Many guitarists are intimidated at the thought of improvising music and tell themselves that improvising is something you can do only after many years of study at the feet of some “master” somewhere.

Improvising music on the guitar does not have to be so mysterious, and I hope I can shed some light on how to begin spontaneously creating music on the guitar.

One of the challenges to the beginning improviser is the sheer number of possibilities of what you can play on the guitar. You have six strings, and access to anywhere from 12 frets to as many as 22 frets or more on some electric guitars. Many notes can also be played in multiple locations along the guitar neck. (For example, the note on the open high E string is the same note as that played at the 5th fret of the B string, and the same as the note played at the 9th fret of the G string and the 14th fret of the D string and the 19th fret of the A string. The timbre of these notes differs slightly, especially between the wound and plain strings, but they are all the same note.)

A simple way around this problem is to impose some limits on yourself when you are learning to improvise.

The easiest limitation is to start using only one string, this eliminates many of the possibilities, so you don’t have as many decisions about what to play next. If you know any scales or modes, you can also select one of those, but stay on a single string. You can also limit yourself to moving only one note up or down at a time, meaning that you don’t make any wide skips along the string. (For example, if you are playing in the key of C, and you start on a C note, the next note you play can only be a D or a B, depending on whether you want to play a higher or lower note, since the C scale is C D E F G A B C.)

To begin, just noodle around within these limits (as suggested above) until you feel comfortable with the single string, and listen to the melodies you are making even with such a limited musical palette. When you feel comfortable, try playing over a simple chord pattern.

A 12 bar blues is a good place to start. You can play it in any key, the simplest 12 bar blues pattern uses the I, IV, and V chords*, in the key of C that would be C, F, and G (or G7), actually any of the chords could be 7ths, but keep it simple to start. The pattern uses the I chord for the first 4 measures, then the IV chord for measures 5 and 6, back to the I chord for measures 7 & 8, the V chord for measure 9, and the IV chord for measure 10, and back to the I chord for measures 11 and 12. In the key of C, it would look like this: C C C C F F C C G(7) F C C, where each letters represents a single measure or bar of music.

Play a simple rhythm, slowly at first, use simple down-strokes, one per beat.

Here is a visual representation that might make it clearer:

   1     2     3      4

  C  |  C  |  C  |  C  |

//// |//// |//// |//// |

  5     6      7      8

  F  |  F   |  C  |  C  |

//// |//// |//// |//// |

  9     10    11   12

  G  |  F   |  C  |  C |

//// |//// |//// |//// |

Each slash represents one down-stroke, so this shows a 12 bar blues with four beats per measure, called 4/4 time, or common time. The letters represent the chords you are playing. Record yourself playing these chords, slowly, and play faster only after you are comfortable improvising over the slower changes.

When you begin improvising over these chord changes, focus on listening to how the individual notes sound against the chords. (That’s one reason to start slowly.) At first, only play single notes on the beats, (count 1 2 3 4), when you are comfortable with that, try adding notes between the beats (1and2and3and4and), but you don’t always need to play 8 notes for every measure; try varying what you play. Remember to listen to what you are playing, and the chords you are playing against.

Play with this exercise for a few weeks and you will begin to see a big improvement in your playing, as well as in your ability to hear what other guitarists are doing when they solo.

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