Beginner Tips for Improvising on Electrical Guitar
Improvisation is important when playing any type of musical instrument. And when it comes to the electric guitar, you will be able to create melodies and solos on the spot so that you can express your creativity and soul. This is a great way to connect with your audience. You can improvise according to the mood of the audience and this will create a unique performance every time.
You need to have the basics down before you start improvising.
You can follow guitar lessons Melbourne to get a good idea of the basics. And here you will learn about melodic embellishment. This is where you can add ornamentation to your melodies. To do this, you can first start with a simple melody and then start experimenting. You can start to add pull-offs, slides, bends, vibrato etc. to play with the melody a little bit more and this will improve your playing skills as well. You can infuse more character to your playing and allow your personality to shine when you do these embellishments. But in addition to knowing how to add variations, you also need to know when to add these. There are strategic places to add ornamentation and this will elevate a simple melody easily. But if there is ornamentation throughout the melody, there won’t be any contrast.
You need to learn chord tones as these will serve as the foundation to your improvisation.
You can familiarise yourself with the chord tones that are within different chords and this will create more cohesion in your improvisation. Another tool you can use is chord scales or arpeggios. Here, the individual chord tones are outlined within a progression. You can play chord scales for different chords in one song and slowly start adding them to your solos. The pentatonic scale is an essential that you need to learn as a beginner. It is easy to memorise and you can use it in so many different musical genres. The minor pentatonic scale fits with many pop and rock progressions so this is a good place to start. And once you feel more comfortable with this, you can then start looking into variations.
Melodic devices can add a lot of flavour to your improvisation.
Some examples of melodic devices are repeated motifs, sequences and rhythmic variations. You can add these devices to your solos and experiment with them to see how it changes the melody and whether it creates interesting rhythms that will catch the attention of the listener. Make sure to listen to great musicians and guitarists to have a better understanding of their melodic styles. You can listen closely to how they use phrasing, dynamics etc. in the solos. And if you hear something interesting, you can try to replicate these techniques in your improvisation so that you can find your own style of playing. Phrasing is basically how your melodies are structured and delivered much like conversation. And you can experiment with the length of the phrases and pauses to create interesting solos.