The chicken or the egg?

Hi fellow twanger. Sorry about the great gaps between articles. There are never enough hours.

I was recently invited to stage a masterclass at a nearby high school by a music teacher who had read my book PlaneTalk. The questions most asked by his 35 or so guitar students were about improvisation... namely, how do you do it?

Where to begin?

The scale or the chord

Over the years I've noted that 99 percent of teachers recommend scales as the starting point for learning the art of improvisation. I'm in the 1 percent who recommends chords.

The fact is that they're both the same thing essentially. I've just always had an inbuilt dislike of scales, so I concentrated on chords. If you're someone who, for the life of you, can't figure out how to apply scales to the art of improvisation, then try the chordal approach. I still wonder myself... are you supposed to change scales every time the chord changes? Or are you supposed to still think of the mother scale, the key? Are you expected to know every position for every scale? And I've been playing for 42 years!

Here's my approach, but first: When I say improvisation, I mean an invented MELODY. A melody has structure. It starts somewhere, hangs together as a whole, and ends somewhere. It is made up of phrases, just like language, and these phrases also start and end on solid notes.

When I say chord, I mean the constituent notes of that chord (usually just the I, III and V) ALL over the fretboard. To me, the whole fretboard becomes a chord. You must be able to "see" all the positions laid out one after the other.

Once you know the key, the chord says it all. The key lays out the ground rules and potential structure of the piece of music, but what I call the "chord of the moment" sets the rules for that particular moment. When the chord changes to a new chord, then that chord becomes the chord of the moment.

So, for example, the tune is in the key of C. (This should tell you that, potentially, you can expect F chords, G chords A minor chords, D minor chords, E minor chords... These are the ground rules. Why should you expect them? Because they are all generated by the C scale, they are all offspring of the C major scale.)

Continuing the example, we're improvising to a tune in the key of C, but the chord of the moment is an F chord. If you're thinking scales, what do you do? Switch to an F major scale? Continue playing the C scale? I have no idea, because I never think scales. I think chords. So I see that F chord all over the fretboard. What I'm seeing are all the start/end notes for the upcoming phrase. I'm also hearing in my head the last note of the previous phrase, and I'm about to commit myself to playing the continuation of the improvisation -- let's say it's a solo -- and I can hear it in my head. This is probably the most important aspect of being able to invent. You must be able to hear it before you play it.

Let's keep on with the example and now the chord has changed to a G7. Now I simply switch my fretscape to a G7 view. I can now see all my G7s, from nut to 20th fret. I'm seeing all the Is, IIIs, Vs and now VIIs for G. These represent my preferred start/end notes for next phrase. (Of course, I may elect to finish the phrase during the next "chord of the moment", in which case one of its notes will be my ending note.)

And so on. What happens in between these start/end notes, which can only ever be "right" notes, is where the practice comes in. The fact is, once you are able to locate your I, III and Vs, the rest are nearby and can now be nailed down as IIs, IVs VIs and VIIs. The in between notes are there too, the ones that fill the gaps between notes a wholetone apart. In other words, from the chord ( I, III and V) we've reconstituted the scale ( I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII), all part of the underlying chromatic scale -- ALL notes.

This heirarchy is the route to meaningful solos, melodies, improvisation. The I - II - V of any moment are the "good" notes. Melodic phrases launch from these notes, use other notes (usually scale) to resolve back to them. This is what the ear wants to hear. By thinking of the chord rather than the scale, you will be able to zero in on the right start/end notes at any moment of the tune. Just think of the chord that is being played at that moment and lay it out on the fretboard. Of course, you MUST know the chord progression, but even that becomes "hearable".

There is more to it than I can write in a column, and the real trick to it all, especially the ability to see the fretboard as a chord, is the subject of my book PlaneTalk which comes with the Guitar Slide Rule, a neat invention which graphically displays the layout of the guitar. You can learn more at http://www.lorange.kirk.net. The content of the book and slide rule are now also available online at a members only site, so if you're still wondering what that trick is, you can be learning it immediately.

All the best, never stop twangin'

Kirk
http://www.kirklorange.com