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Audio Track 1-13

Improvisation

“Improvisation” in music is basically the art of composing music “in the moment.” It is the act of spontaneously arranging a guitar solo based on your feeling in that “moment” and/or your reaction to what the other musicians are doing. Most beginner’s think

“That sounds pretty advanced. I could never do that. I’m just a beginner.” Right! You are a beginner, so you need to begin right now also being a beginning improviser!

If all you play on your guitar right now are those things that you’ve memorized from tab or been taught by your teacher, then you are going to have a hard time breaking out of that “memorize and regurgitate” rut later. The longer you stay with memorized solos that are based on someone else’s arrangement, the harder it is going to be for you to eventually break away and create your own solos.

What I’m going to encourage you to do in this volume, and throughout this course, is to always work to come up with your own arrangements. Since we are starting with simple ideas and then moving forward gradually, I have confidence that you can do it. The process that you are learning here is going to help. The steps of learning the chords, learning the melody, learning a simple Carter style arrangement, learning how to simplify the melody, and then learning how to add your own techniques and embellishments in order to come up with an interesting arrangement (on your own!) is how you start moving towards this idea of improvisation.

If you go through the steps I’ve outline above enough times, with enough different songs, in enough different keys, you will start to be able to execute those steps at a faster and faster pace. The process will become natural to you and you will eventually start to be able to execute them spontaneously and in the moment. It is just like driving a car. The first time you drove a car you had to think about all of the steps one-by-one, now you just get in and drive without really having to think about it.

My definition of improvisation stated that it was

“composition in the moment.” What you are going to work on in this course is arrangement and composition of songs starting with the melody and then moving towards adding a number of techniques that will embellish that melody. At first every step may take a little while. As you get better, the amount of time it takes you to accomplish each step will shorten. As time goes by, believe it or not, you will get to that place

where all of the steps will occur at once, spontaneously, and in the moment. But first work each step one-by-one, without skipping steps. You will get there.

So, getting back to what I was talking about in my analysis of “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain.”

When I arranged that solo, I did it “in the moment.”

I picked up my guitar, decided that I would play this song in the key of C and I just started playing. At the time it was a song that I had never played before. The arrangement you see on the previous page came out spontaneously. I didn’t have to think about it. It just happened. It is not a very complex arrangement, but your arrangements and improvisations don’t have to be complex. Start simple, but start! For every song that is presented in this book I want you to come up with your own arrangement, I don’t want you to memorize and copy mine and stay with my arrangement. You can learn mine, but then change it. And as I stated before, the changes don’t have to be radical. Just change it a little. Then the next time you play it, change it a little more. Then a little more. Pretty soon, you’ll have a variety of arrangements and they will all be your own.

David Grier is one of the most creative flatpicking guitar players in the world. He can play one song and come up with a seemingly endless number of variations. People are amazed at his inventiveness and versatility. How did he get to where he is today?

When I interviewed David he told me that when he was a young kid he would sit down and figure out an arrangement for a song and then play it for his father.

His father would say, “That’s great David! Now go back and see if you can figure out another way to play that song.” David was encouraged, from a very young age, to continually think about new ways to play the same songs. I want to encourage you to do the same thing. You can learn my version, but then sit down and figure out another way to play it based on the tools and techniques that you have learned.

One more thought and then I’ll step off of my improvisation soap box. I think that most people are afraid to come up with their own arrangements and are afraid to improvise because they are afraid that they will

“get it wrong,” or “make a mistake.” You need to get beyond that. You need to be OK with stepping outside your comfort zone. I’ve heard Dan Crary say something like, “The people who are the best at improvisation are those who are not afraid to improvise.” That is exactly right!

So, in the remainder of this course, here is what I’d like you to do. Once you learn the chords, the melody,

and a simple Carter style solo, start messing with it in real time. Play through it and begin adding a hammer-on here, a slide there, a bass run, and alternate strum pattern, etc. Do it “in the moment.” Don’t worry about making mistakes. I’ll be showing you a variety of new techniques in this volume like tremolo, double stops, cross picking, neighboring notes, and scale runs. As you learn each new technique, add it to your “bag of tricks.” Go back and play “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” and “You Are My Sunshine” and “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” again and try to use the new techniques. Play the song over and over and try to see if you can come up with something a little different each time. If you stumble, then go back, slow things down, and take your time arranging something. But always spend a little bit of time trying new things “in the moment” everyday. If you start doing that right now you will eventually get to that place where you are the person everyone at the jam session is looking at and saying “How does he (or she) do that!”

Now let’s move on!

Let’s take a look at a few more songs. I’m not going to analyze them in as much detail as I did for “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain.” I’m going to let you do the analysis of each song. I want you to try the song on your own and then look at what I did with the song. But please try it on your own first, going through each of the steps, and then look at mine. Below I’ll simply state what I’m trying to demonstrate in my arrangements of each of these songs.

Nine Pound Hammer—

“Nine Pound Hammer” is shown on the next page. I wanted to use this song because it is popular, open to a lot of variation and interpretation, and it is the first song in this book that has a few eighth notes in the melody (measures 3 and 7). In my arrangement I wanted to maintain those eighth note melody runs, plus I wanted to add some hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides. Plus I throw in a nice little G lick at the end, which you should recognize from Volume 1.

Jesse James—

For this song I tried to throw in bass notes where I might have otherwise selected to strum. You’ll remember from Volume 1 that there were some arrangements of our G, C, D rhythm where we made liberal use of strums and others where selected to use more bass runs. You can

do the same thing with lead arrangements. Sometimes they sound nice with strums and other times applying more bass runs sounds good.

Red River Valley—

Here is an arrangement of “Red River Valley.” Instead of providing a separate tab for the melody by itself, I’ve indicated the melody notes in bold. In this arrangement I stuck with a simple Carter style solo that is based on the melody, but I’ve also added in some alternate strumming patterns during a couple of the long vocal pauses. I also used that bass run in G that descends down the G arpeggio in measure 8. It’s the same one I used in measure 8 of “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” and measure 8 of “Jesse James.” I guess like that one!

Old Joe Clark —

“Old Joe Clark” is a vocal song that is often also played as a “fiddle tune” instrumental. Fiddle arrangements tend to be full of eighth note runs and can be difficult to play on the guitar, especially at high tempos. However, if you are in a fiddle tune jam, do not feel as if you have to play so many notes! If you look at the basic melody for “Old Joe Clark” you can see that there are no eighth notes in the melody.

Most flatpickers who learn this song will learn someone’s fiddle tune style arrangement without first learning the basic melody. One of the problems they run into with that approach is that if they get in a jam and the other musicians are playing at a fast tempo, then can’t keep up. Learning a fiddle tune solo is great, however, if you learn the basic melody first, you can go back to it if you find you are in a situation where the tempo is just too fast to play your eighth note fiddle style arrangement. When you play just the melody you are cutting the number of notes that you have to play in half! My motto is: “If the tempo is high—simplify!”

I chose to use “Old Joe Clark” as an example here because I wanted to use it to demonstrate another way of adding chordal strums to a melody line that is a little different than the standard Carter style. If you take a look at my arrangement of “Old Joe Clark” you will see that I’ve kept all of the melody notes, but inserted an eighth note up-strum in-between them. This technique adds a drone sounding harmonic component. It is a very simple way to fill up space when your melody notes are quarter notes.