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

The key with the least number of barre chords is C, with F being the only non-open chord, so I guess it’s the easiest for a beginner; E, A, D and G are the next in rank of easiness as they also consist mostly of open chords; B and F are getting trickier to keep track of and play with ease, and the sharp/flat keys — forget it! Even after 42 years of playing, I don’t bother even trying. The way I see it, the guitar was designed to ring loud and clear, and it’s next to impossible to get that ringing without open strings doing the work. Barre chords, by their very nature, will always ring less.

That’s where capos come in. Whoever invented the guitar must have already thought of the capo, which compensates for the unfriendly keys. A simple idea, it effectively moves the nut up the neck by clamping down all all strings at once. The result is to raise the overall pitch while keeping the relative tuning of all the strings intact. This allows the player to choose another key to play in, a more friendly key. I should really say ‘pretend key’ because the key doesn’t change at all. Only the fingering changes, as if it were a new (friendly) key.

I have put a chart together here which shows as a graph the 12 keys and their seven notes/chords. It will allow you, if you’re wondering about the subject, to see how it all works. The 12 keys read horizontally, and their scale/related-chords reads below them, vertically. You will see at a glance which are the least complicated keys… they’re the ones without all the fly specks around them. The fact is of course, they’re all identical – it’s only the guitar’s design and tuning that makes them seem different – but try telling your brain and hand that.

There has always seemed to be a bit of a stigma about capos, like you’re cheating if you use them. If being able to ‘see’ a song quickly in terms of I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi and vii and giving the guitar a chance to ring out with nice open strings a vibratin’ and have all the years of playing in nice friendly keys another chance at it — if that’s called cheating, then let it be so. I’ve always felt that the music reaching the ears was the main thing, and I’ve always found that MUCH more comfortable in the friendly keys.

Capos only move the pitch up, never down (unless you’re moving down form a higher already capoed position) and when reading the chart, you can only pick keys lower than the original. They’re on the left of the original key.

Remember that all that changes is the letter. The major or minor or 7th or sus4 — the chord flavors — remain the same. The left hand column indicates the Roman numeral value of the note/chord and by its use of caps and lowercase, indicates the major/minor quality. Remember though, these can change. The composer can pick chords other than those to write a tune.

Capos can misbehave and be a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes. It’s usually best to keep the capo as close to the nut as possible, just for the sake of the tuning. The higher up the neck you go, the more likely it is to pull the tuning out a bit. If you clamp the capo too close to the fret wire, you’ll probably sharp everything a bit; too far back and you might lose good string contact with the fret wire and it will sound choked. Experiment, and find the happy medium. Make sure you put it on straight – parallel to the fret wire, or you’ll pull some strings out of tune and not others, and that’s as sour a sound as you can get.

There are many designs of capos and all have pros and cons. None are foolproof. I’ve tried them all and I think to this day I prefer the little Dunlop variety that have a little nylon belt and rack and pinion type clamping device. They’re adjustable, and can be very reliable. They all tend to pull the strings sideways slightly as you apply the final clamping action, whatever it is, so you’ve got to be ready and compensate by holding it firmly. It’s when you’re playing with others that you have to be careful about these slight discrepancies as you can quickly be out of tune with the band if you’re not careful.

Guitar Capos & Transposing from MyRareGuitars.com