Stop Trying To Improvise (Do This Instead)

Probably the most common thing that I get asked about as a bluegrass guitar teacher is improvisation. Everyone is always asking about improvisation, improvisation, improvisation. They're like, Aaron, I don't understand. I've learned, you know, my scale patterns up and down the neck. I've learned a couple of licks. I know some tunes, but when I go to improvise, honestly, I just kind of suck at it. But what if I told you that you don't have an improvisation problem at all? What you actually have is a vocabulary problem. And in today's lesson, I want to show you why learning note 4-note solos, tunes, and arrangements is one of the best things you can do as an intermediate flatpicker, and it will actually put you on the fast track to becoming a really solid improviser. So this lesson is going to be a little bit different today, and yes everybody, I am going to be doing a lot of talking today. By the way, talking also translates to this: sharing a lot of hard-earned insight and wisdom with you. If that's not something that interests you, as so many people in comments like to frequently let me know, you're welcome to close out this video and go check out any of the other 120 long-form lessons that I have on this channel where I show you a whole bunch of cool stuff to play. This lesson is geared toward people that I would consider to be in a kind of intermediate level. Now I know that beginner, intermediate, and advanced is a bit subjective here, but here is how I tell my students to think about it. Just ask yourself this question: can you play about 10 bluegrass solos/fiddle tunes cleanly and in time with good technique, with solid alternate picking technique? Can you do that pretty easily and play those tunes in between 70 and 80 BPM as 16th notes? You have to be really honest with yourself here, but whenever I ask that question, deep down in your gut you know whether the answer is yes or whether it's no. Now if it's no, I would consider you more of a kind of beginner flat student, not necessarily beginner guitar, but you're new to flatpicking. So your time is best spent really developing your alternate picking technique, learning how to do that as 16th notes, learning how to do it in time, and then applying that to just 10 simple tunes. If that's where you're at, I would invite you to check out this playlist right here. It'll give you everything you need to guide you through that stage. But if you answered yes to that question, I would consider you an intermediate flatpicking student. If you're someone who finds yourself at an intermediate level and you find that you're struggling with this whole idea of improvisation, today's lesson is going to help you take the pressure off of yourself. I'm going to show you exactly what to work on, and it's ultimately going to help you become a really great improviser. Y'all, musical styles are a language, and one of the best analogies that I can give you is this. Let's say you were wanting to learn Spanish and I was your Spanish teacher. Which I am absolutely not. My Spanish sucks, but we'll just go with the analogy for right now. So let's say you came to me wanting to learn Spanish, and I taught you the alphabet in Spanish, and then I showed you some basic words and phrases: hola, adiós, maybe some phrases like, you know, ¿cómo te llamas? ¿Dónde está? Things like that, just some basic words and phrases. So let's say I Taught you that, and then I said, "Okay, now tell me a funny five-minute story in Spanish." You would probably look at me like, "Uh, I have no idea what to do." That is what so many intermediate flat pickers are doing. They know their G bluegrass scale, and maybe they've got a couple of cool licks under their fingers. Maybe they go over to C, D. And all of that stuff is useful, but then they think to themselves, I don't understand. I've got my scales, I've got my licks, why can't I improvise? Because knowing some of the words isn't the same thing as knowing the language. And this is where I think a lot of players get the developmental process backwards. You don't become fluent in the language by trying harder to be spontaneous. You become fluent by absorbing enough of the language that spontaneity becomes possible. Another thing that I'll hear from a lot of players at this level is they'll say things like, Aaron, I don't want to just be a Tony Rice clone. I don't want to just play like Billy Strings or, you know, other players like that. I want to be able to play like me. And that is a great end destination, but on our journey to that, there are stops along the way. But again, if you're kind of an intermediate level flat picker One of the best things you can do is learn note-for-note solos, tunes, and arrangements. Because think of everything that, like, a great tune or a great arrangement teaches you. So I'm gonna do something that's kind of sacrilegious here, and I'm gonna play a little bit of Salt Creek in G without a capo. No offense to the mandolin and fiddle players out there, but let's say, you know, you kind of learn the basic melody to the A part. But then let's say say you learn like a little embellishment, a little more advanced version like I've taught on this channel, that goes something like— okay, think about what learning that teaches you. You're not just learning which frets to push down. You're learning what bluegrass vocabulary sounds like over particular chords. You're learning how phrases connect. You're learning how the melody is embellished. You're learning how to position shift up and down the neck. Not to mention the fact that you're continuing to work on your timing, on your technique, on your phrasing, on your tone, and you're learning how all of that stuff works in an actual piece of music. And that's very different from just learning some licks in isolation and learning some scale patterns. This is one of the reasons why I'm such a big believer in building your repertoire, because every tune kind of teaches you something different. So let's just take 2 really common tunes here, and again, please forgive me, I'm gonna play Salt Creek in G. But you know, you take a tune like Salt Creek. Okay. Then take a tune like Blackberry Blossom. Those are 2 completely different tunes with completely different melodies and completely different chord structures. Then take another tune like Billy and the Lowground, and again, completely different tune, different melody, different chord structure, different musical problems to solve. But then maybe you start tackling some solos to the bluegrass vocal tune side of this. Maybe you learn like a solo to Blue Ridge Cabin Home, you know, and then maybe Nine Pound Hammer, How Mountain Girls Can Love. And with each one of those tunes, the melody is different. The chord structures are different, and again, there's different musical problems to solve. The thing about it is, is that every new tune and every new arrangement that you learn expands your vocabulary and your repertoire. But after you do that for a while and you learn these arrangements and you commit them to memory, something really cool starts to happen. What happens is you start to learn some of these note-for-note solos, tunes, and arrangements is that pattern recognition is going to start taking over. You've learned this little position shifting run that I've taught on this channel, and a lot of times I'll use it in How Mountain Girls Can Love. You understand that that's a little 2-bar phrase that you can use in G. So you start to realize, yeah, I can use that in How Mountain Girls Can Love, But I can also use that in Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Right here. Fits in perfectly right there. Oh wait, I can also use it in I'll Fly Away. All right, you'll start to recognize little patterns like that. But in addition to that— oh, wait a minute, I could also use that phrase at the end of the A part to Gold Rush. Okay. Oh, I can also use it at the end of the B part to Big Mine. You will start to recognize patterns like that. Maybe you've learned a couple of these little one-bar G licks like, or, and you start to realize, wait a minute, I can use that at the end of the A and the B part to Salt Creek. Wait a minute, I can do the same thing with Red-Haired Boy. You start to recognize similar chord progressions in certain tunes. Or you start to recognize little 1-bar and 2-bar places where a phrase or a lick that you maybe learned in another solo or another tune that has that little spot that you can apply that lick or phrase to. This is where improvisation starts to feel a little bit more natural because we're not doing this as just this massive kind of drug-fueled Grateful Dead jam, which, hey, no offense to anybody that enjoys doing that, you do you. But what we're doing, it's almost like controlled improvisation. So we're not coming to every new tune and saying, hey, completely reinvent the wheel. What you're saying is, ah, I've encountered a similar musical situation before. What do I already know that might work here? That's a much easier question to answer, and the more music you've learned, the more answers that you'll have. I want you to think about musical progression like this. At first, you're imitating. You're having to learn things note for note and by rote memorization. And with enough time at that level— and it does take time and practice— with enough time, you'll start recognizing. You'll be like, ah, okay, I've seen that chord progression before. Or, okay, I've heard that phrase before. I've heard a similar melody in other tunes. And then you start connecting, like, ah, I wonder if I could use this phrase that I've learned over here in this tune. I wonder if I can take this lick that I learned in this solo and apply it to this new tune. And eventually you start creating, and the more that you create, the more that you're able to create on the fly. Remember that progression: imitation, recognition, connection, creation. Imitation, recognition, connection, creation. The big mistake that I see— people will get some scales and some licks and they immediately want to jump to, why can't I create an amazing bluegrass guitar solo on the fly? It's not because you're bad at improvising. There's just a whole developmental process in between where we're starting out and where we want to be. And like with most things in life that are worthwhile, there's no shortcut to get there. But what I can do is show you what to work on. Here's my challenge for you. If you find that you've been struggling with improvisation, if you're like, man, I just want to get better at improvising, what I want to do is I want to help you take some of the pressure off of yourself. For the next couple of months, I want you to just learn music. Pick at least 10 great bluegrass solos, fiddle tune arrangements, and learn them all the way through. Learn them note for note. And get them memorized. What I recommend students do is do a combination of solos to bluegrass vocal tunes and then do fiddle tunes. But again, where this video is geared toward intermediate players, I want you to learn the basic melody of the fiddle tune, and I want you to learn a more advanced version of the fiddle tune. Good news, I got you covered. If you want 5 great bluegrass solos to some classic bluegrass tunes that are perfect for a kind of intermediate level, check out this video right here. And I will link to it down in the video description. If you want some great fiddle tune arrangements to learn, check out this playlist right here. This playlist has 20 fiddle tunes that I have taught on this channel, and for 15 out of the 20, I teach you a basic melody version and a more advanced version. But again, it's perfect for this kind of intermediate flatpicking level. And what's great about all of these is they're a little different. They're in different keys They have different melodies, they have different chord structures, and they force you to solve different musical problems. But when you're learning these, I do want you to memorize them, but don't just memorize the tab. I want you to really listen to these tunes. Get the sound in your ears. Pay attention to the phrases. Understand the chords underneath all of these solos and fiddle tunes that you're learning. Try to hear if there's something that you've learned before that showing up in another place. Maybe it's a chord progression, maybe it's a melody, maybe it's a musical phrase. Because doing that, learning that, listening to it, paying attention to it, is what's gonna build your musical vocabulary. Now here's an important distinction that I want you to make here. I'm not telling you not to improvise, but we have to think about where you're at as a player to where you want to be. Think of it like a road trip. Okay? So, I live up in Northeast Tennessee, in Johnson City, Tennessee. I'm originally from a little town called Quitman, Texas. So, I have done that road trip from Quitman, Texas up to Johnson City, Tennessee many, many, many, many, many times. And there are stops along the way. Starting Quitman, I drive out to Interstate 30. On Interstate 30, we go up to Texarkana. Then we hit Little Rock. And then I get on 40 and we hit Memphis. And then from Memphis, we hit Nashville. After Nashville, we hit Knoxville. At Knoxville, we get on Interstate 81 and we head north up to the Tri-Cities area of Northeast Tennessee where I live. There are stops along the way. Being able to be a really solid bluegrass improviser is a great goal, and it's one of the funnest things to be able to do in this style. And so yes, eventually I want you to be able to take these arrangements apart. I want you to move the phrases around. I want you to embellish the melodies. I want you to experiment, but you have to remember there's a sequence to this stuff. So if every time you try to improvise you find that you freeze up, or you end up just running a scale, or you just kind of go to the same 2 or 3 licks that maybe work, maybe they don't work, you probably don't need another improvisation lesson. Probably just need more musical vocabulary. So for the next little bit, instead of thinking to yourself, why can't I get better at improvising, I want you to think about this: How much great bluegrass guitar have I actually learned and memorized? How much have I learned, memorized, and developed to the point of unconscious competence in my playing? Because every great tune that you learn, every classic solo that you study, every phrase that you get into your ears and underneath your fingers is going to give you something that you can draw from later on down the road. Learn the language first and then start having conversations with it, and eventually you'll find that you don't have to work nearly as hard to force yourself to improvise, because finally, after doing your due diligence and the hard work of really learning the language of bluegrass guitar, you'll actually have something to say. So I know this lesson was a little bit different, but I promise you this is one of the most important lessons that I have shared on channel, and I really hope it helps you take some of the pressure off of yourself to immediately be an amazing improviser. Learn the language first and then pull from the language when you're improvising. As always, I want to thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.