The concept of improvisation can be intimidating for some musicians, but since you’re not going to start out in front of a rock star audience with nothing but an electric guitar and whatever musical ideas might be lurking in your brain, it’s nothing to be apprehensive about. Just think of it as part of your daily practice routine, and you’ll soon begin to enjoy it and cultivate it as an important aspect of your musicianship. To get started, check out some of these tips for beginner’s improvisation on the electric guitar.

1. Elaborate on Hooks
   You probably have some favorite hooks in the back of your mind, so why not use them as a jumping-off point for your improvisations? Just get solid in the key and repeat the hook until you forget how you got to it and where it’s headed, then make up the rest on your own. Because you’re starting with a certain rhythm and flavor, it shouldn’t be hard to continue it, but be sure to add something of yourself so you’re not just imitating. Think about how you’re feeling in the moment and express it while you play.
2. Link Sections of Exercises and Favorite Solos
   Choose sections of technique-building exercises that you enjoy, making sure that they’re in the same key or transposing to achieve this effect. You can simply string them together at first, then start to switch out sections, elaborate, and eventually go off in your own direction. If you’re not inspired by your technical exercises, work with some excerpts from favorite solos.
3. Get In on Blues and Pentatonic Scales
   Once you’ve become comfortable with the idea of manipulating melodic material, it’s time to start building some on your own. The simplest blues scale, and possibly the most fun to work with, gives you the option of taking a major scale down to the blues by lowering the third and seventh degrees. To keep things interesting, alternate the lowered degrees with the original major third and seventh tones – the blues flavor will seem effortless. You can also try the seven-note blues scale by lowering the third, fifth, and seventh degrees of a major scale. Improvising on a pentatonic scale can be a good way to start out because, as the name suggests, it involves only five tones. To play in minor pentatonic, simply choose a tonic tone, then add a minor third, build on two major seconds, and top it off with one more minor third. For example, starting with C, you would add E-flat, F, G, and B-flat. You can take the minor pentatonic scale to the blues version by adding an F-sharp/G-flat.
4. Turn On a Rhythm CD, Pick a Scale, and Go
   When you’ve got the basics down, you’ll be surprised at what rhythm can do for your improvisation. It can help you bring originality to the process, enabling you to be more creative and bringing out the ideas you’ve come up with while experimenting.
5. Grab a Friend and Switch Rhythm and Lead Roles
   If you’ve never experienced the energy that builds when musicians jam together, you’ll get addicted once you grab a friend and start improvising. You might have a melodic idea that fizzles when you’re on your own, but a friend can pick it up and turn it into something interesting that you can run with. As long as you both agree on a scale to play with, you can simply switch rhythm and lead roles every few measures to really get the benefits of feeding off of each other. This is a great way to keep your creative juices flowing and get experience in collaborative improv.

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education performing research surrounding online universities and their various program offerings. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Improv 101 for Electric Guitarists from MyRareGuitars.com

One thing I discovered though: The new soft case I bought for my Strat fits into the overhead locker of the 767 so I don’t have check it in as baggage. I’ve always hated to see my old Fender disappear down the conveyor belt. You’re never quite sure that you’ll ever see it again. Now, I don’t have to part with it. I did however get asked the question.

Why is it that so many people think that there are two kinds of guitar player — rhythm and lead? I’ve been asked the question a million times in my playing career, mostly by beginners and non players. “What do you play? Rhythm or lead?” like they were two different instruments. I like to say I play music.

If you want to call yourself a guitarist, you must of course be able to do both, and for me the distinction between the two becomes more and more blurred as the years go by. A simple muted single note melodic line can become a great rhythm part conversely, a sequence of chords can easily be heard as the ‘lead’ part if approached with that in mind. Both are music.

The song should dictate what’s required. Obviously, when the singer is singing, the spotlight should be on him or her. To be riffing away would be distracting if not downright rude. This is when you should be thinking ‘rhythm’. This is when you should be listening to the singer, the lyrics, and asking yourself “What’s the least I can do here to help give the singer and the song their best shot”, and by least I mean “minimum amount of playing”. You will never go wrong thinking small, especially if you play with others in a band. This is very difficult to do, by the way, as some of you may already know. It’s much easier to play a continuous, mechanical strumming part than to break it up into little pieces and throw three quarters of them away. The first first technique is robot-like, the latter requires thought, consideration and taste.

As for ‘lead guitar’, even after thirty nine years now of playing guitar, I still don’t really know what it is, but I think it has a lot to do with what George used to do with The Beatles: playing the intro themes, filling the gaps between the vocals with riffs, either improvised or written into the song, and of course, taking the solos, again, either improvised or set in concrete. I must say though, that after all these years of playing and hanging out with players, I’ve never met a ‘lead guitarist’, a guy who just plays themes, riffs and solos. Before you can do that, you must first know about chords (rhythm) so that you know where to find your riffs, licks and solos. They are born from chords.

Again, when playing ‘lead’, less is best, and again, much harder to do. Running mechanically up and down scales at breakneck speed is not really making music. Killer melodies come from the heart, not the fingers, not the scale, as I’ve stressed over and over in these columns.

I used to see music as a building process — adding this element to that, collecting riffs and licks, connecting bits of information. Now that I know, I see playing music as a process of subtraction. I ask myself questions like: How few notes can I use out of all the possibilities to covey what I want? What’s the smallest way of stating (for example) Am7, and how big can the holes be between plucks or strums without losing the feel of the song. The challenge of deciding what NOT to play is much greater than collecting all the bits and pieces in the first place. As I’ve mentioned before, this is where taste comes in.

That’s it for now. Gotta go do some pickin’.

Rhythm & Lead Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com