How to Improvise on Guitar

Improvising on a musical instrument often means branching out from specific conventional melody structures. For guitar, musicians use the fretboard to create basic chords and melodies, and to do more advanced "improv" work. Here are some ways to get more creative within a structured guitar pattern.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Find your chord progression, key and tempo, and practice until you have it down. To improvise well, you have to have your basic pattern in place.
2. Add notes to chords. This is a common guitar improv technique: a C major will become a C major 7, or a G will be a G suspended. In other words, you're adding a note to a basic chord. Improv by trying out notes and listening to which ones sound good with a particular chord.
3. Set up a melodic fretboard pattern. Use a pentatonic scale (5 notes in an octave) to visualize which notes fit into the key you're playing. This is a step toward being able to "bend" the pattern without creating too much dissonance. Work through a pentatonic scale with a chord playing in the background to hear what it sounds like.
4. Add specific flourishes to solo lines. Do a walk-up of half-steps or add "in-between notes," as long as you end on a note that fits the scale. Branch out into improv, and then get back into the scale; your improv will get better over time.
5. Use rhythmic improvisation. If melodic line playing isn't your thing, you can create different sounds by playing parts of chords in creative rhythms (along to a drum if there is one). Try selecting a few strings and picking them in inventive ways for a different sound.