Hello! This is Dennison Williams here. In this video, I wanted to talk about improvising with the music and because it's been quite apparent to me, I do a lot of studying and research on the internet and I see a lot of people asking questions about how do you improvise on guitar. So I am going to reveal somethings to you in this video.
At first level I talked about why it is important to learn how to improvise. Some people have never even thought about that before.
Well, for one reason and actually the main reason is that it opens up the ultimate creativity in your playing and using the ability to jammer any song. So you don't have to always memorize solos and be pressured like when you are playing on stage and stuff. But also if you want to be active in the creative process, overriding we say, it really is the key way to come up with the songs, the structures of them or even souls and above.
So that's one reason you should do it, a lot of people think that just Jazz musicians improvise and that of course is not true. Everybody should learn how to improvise at least a little bit.
So how do you get good at improvising? And here is the truth, at least from my perspective, and I have had other guitarist to agree with me before, some really experienced guitarists. Everybody thinks that the key to unlocking the amazing power of improvisation of playing is by way of scales and notes. This is true to a degree. But scales are notes especially, if you are new to playing guitar, don't really explain anything. If you want to become really efficient and having efficient understanding of music and how it works, it's kind of built upon this a hard moment, these epiphanies. Knowing way that you can track those down and instead of just start experimenting. I know that's not the answer that you want to hear because that's not like 'a+b=c'.
Obviously, scales and notes are great. One reason that they are great is because a lot of them like the harmonic and melodic minor melotone, very distinctive sounds. And perhaps just for some reason, you have never heard anything like that before or never really listened to classical music much. So it can be a doorway to a bigger world.
But the key to learning how to improvise is it comes about from playing for certain of the time practicing and spending well at least 2/3rds or half of your time listening to music. So I have got some CDs here. A lot of you are going to be, if I put how are you doing, but these are just a small sampling of the CDs that are on my collection, I have jammed with. I have Bill Evans Trio, Waltz For Debby. It is a -- like I said Trio is Jazz. There is no guitar in it, there is all piano.
It's good to study a lot of different styles of music. Jazz can be kind of funky. I remember the first that I heard Jazz music, I could not comprehend it. And so that's another thing, it's based upon. I used to make people say, "Oh! I do not like this down music." So they don't even bother with it. Well first you don't, I mean, I hated Pink Floyd for years. I know a lot of you are like, Oh! You can't do that. That's a sin. Eventually you can't run. But I worked out, you have to work out a little bit.
The great thing about jamming with problems that don't have any guitar, don't feature the instrument that you are trying to master, is that you facilitate that role. You are the star then and so you can really hear what's going on and match it out and see how you match up, as that one special person has an exclusive instrument in bands they are in.
Again, Miles Davis, which was the first Jazz that I ever heard and it took me a lot to get my ears rupture. And it belongs, I did, I am really thankful that I did because the rhythmic structures of jazz music ring bring are incredible so that has helped me a lot. As a sound by, I think Natz as I sad, it's Rapper, old school rap, Natz I mean, I am fan of rap I just don't not have a lot of rap albums jammed with this one too.
I have a post to children for Bluegrass and Nicole Creed, I jammed a lot, this one great stuff. Tito Puente is going a lot Jazz start. Tito Puente music is amazing, huge proponent of Latin music and a lot of Jazz. Cuban Jazz and stuff like that is such a revealer of great information. And not about style music, you are trying to become professional. Django Reinhadrt. Good Man, I studied his stuff for a long time as well. Brian Setzer, which is all I played for about two, two and a half years, it was a Rock and Bailey Jazz type stuff, and it got old, loved it at a time but it taught me a lot. I came back to heavy metal, I think, right after studying Rock and Bailey last. And just the things I came back to the table with were absolutely phenomenal.
The album that I first started jamming with wasn't this one exactly but what I first learned improviser was Santana, absolutely phenomenal stuff, Santana is a great way for any beginning guitarists, if you get into, because it just uses mostly with major, minor pentatonic E Dorian modes, I mean now this will make a music, it's special to you obviously to make the guitars very difficult and a mastered craft. But you can still apply even a lot of like clean, electric sounds to it.
The BB King, that's another thing, a lot people are watching my videos and watch my lessons of Blues people. I was probably about twelve and first time I had ever heard Blues in my life or street Blues, was on PVS and it was BB King concert and I thought it was the weirdest thing I had ever heard. I cannot grasp it all, but after listening to it for a while yeah, and then for Metalheads out there, I have Black label society's first album like all their albums. Rest of them are not so good anymore, but you can certainly even jam along with your own style. Your own preference music.
So anyways, the key is for most guitarists, because okay you have to think a bit like this. In the beginning, all that you know, in terms of what could have locked your musical potential, or is musical theory and I would like you to kind of look at the word 'theory'. Theory as in theoretical, as in theoretically, this is a way to explain something to another person. But its theory, it is theoretically, not exactly true. It is not setting stone. Those rules are there and we need to -- are made to be broken. And like my sister was telling me the other day, in like the 1700s any classical composer, of course, was very theoretically disciplined. However, it was almost an insult in those days, if you compose the piece, somebody else performed your piece and they didn't expand upon it live, as in improvising upon it.
Even the classical music is so structured. These are principles that a lot of people have abandoned and it does take a little bit of effort. You have to really be wanting to put in the time to experiment. So I would definitely suggest jamming along with many albums, because I started to explain. Say, you just started playing guitar and so instantly you start setting scales and notes.
Well if they don't exactly click right away. That's a problem. They are great. I always look at them from a perspective of the great for picking and the freting hand because they are all kind of different from each other in terms of the patterns, and so the greatest exercise is the warm-ups. And they do establish key notes in your mind, but you can't track it to comprehend it at once. And so when I first started playing, I didn't touch any scales or notes in learning it for about three years. I learned to improvise, really and seemly well though first because I trained my ears. It's something that happens naturally. And so one day I thought, I heard something about a thing like they make Lydian modes. So went and looked it up, I started playing it, and I was like all of them playing up for years.
So get yourself time to develop first. You don't have to jump in to anything. It's okay to stay with these things along the way and just don't put all eggs in one basket, because the trick of the matter is if you start from scratch learning these things, as you go round, you start picking up a scale instead of picking the note, little bit about chords, theory, construction of t
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