Learning To Improvise

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,
i’m learning to improvise (with my teacher) starting with the basic blues in G (alto),
i’ve put all my practice sheets in the following place

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x3o55qal1tpa33h/AACSavkH2wCJ5855J9MZnDiha?dl=0

and to view the sheets, you should be able to use

http://finalemusic.com/notepad/

These are very basic beginner exercises to get used to the basic blues
in G (alto). The idea is to be able to play them from memory,
using a 12 bar blues ( G C G G C C G G D C G/C G/D).

As the weeks go by, i might add more exercises – if anyone is interested.
The exercises also include major scale as well as basic blues.

Over the

[Anonymous]

just worked out how to save music sheets as pdf’s in macpro – go to print, and in the the print, select save as
pdf instead of sending a document to the printer

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x3o55qal1tpa33h/AACSavkH2wCJ5855J9MZnDiha?dl=0

[Anonymous]

a useful backing track for alto

[Anonymous]

another one

[Michael]

Pretty cool stuff there Sxpoet 🙂 Blues are good stuff for sure, just about everyone loves to hear it no matter where you live. The best approach you can take with your Blues Improvising (any kind of Improvising for that matter) is to just keep it simple. We can say more when we play less–Lee Allen is a great example of this. Check out his song below of Tic Toc; one of my personal favorite of his 🙂 Notice how simple he keeps his playing–it’s melodically and Rhthymically accurate while at the same time leaving lots of breaks in between his licks/riffs–this is always a great approach to use. I’ve had a couple of instances with the Blues Society here where I got to solo (they’re letting me take a some lead solos now) and I had no idea what I was going to do…it’s terrifying to say the least. Keeping it simple is the answer and, at least where I live here, the listeners usually enjoy this kind of playing more than anything else. Using just your 1-3-5 of the scale is all it takes..I’ve had a few instances of being able to create some effective licks/riffs even by just using 1 note. Lee Allen is from Louisiana and I live here in Arkansas–I’m only like 3 hours away from where he lived, pretty cool to live in a region of the US where guys like this originated from 🙂 So I’m always listening to these guys’ playing, taking note of what they do, etc.. Have a good listen to what Lee Allen is doing here..there’s a lot to be learned and see how you can apply his approach to the Blues in your own playing.

[Anonymous]

thanks Michael – my teacher started teaching me the blues (simple like you say), i’ve had 3 lessons so far and i’ve kept a record of all the stuff he taught me in

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x3o55qal1tpa33h/AACSavkH2wCJ5855J9MZnDiha?dl=0

like you say he wants me to learn all this stuff, its in G on alto.
Small steps, if you look at the sheets – this is small steps.
Hopefuly by the end of next year i should be into heavier stuff.

Got Jf’s killer blues, but thats a bit further ahead in terms of my lessons (will be covering that later)

[Anonymous]

btw – the tic tic video is unavailable to me in the uk

[Michael]

That’s really good he’s starting you off on the key of G–it’s one of the most popular in Blues playing and always a good starting point. Sorry about Lee Allen’s Tic Toc not coming up there where you live…youtube is really getting on lots of people’s nerves these days. See if you can find any other videos of Tic Toc on youtube, but Lee Allen has several songs that are great examples too of keeping it really simple. “Walking with Mr.Lee” is another great example, there’s very few notes that he uses from the scale in his Improvising, but notice how he uses them. Sounds great when we keep things simple, we don’t have to be going mental or something when we’re playing. Like Johnny told me when I did the Green Onions over a year ago, ‘nobody ever gets paid on a gig by the number of notes they play’ I put Walking with Mr.Lee for you down here, see if it will come up. Lee Allen’s song “Hot Rod Special” that Johnny did is another great example of what were talking about–if you notice, he’s not using that many notes from the scale–keep it simple.

[William Cingolani]

Thanks Michael and sxpoet. They’re the the best

[jake]

Great stuff guys! Thanks for sharing your lesson material sxpoet! Very helpful to say the least!! Love how simple it starts and just builds upon itself!!

[Author]

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