Well Jon, a big thank you to you. I finally achieved what I set out to do. I joined your club just after Covid to improve my confidence and be able to jam with total strangers off the cuff and this weekend I achieved it. It also received a positive response, much to my relief, so thank you for all the time and effort you invest in us. 😘

Improvisation is a very broad subject. It spans all genre and style. It engages all manner of techniques and requires many abstract and concrete values in physical skill, aural awareness and theoretical understanding. It can also be just as thunderous without any of these aforementioned things. Just by letting go and playing like nobody is listening and dancing when on one is watching or singing in the shower! or the car! Watching a great dancer or athlete can be found to be just as impactful choreographed as it is in the unique moment of freestyle movements in real time. No matter what, it is a tricky thing to explain especially as there is no ‘one size fits all’. The FIRST thing to let go of is the fear. How do we do that? Look at it this way, let’s say we are lost in a forest. Let’s say we are not completely lost because we know where we are but we’re not sure which way to go to get home. Maybe someone realises they have a spare phone power pack in their rucksack. Hooray!!! We can ring someone and tell them where we are. They can tell us how to find the path home! Imagine how much better that would be than ringing someone and saying “we’re lost in the forest but we’re not sure which forest it is and we have no idea what part of the forest we’ve wandered into.” The first thing we need to know is, where are you? Can you easily name all the strings on the guitar in standard tuning? Can you play open position chords? Can you play bar chords? Do you know what a triad is? What a scale is? Do you know or really can you play any scales? Which ones? Do you understand the concept of Major and Minor? Can you hear the difference between major and minor? Do you have a specific genre in mind? There are lots of things to consider when crafting your approach to improvisation. I’d like us to get this discussion going together. Tell us/each other where you are and what you think will help move you forward as a soloist. I will start with putting up some ideas in the Improvisation Station and the Technique section in the Classroom area. For some of you the Nail the Snail Scales series and the Lawn Mower Effect in Technique Street would be worth a look.

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