Guitar Pedagogy

When I started playing the guitar, I quickly became a “scale nerd.” My guitar player role models were all in jam bands, and played long, notey solos, and so it seemed to me that the thing to do was to learn a lot of scales and play them all over the neck and make lots of grimaces while doing so. I just jumped right in, and started getting my hands dirty. Not every student is like that, however. For many students, just showing them the notes of a scale is not enough - they don’t know where to start! For these cases, I created this little excercise, called “call & response,” in an effort to 1) understand the goals of improvisation and 2) feel more comfortable in the role of improvisor.

What about scales and chord theory?

It’s true that a thorough knowledge of music theory can only help an improvisor, but this is no reason to hold off on improvising until a student knows a certain number of scales or chords structures. At its most fundamental level, musical improvisation is merely a spontaneous creation of sound. I try to start working with improvisation as soon as students have learned a handful of notes, usually the notes of the first two or three strings in first position (which should be pretty early on: see “The First Lesson“). I feel that some free creative activity serves as a nice complement to note-reading and learning correct hand position, which can feel very strict and dry to a new student.

Learning by example

While a student might have a perfectly good sense of rhythm, a nice ear, and know their notes by heart, handing them a scale pattern and saying “Go ahead, I’ll play the chords, you take a solo!” can be confusing or just overwhelming. Faced with so many notes to choose from, and without the intuitive understanding of scales and dissonance/consonance developed after years of experimentation, a first-time improvisor will often either freeze up, playing one note and then saying “oops..,” or merely shrug and start playing notes at random. This is because we as teachers often take for granted that a student will already have an understanding of musical style: we assume that they’ll know what a guitar solo is supposed to sound like, and try to imitate it.

This also reveals a very common misconception about improvisation: that an improvisation is “pure” spontaneity. Even at very basic level, using only a handful of notes, there is a logic, or, even more precisely, a set of rules to follow when improvising. This is dictated by the musical style, and by the surrounding sounds. And it is subtle enough that it is difficult to describe verbally in any way that will be helpful to a new improvisor. Otherwise, our job would be simple: “OK, start on A and play three quarter-notes and two eighth-notes, following the scale pattern - you’re improvising!” Yeah, right. So what a student needs at this early stage is a real practical example. They need to hear what the notes they have learned can do! And that’s what you’re there for.

Keep it simple

This brings us to my little excercise. The basic idea, to begin with, is that you improvise a short phrase, and ask the student to “respond” with their own notes. Before we get there, however, I find that the student gets the most out of it if you do a round of strict imitation, where you ask the student to play back the notes that you play, in a the same rhythm. The most important rule: keep it simple. Use only the notes that your student has learned (duh!), and also try to show them clearly which finger and which string you are playing. Don’t confuse this with an aural exam - sometimes I’ll even say the note-names as I go. You want the student to feel as comfortable as possible so that they can concentrate on the musical phrase and not worry about having to figure out notes. Keep the rhythms clear and simple, and also stylistically appropriate. For example, I’ll often use this excercise in conjunction with an introduction to the blues. When we do the call and response I try to use phrases that would logically fit over, say, “Hoochie Coochie Man.”

role reversal

Once the student seems to get the hang of the kinds of things you’re throwing at them, ask them to create phrases that you will then imitate. Explain that, like you’ve been doing, the rules are that they stick to the notes that they’ve learned (no grabbing notes at random way up the neck) and that the rhythm be very clear. Sometimes I’ll even accompany them with a simple blues shuffle lick, and then jump in with my repetition of their line, so that they get a clearer idea of the context.

Most of the time even the shyest of students will have gotten the idea and be able to play back a few phrases in the correct “style.” If they get frustrated, try to be encouraging, showing them that there are no wrong notes, and that even playing one note in a good rhythm can work. If they start to feel like they’ve exhausted all the possibilities, call it a day and move on to something else - you’ll come back to this later.

have a conversation

The main goal is to give students a little taste of improvising that’s not intimidating. It works best in small doses, maybe at the end of a lesson after you’ve spent some time on notes and rhythms. I come back to it every couple of weeks, and my students are often pleased to get to do it again. After we’ve done it a few times, I’ll ask them to actually improvise a real “response” to the line that I play - maybe keeping the same notes and changing the rhythm, or vice versa. If they get that idea, than they’re really on the right track.

And the great thing about this excercise is that it can be as simple or as complex as you make it. As a student progresses, turn away and ask them to find the notes that you play just by ear. Use whole scales instead of just the first couple of strings. Use trickier rhythms and phrases. Try it over a blues progression, or something even more advanced. At each level it’s useful because there is always a direct exchange between the teacher and the student - you’re working on listening to other musicians while improvising, staying in a given rhythmic and harmonic context, and learnin to play in a given style in a way that’s hands on and intuitive rather than theoretical.

other applications

I’ve also found that this can be a good excercise for beginning students who seem to be a bit slower at getting their chops together. If they’re a bit sluggish at playing a little melody, or can’t seem to get the mechanics of right- and left-hand coordination just right, sometimes having to follow a piece of music can be too much of a distraction. This excercise can really help them to start really “playing.”

Know any other ways to use this excercise? What about other variations? Other approaches to teaching improvisation? Guitar Pedagogy would love your feedback - leave us a comment or send us an email.

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