What Is Guitar Improvisation - Make Sure You Don't Get Left In The Dust

One of the biggest questions asked is what is guitar improvisation. The answer can really be summed up in one short phrase. It is just like improvisation on any other instrument.

It can mean many things to many people however. One of the simplest explanations would be that it can take the form of playing around with, or extending scales, but it is also very much at the heart of many musical cultures, such as the Spanish flamenco style, or the alapanas, ragas, and tanams that are used in classical Indian music.

Throughout the years, improvisation has also had a particularly wide usage in jazz, all the way from the technical musicianship of many stars of "bebop" to the more controversial "free" musicians, who at their most extreme play everything completely void of reference to melody, harmony, or rhythm.

A major surprise will come to those people that view Western classical music as some sort of severely rigid musical system, to find out that improvisation has played a significant role in its development and history. In fact, some of the great musician-composers like Handel and Bach, were recognized for their improvisations on the organ. The violinist Paganini is actually thought to be one of the greatest improvisers of all time!

What is guitar improvisation in practice? It would be very idealistic, as well as simplistic to imagine that each and every guitarist that steps forward to take a solo, views what is about to be played as some sort of blank canvas, and that the resulting sound will be a manifestation of divine inspiration.

The fact is, that in the hands of capable musicians, improvisations can be little more than linking together a vast series of musical phrases, which may or may not be completely identical from one performance to another, and surprisingly could only amount to a minor variation of the same theme.

Often, soloing in the realms of many popular music styles will fall into this category. It is even truthful to say that this can and will be the case even in genres where improvisation holds a more tradition role such as jazz, albeit it will most likely be held to a more technically proficient degree.

In truth, this isn't particularly surprising. As musicians who happen to be working in a broadly accessible sphere of music make up their minds not to play set pieces, the possibilities that are open to them may all of the sudden seem relatively limited in scope.

Interestingly enough, the word "limit" is especially apt when speaking about improvisation, simply because at a practical level it usually requires working within a predefined framework of music.

This concept may of course seem somewhat theoretical or even irrelevant to many guitarists, because many of them take pride in the fact that they can reproduce or replicate the sound of their studio recordings in a live performance situation. This should not be taken to mean however, that improvisation is irrelevant in mainstream music.

How then are new songs composed one may ask them self? More often than not, it is simply a result of sitting down with your instrument and playing around until that "spark" happens. It is usually the same process that takes place when working out a solo or band arrangement.

So, what is guitar improvisation...really?

As the Harvard Dictionary of Music puts it, improvisation is "The creation of music in the course of a performance." Pretty straightforward if you ask me. However, this seems to me like a fairly narrow definition of the word. It doesn't seem to do it justice to the manner in which it has come to be used in nearly every form of modern music.

Take for instance the typical approach to a jazz solo. Traditionally, the melody is predefined, and the soloist will then stray from the melody, but strangely enough, will generally play around the notes that are used in the melody. Also, in many blues-based musical patterns, soloing often times appears to be a case of playing around with the notes of a minor pentatonic scale, which have usually been based around a previously developed motif.

I guess with all of this information, the true question begins to emerge. What actually constitutes true improvisation?

In some cases, such as an outstanding jazz soloist, could we simply be confusing inspiration with an extremely well developed musical vocabulary?
Or could they actually be part of the same equation?

When so many people are asking, what is guitar improvisation? Maybe we are all over complicating the approach. Sometimes it may be better to "just play" and not try too hard to analyze the music.