Welcome to our weekly Music Corner Drop-in series where take a deep dive into a broad range of subjects on everything guitar and music in general.
This week we continue to expore how to improve our improvising. Lots of techniques, know-how and much more to apply to your own songs. Chords come from scales and when soloing/improvising we need to use the notes of the parent key but also understand the nature of the chords we’re playing over!
Overview
We continue our look at the art of improvising (with a tad of underlying ‘musical science’).
Chords are built from scales but here we focus on recognising chord progressions and the types of chords used in them in order to choose the relevant scales to improvise solos. Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Dom7 (7), m7, half dim, maj7, etc. They’ll all come into focus.
Knowing the notes of the parent scale and ensuring that you’re using them for all chords in that key. Also, knowing the various CAGED shapes for each chord and the major scale surrounding these shapes.
Essentially, we’ll be looking at how music works while exploring how to construct melody on-the-fly i.e. improvision.
Session suitability
These sessions are most suitable for intermediate players with a tad of music theory/knowledge but players of all standards will register some lightbulb moments and pick up some great ideas and approaches. It’s a good idea to have both an acoustic and electric guitar to hand for these sessions.
Materials:
You will receive any relevant PDFs and a Zoom video recording of the live lesson i.e. everything you need.
Music Corners in general
These weekly one hour sessions are designed to give us the tools to self-improve and widen our knowledge in the following general areas: rhythm, reading music, improvising, understanding music theory, getting good tone, how to play a solo, how to play with a group, how to develop your ear, learning the rules of music through transcribing the history of a genre. Our tutor, Jamie McCredie, will share key things he has learned over years that have helped to make him the professional guitarist and musician he is today.