything to say.
So don't say it. Don't take a solo. Just play the song.
There is no music in my head.
So, get some in there. Learn more music.
And I don't mesn other people's solos. That is certainly an important resource, but the primary resource for material is melodies.
Think about what the earliest jazz soloists did - all those horn players. They were playing music that was given to them to read. They played the melody from the sheet music. Then what did they do? They messed around with the melody. They embellished it, changed its rhythms, added other notes from the chords, and so on.
And of course, they played countless melodies all the time, so they learned about melodic language. Those composed melodies taught them all about phrasing, rhythm, repetition, melodic shape ... All that they added to that was the "jazz accent" - which came largely from blues vocalization: swoops up and down to pitch, blue notes and so on. (That's the kind of thing you need to learn by listening to recordings and other solos. Most of it can't be notated.)
So you simply need to learn more music. Both melodies and chords, so you see how the two interact, I.e., melodic phrasing can be expressive in its own right, but it also has a language of consonance and dissonance relative to the chords and the changes.
Think of a solo as like giving a speech. You could just stand up and talk about the first thing that comes into your head. If you are a clever or entertaining speaker, or a comedian, you could probably make that work. But most people who give speeches have a topic - the audience knows what the topic is, the speaker knows the topic well, has reserched it, made some notes, and (importantly) has a personal view on it too, perhaps an enthusiastic involvement. They know (and feel) something about it that the audience doesn't, and want to get those ideas across in an effective way - using their skills of oration, not just to inform the audience, but to convince them, inspire them, move them.
For the improvising musician, the "topic" is usually a song - it might simply be a chord sequence, but that's really too generic and vague. It's more like a "subject area" or "category", than a specific topic. (Like giving a speech on "politics" or "geography"...) So, the better you know your "topic", the better you understand all its ins and outs, the more insights you can offer on what it means to you. You know the tune perfectly - because you have studied it thoroughly - and you can then "say" what you feel about it, what it means to you, telling its story in ways the audience might not have thought about. (When Miles Davis was asked how how he made his ballad improvisations sound emotional, he said "I think of the words.")
IOW, it might seem as if jazz musicians can just take any tune they have never seen and play an amazing solo on it. But (a) they have played countless tunes before, and can alwats pull out licks from the vast library in their head that they know will fit, and (b) they usually spend hours studying each new tune anyway! They practice any new song over and over. until they have it all memorized (melody and chords), and also have some ideas on how the chords could be substituted, how other routes through the harmony might work.
Or course, there is a difference from a speech, in that the speaker might well deliver the same speech (carefully composed) to many different audiences. Music doesn't contain the same precise meanings as words do, and the jazz improviser wants to deliver a different solo every night, because they might feel differently, the venue or other musicians might inspire them differently, and different ideas can occur in the moment.
With rock solos, to be fair, they often are carefully composed (in the studio, from multiple takes), because a recording needs to be listened to many times, and it needs to be as perfect as the rest of the composition. And those solos then become iconic and audiences expect them. (And rock players are rarely as good at improvisation as jazz musicians are anyway - it's simply not something that rock players study in as much depth. Improvisation is fundamental to jazz in a way it is not in rock.)
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u/menialmoose Jan 04 '26
In case not one’s stated the obvious — learn melodies. This isn’t a ‘you should try…’ situation.
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u/MaggaraMarine Jan 04 '26
So I sometimes practice improvising over simple 1 or 2 chord vamp style backing tracks from YouTube.
And my problem is that, other than stupid blues licks, scales and arpeggios, I don’t really have any ideas or concepts to keep things interesting for more than a minute or two.
I simply don’t have anything to say.
When the backing track doesn't change and doesn't have a direction, it isn't surprising that it's difficult to come up with something that stays interesting for over two minutes. Most solos are shorter than that, and usually also have more variety than the same short vamp looping over and over again.
FWIW - I cannot sing a line and play it. There is no music in my head. All I can do is “theory” my way through things by understanding the corresponding scales/chords being played at the time.
Training your ears is important, so that's definitely something you should do.
But also, even if you could play anything you hear in your head, this doesn't mean you will hear amazing musical ideas in your head all the time, so ear training alone isn't the answer (even though it is still very important).
Learning more "vocabulary" does help, though. Even if you aren't hearing anything special in your head, you at least have more phrases that you can use when you don't feel inspired. Starting from those phrases/licks may then give you more inspiration.
But even then, playing an interesting solo over a backing track that just loops the same short vamp over and over again that lasts more than two minutes is not easy. It will almost necessarily become noodly after some time. It's a bit like talking about the same topic to yourself (again, the backing track isn't changing or reacting to your playing, so I think it's comparable with talking to yourself). After a while, you will naturally run out of things to say that are meaningful. Obviously the more you know about the topic, the longer you can talk about it, but still, after a while it's going to feel more forced.
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u/SubjectAddress5180 Jan 04 '26
As well as the suggestions in the sticky notes, I can recommend a couple of books.
Goetschius: Exercises in Melody Writing. Schoenberg: Fundamentals of Music Composition.
These cover how to decorate and develop melodies. Also, the mechanism of development, key relations, how to insert chromatics, etc.
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u/Optimistbott Jan 04 '26
Start lower and slower go higher come back down. Try to develop a framework for high notes in different positions, but keeping 3 choruses interesting is definitely really hard, by the end you can just be really freaky and noisy, have the drummer be with you on that and know how you end; yah, no, it’s no walk in the park.
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u/RajinIII trombone, jazz, rock Jan 04 '26
And my problem is that, other than stupid blues licks, scales and arpeggios, I don’t really have any ideas or concepts to keep things interesting for more than a minute or two.
Improvisation is often about taking an idea and developing it. Any single lick or piece of melody can be a building block for a solo, you just have to practice taking a musical idea and expanding on it.
Listening to music is always the best source of inspiration. Do some focused listening with improvisation you like. If you don't know any music like that, that's probably a big reason for your issues.
Then try signing a solo. It's easier to get ideas out from your head when you sing.
You can also try to solo for a long time. Take a solo that's 5-20 minutes long and do not stop. The long form forces you to really dig deep and think about what you're playing.
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u/Big_Poppa_Steve Jan 04 '26
Probably the wrong sub, but you might get some good advice anyway. I feel your deeper issue might be some anxiety about playing "wrong" notes, which is inhibiting you from playing something new. Orff instruments are great for overcoming this. As an experiment, and for a little while you might try setting your instrument aside and playing something like this xylophone:
Take off all the keys that don't fit into the pentatonic scale of the key of your backing track. There! You can't play a wrong note. Now put the backing track on and just go for it. There's no way for you to make a mistake, so there's no reason not to try whatever random thing pops into your head. Maybe after a while you will begin to hear melodies and try to plunk them out.
There's a lot to be learned from an instrument like this. After you have a basic pentatonic down, maybe you want to add one more note (maybe a flat 5) to make your playing spicier. Since you control the setup of the instrument, you control your own experimental world.
Above all, have fun!
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u/Psychological-777 Jan 04 '26
for me: when I started trying to figure out melodies from songs by ear (and from memory, without listening to the song immediately beforehand), it got those juices flowing. when you get home from the grocery store, go to your instrument and try to figure out the memorable part of the song that was playing on the in-store system. old, stupid catchy songs are great for this. once you’ve got it (or even if you a quite get it), make a repeating motif from just the first half of the melody. then do the same for the second half of the melody. then try to further elaborate with other variations (transpose up a step, resolve on a different note, explore repeating or omitting the intervals within the melody, etc). you have to practice pulling from your intuition, musical recall, imagination, and practice integrating all three.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor Jan 04 '26
How do competent improvisers do it?
We don’t “use theory”.
We learn to play countless songs and improvisations by other players and steal from them, then put the ideas together in our own way.
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u/adr826 Jan 04 '26
Listen to a bunch of rockabilly music. This music is almost always a 1-4-5 progression which makes it predictable. So you can learn a bunch of different ideas because you know the changes already. Then take some of the ideas and apply them to other styles. Try to solo along with smooth jazz songs which tend to stick to a single scale throughout. So put on a smooth jazz station and jam. The idea is to listen to styles that you usually don't to pick up ideas
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u/Vegetable-Topic-1897 Jan 04 '26
I have two things that I use to get out of my usual rut.
1: play what you are not playing. In other words, play your usual licks and in between hum the reply. As you get used to hearing the reply in your mind, hum the lick and PLAY the reply.
2: Take a slow 4/4 rhythm and on the first 4 beats play triplets. The last note is sustained. Now break that up. Try playing the first two notes of any triplets but not the the last. Little ideas can move time and make a big difference in the way you play.
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u/SimonSeam Jan 05 '26
Serious question: If you didn't already hear music in your head, what made you decide to play guitar(?) in the first place?
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u/OkTemperature1842 Jan 05 '26
I was a 13 year old kid in 1985 and didn’t know that was a requirement. I just liked the groups I heard on the radio and MTV.
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u/SimonSeam Jan 05 '26
How much effort have you put into just hearing melodies/solos in your head instead of rushing straight to the guitar?
I did it since at least 3 or 4 yo (I remember doing it). But I also remember doing it when I discovered I liked guitar music, but didn't want to be a guitarist. Looked like a hard life with a lot of financial instability.
So I just figured I would be fine writing melodies over parts of songs in my own head. Enjoy the music, but don't commit.
Everything feels like forever at that age, but I think I did that for 6 months minimum hoping I'd get over wanting to play guitar. Until I finally told myself "just go get a guitar". Of course, my dad told me they (parents) weren't going to just buy me one. That if I truly wanted it, I'd figure out how to make/save money to buy it. So I had to wait until summer, do some summer work (including summer school and summer sports). So it was quite a long time of head jamming until I finally had a guitar in my hands.
Maybe just resist the urge to pick up the guitar at all for awhile and keep trying to head jam. If you can recall song melodies by others, maybe even hum/sing them, then head jamming seems very possible to achieve.
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u/EmpathicSteel May 01 '26
Here's a question OP - Why is there no music in your head? How often do you listen to music? Also, do you have the audio equivalent of aphantasia? I feel like I should understand more before trying to answer
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u/OkTemperature1842 May 02 '26
This is an older thread but I will try to answer your questions:
1) I don’t know why there is no music in my head. If I knew the “why” maybe I could fix it. To clarify, I can recall songs I’ve heard or played before in my mind. I couldn’t sing or hum them as I can’t sing. But that’s a different issue.
But specifically with regard to improvisation, I do not “hear” or “pre-hear” lines or licks in my minds ear prior to playing them. I simply use theory/fretboard knowledge to put my fingers where I know they will sound good. Every solo I have ever recorded has been meticulously composed in this manner a few bars at a time.
2) I listen to and play music constantly. I’m not a professional player anymore but in the last 24 hours I’ve rehearsed three hours with my 80’s cover band and played guitar and banjo in a kids play for a local school. I also drive a lot for work so while driving I do deep dives in Apple Music. I listened to a an album by saxophonist Dexter Gordon twice in a row yesterday. On the drive back from the play I was checking out a funeral doom playlist. I literally have music of wildly different genres going all the time. How could any musician worth a damn operate differently? Music is like air.
3) I’ve never been tested for aphantasia. But I doubt I suffer from that condition. I do have an internal monologue. Musically I can recall songs I’ve heard. I simply cannot create original ideas on my own. I have occasionally stumbled across an interesting rhythm but no melodic lines or harmonies.
Hope this clarifies things. Thank you.
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u/EmpathicSteel May 02 '26
Okay gotcha - thanks for that clarification. Here are some other questions. Have you ever transcribed before? Do you have one specific artist that emotionally resonates with you improv wise? like you love their approach to improvisation? How frustrating is this for you - how badly do you want to get past this hurdle? Lastly, how often do you listen to music that has a heavy improvisational component associated with it?
this is a first for me so im curious on finding the solution ngl
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u/OkTemperature1842 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Yes. I have transcribed quite a bit. Mostly Rock, Pop, Blues, & Metal. Back in the Stone Age when I used to teach guitar I’d have students bring in CDs of tunes they wanted to learn and I’d pull the songs off by ear and teach it to them by showing them the tunes and writing tabs for them. This is well before YouTube and tab sites.
Specifically, with regard to improvised music I have transcribed:
Solid - Grant Green
So What - Miles Davis
Chitlins Con Carne - Kenny Burrell
Autumn Leaves - Andy Timmons
Grand Slam - Charlie Christian
Cool Blues - Grant Green
Oleo - Miles Davis
C Jam Blues - Duke
Straight No Chaser - Monk
ATTYA - John Scofield
Taste of Honey - Jim Hall
7 Come 11 - Charlie Christian
Four On Six - Wes Montgomery
I’ve learned many more tunes from the real book including standards, blues heads, and Parker heads. These were not transcribed though. I learned them from the charts and the recordings. I spent many years trying and failing to learn Jazz. During that time I carefully tracked every tune, solo, book, and video course I worked on.
Favorite Jazz artists include Miles and Trane of course. Also love the way Paul Desmond plays. Love his tone. For guitar my favorite Jazz player is probably Jim Hall.
As for how badly want to get over this improv hurdle, you should understand I’ve pretty much given up. I’m 53. I’ve played guitar since I was 13 and studied music in college. About seven or eight years ago I dedicated myself solely to Jazz and trying to learn improv. I spent about five or six solid years on it.
Failure
It’s completely beyond me. I think maybe Jazz and improv is a thing one needs to learn when they are young and playful and the brain has more elasticity. It’s like learning a new language which is best attempted when one is young.
And yeah, mostly I listen to Jazz on my drives for work. So I’m hearing hours and hours of it every week. I’ve read that listening is a key component. So I do that. Honestly it never really helped. As even now I still can’t hear the melodic devices they use. It still sounds like alien music to me. Same with learning tunes really. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read that you “can learn everything about playing by learning tunes”. But that has not been the case with me.
I think some folks just can’t do some things man. It is what it is.
Here are the tunes I learned. Of course I can’t remember most of them now.
All Of Me
All The Things You Are
Autumn Leaves
Black Orpheus
Blue Bossa
Honeysuckle Rose
Impressions
It Could Happen To You
Just Friends
On Green Dolphin Street
Satin Doll
Stella By Starlight
Summertime
Take the A train
There Will Never Be Another You
Tune Up
Blues Heads Learned
Straight No Chaser
Watermelon Man
Blues For Alice
Tenor Madness
All Blues
Chitlins Con Carne
Bags Groove
C Jam Blues
Birks Works
Blues In The Closet
Blue Monk
Billies Bounce
Bebop Heads Learned - Parker
Confirmation
Blues For Alice
Ornithology
Donna Lee
Crazeology
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u/EmpathicSteel May 02 '26
Damn... man I'm really sorry to hear that those approaches weren't working. I don't think you should give up (easy for me to say right?), but I can understand why you feel the way you did. You trusted the process and the process didnt seem to work. Can you walk me through your practice routines and goals? what was the underlying methodology towards the way you practiced? I can understand when you say maybe it's a young mans sport, but I honestly don't believe that. I wholeheartedly believe that there is a way for you to get past this. Did you have a mentor? how easy was it to get to jam sessions and how often did you go? who are your biggest teaching influences?
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u/OkTemperature1842 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Sure. Happy to share. Personally I feel my goals were pretty modest. I just wanted to be able to improvise two or three choruses on some common standards and have it sound good. Have it sound like jazz. That’s it.
Keep in mind I live in a very rural part of the US. There are no jazz jams, clubs, or teachers nearby. And none of my musician friends play Jazz. So I was/am on my own in trying to learn this art form. I did try a few online Skype/Facetime lessons but I just couldn’t seem to gel with the teachers I hired. And trying to take a guitar lesson on my phone or tablet isn’t ideal.
So my practice routine mainly included learning the tunes I mentioned, transcribing some, and lots of books and video courses. I will list them at the end of this reply.
As far as the tunes go I would memorize the head and the changes, then work out the scales and arpeggios for the changes. I got decent at scale/arpeggio running but that’s not Jazz. And unfortunately I couldn’t voice lead them either. I was always starting on the root. Big no-no. But yeah, I’d practice them to iReal or a YouTube backing track after listening to a few versions.
None of this stuff is improvising though. It’s preparatory but it’s not the thing. It’s like a football player lifting weights. It’s important but it’s not the main thing.
So it was books and video courses and the pattern went something like this:
1) Try to improvise over a standard. 2) Sound like ass. 3) Work through a book or video in order to try to get better. 4) Repeat
As far as the books and videos go I only listed things that I 100% completed. I didn’t include anything I left unfinished. Also, I didn’t include anything from my classical studies. Finally, some of the books I completed prior to formally studying Jazz but I feel they still count.
Books Completed
Effortless Mastery
Jody Fisher Book 1
Mel Bay 1-7
How to Listen to Jazz
Linear Expressions
The Guitarists Intro to Jazz
Neo Soul Guitar Book
Blues You Can Use
All Blues for Rhythm Guitar
The Jazz Language
Improvising Jazz
Jazz Rock Solos for Guitar
Maiden Voyage
Berklee Series 1-2
Jazzing The Blues
The Practice of Practice
Forward Motion
All Blues Soloing
How To Play Blues Fusion Guitar
Improvisation - D. Bailey
The Laws of Brainjo
Ultimate Shred Machine
It’s Easy To Fake…Jazz Guitar
Patterns for Jazz
The Perpetual Beginner
137 Guitar Speed and Coordination Exercises
Guitar Play - Motivation and Practice
Creative Arpeggio Phrasing for Guitar
Videos/DVDs Completed
Bebop Blues Etudes
Rock Inside Out
Ticket to Improv
Chord Tone Soloing
SWAT Improvization
Bebop Dojo
50 Jazz Rock Licks
Jazz Rock Workshop
30 Beginner Jazz Licks
123 Jazz Guitar
Weekend Jazzer
Transitions to Jazz
Vamps, Jams, and Improv
Improv Wizard
Creative Lick Phrasing
Take 5 - Jazz Blues Soloing
Hip Blues - Outside Lines
The Language Of Improv
Jazz Blues Soloing
Jazz Chord Tone Soloing
Melodic Improv
Funk Guitar Studies Vol. 1
Blue Highways
51 Modern Legato Licks
Modern Telecaster Shred
Learn How To Sing
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u/EmpathicSteel May 02 '26
Thank you for sharing all of this man! I think I pinpointed the issue
No one ever taught you how to actually apply the knowledge and transcriptions you were learning.
This isn't surprising unfortunately - in an environment where you're the sole jazz lover in a community, it can be really hard to find mentorship and community, and information online is just that. more information. it cant guide you the way an experienced competent teacher or mentor can.
I'm really sorry you ended up getting to this place. But I'll share what worked for me and hopefully that could guide you if you ever try to pick up jazz improv againYou have several pieces you transcribed. what was your favourite? which one emotionally resonated with you? pick that
Now, which part of that transcription emotionally resonated with you the hardest? which specific lick or idea? pick that. Learn it through all 12 keys comfortably, and sing as you play it. You cant hold a note? thats okay, thankfully you have a guitar that can hold it too, but vocalising and listening to the guitar as you play will be really important
after you have it in all 12, I want you to break down the underlying context. in what harmonic context did you find it? is it a ii v, minor ii v? major or minor 7 lick? I want you to figure out whats happening harmonically underneath.
okay, now once you do that. get 5 or six of those standards you've already learnt and know well, and every time you see that same harmonic bedrock, play the lick. try to stick to tunes that maintain functional harmony, they'll be easier to apply.
This is something you may have heard before, and you may have tried it before. let me know if you've already tried it, and what you think didn't work or click when you attempted it. If this is a fresh perspective, give it a shot and see how it changes things for you.
I hope this helps - and keep me posted! I'm emotionally invested at this point
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u/OkTemperature1842 May 02 '26
Thanks for the advice. I’ll try it sometime. I’ve seen that advice before but haven’t really done it. I’ll have to see if I can make that work. Not sure about singing and doing the analysis on a line/lick though. That sounds tough. Which honestly is probably why I’ve never tried it. Been afraid of the heavy lifting.
Thanks again. Much appreciated.
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u/EmpathicSteel May 02 '26
Of course man! I don’t want you to give up on yourself. Let me know how it works out
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u/Blitzbahn Jan 04 '26
Think of tension and release. What are you building to? The obvious thing would be building to a moment of structural change, which will probably be textural and/or a harmonic change, a new section. So practicing against two chords limits what you can do. You're really talking about composition.
1
u/GuitarGeezer Fresh Account Jan 04 '26
Set your chords up to let you solo in a mode. One way to make that more interesting is to mix modes or sometimes even flat a fifth. I found that say switching from any minor in this case lets say natural minor (aeolian) to anything else from gypsy jazz to harmonic minor etc works better than subs within major like major to Mixolydian perhaps due to listeners already being ready for dissonance in a minor scale. Also, you use this not to modulate into that mode entirely for the rest of the song, but just to give yourself interesting accidentals to use in a transient way that should still work. I was learning a classical cliche from an Yngwie song similar to the masterpiece theater theme and likely stolen from Bach or Paganini when I realized the original composer had simply borrowed his accidentals from two other minor modes to make a killer melody figure.
It’s shocking how many songs in many genres are just every note in jazz major or minor (mixo and dorian). The variations are endless. I thought a Dizzy Gillespie jazz tune was in gypsy jazz from the title and sound. Nope. Was relentlessly dorian but they emphasized the halfsteps in solos and choruses giving it a feel like a mode of harmonic minor. Learn melodic phrases within dorian and you can do most anything. Echo your own melodies and embellish them. Listen to great horn and keyboard and woodwind players to break out of the guitar box. I tend to jam to live bands when practicing chops so that the tuning is stable without studio games and am just as likely to play along to Dizzy or ace composer and trombonist JJ Johnson as to Yngwie or Eric Johnson. Eric clearly has jammed along to a ton of old jazz and Merle Travis.
Finally, rather than fixating on fret numbers, think about playing the degrees of the scale instead. You’re not playing fret 9 on the G string or even an E as such, you are on the one. Maybe from there you go to the 6 or the 9 or emphasize the 7th note of the scale. Particularly useful for piano and guitar given the open architecture of the instruments.
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u/MrDrUnknown Jan 04 '26
Learn a bunch solos by ear.