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

I spent many, many guitar playing years to figure it out, but it paid off. I turned it into a profession, and now I earn a good portion of my living doing just that. I do it on album tracks, jingles, soundtracks, and it’s often my role in a band line up. I specialize in slide guitar, but it’s all the same thing.

Here are some tips:

1. Know the key you’re in completely, totally, absolutely. In the end, they all become the same thing, but the rules of music and the layout of the fret board conspire to make it seem otherwise. Know the mother scale, and the *chord scale* that goes with each key. I’ve written many articles about keys, but here goes again in a nutshell: The major scale consists of seven notes. These seven notes give rise to seven chords of three notes each, using a simple formula. This family of seven notes and chords is called The Key. (There are twelve keys, one for each note of the chromatic scale which acts as a starting note.)
2. Know the *chord of the moment* inside and out. It’s setting the rules for those moments that the chord is being played. When I say *know it*, I mean:A) know where it is on the fretboard in all positions at once. It took me years to realize that chords are smeared out the whole length of the fretboard, they’re not little diagrams with dots where your fingers should go. A simple chord consists of three notes — the old (1) (3) (5) — and they can be played any old way you can figure out, and since the fretboard is essentially a maze of repeat notes, it follows that the whole fretboard becomes a chord… if you’ve tuned your brain that way, that is.B) Know it’s context. Know which chord in the key’s chord-scale it is. Let’s say we’re in the key of G, and one of the chords in your solo is a D, then know that you’re on the *Five Chord*, for that is what D is to G, the fifth chord in the sequence. Why should you be aware? Because a D chord in the key of G does not come from the D scale, it comes from the G scale. It comes from starting the G scale from D and ending at the next D. This yields a scale almost the same as the major, but the 7th note is one fret lower. This new scale is called a mode, but the easiest way to remember is simply to know that the *Five Chord* is a flat seven chord. If you can see where the seven fits into the fretscape, you can use it. If it’s NOT one of the seven chords of the scale (anything is allowed), then really know it.
3. Always think melody, never think scales. Scales are for getting your fingers familiar with the fretboard, the feel of the strings, the stretch of the intervals, but they should never be used AS solos. To be in any way effective, a solo has to tell some kind of sonic story, to do that you must first set the scene, develop the plot, introduce tension and suspense, and finally resolve the whole thing with a satisfying ending. Every song is different and there are no set rules.
4. Don’t ruin it with technique. There nothing worse than being jolted from the magic by a poorly executed piece of show-offery. Speed has NOTHING to do with solos. Naturally, if the tune itself is uptempo, then your solo can be too (but not necessarily), but your technique must be flawless if you’re going to play fast. Again, music has the ability to suspend time if properly rendered. That’s one of its best features and that’s why we love to listen to it. Playing beyond your ability just ruins the music and brings the listener crashing back into reality.
5. Solos are not a bunch of riffs strung together. You may fool your audience with that, but you’ll never fool yourself. Always seek to make your next solo totally different from the last, and always seek to follow the tune you hear in your head.
6. If you like metaphors, here’s one: solos are a collection of musical phrases. Musical phrases can be seen as excursions away from and back to *home*. Home is the (1) (3) (5) of the chord of the moment. There is only one chord of the moment at any one given moment.

When it all boils down, there are only 12 notes. Inventing melodies spontaneously from the three and a half octaves or so at a guitarist’s disposal is more a matter of elimination: which notes CAN’T I play? It takes a while, but eventually you will know the hierarchy of the moment. In other words, which notes are boss, which are subsidiary, which are connecting notes. Your melodic ventures will then have a framework to explore.

The TRICK to keeping track of it, of course, is described in my book PlaneTalk. You can find out all about it here: www.thatllteachyou.com. Over 5000 guitarists all over the World have now been let in on the secret to *seeing* the music on the fretboard.

All the best.

The Art of Soloing from MyRareGuitars.com