Improvisation Level 1

Without a doubt, the hardest topic to teach and learn on the guitar is improvisation. There is a reason you can find millions of videos on learning the scales you can use to improvise, but very few on actually how to then improvise with them. That reason; Improvisation is creative, personal and unique to everyone. How do you teach something that is unique to everyone, especially online?! Well, we've been working for months to bring you the start of an incredible series of courses that focuses on helping you discover your ability to improvise, which is a skill that can be learnt. So, let's talk about what we can expect from Level 1 of our Improvisation journey.

Improvising is one of the most beautiful and rewarding activities you can do in music. To be able to create a sound on the guitar that you've just thought in the moment is pure magic.

The scale is not your everything

The way we start learning to improvise, typically, is by using our pentatonic shapes. We learn these shapes all over the neck, and are then expected to be good at improvisation. However, this creates a big disconnect between the scale and musicality. We spend all the time diving into the scale shape, and moving through it quickly, but we forget to go a little deeper, and study the sounds that scale makes, the intervals within the scale, and actually, how to start creating melodies using it.

That's where Thomas comes in, as your shining light in a sea of scale shapes and more and more complicated theory. Our focus becomes about building our improvisation tools from the ground up. Starting with one note and just thinking about rhythms. Building the intervals in major and minor piece by piece, taking the time to really hear the sounds.

If you can solo with one note

Our mantra for this course is, "If you can improvise and solo with just a single note, then imagine what you could do with more". If you're finding yourself hitting a brick wall with your improvisation, I guarantee that what you don't need is more scales or more theory. What you need is to strip it all back, start to understand the impact of each individual note combined with different rhythms, and learn the importance of a tool bag of techniques. Slides, bends, legato, vibrato; These are the tools you have at your disposal when improvising, and we will ensure that you have a very real understanding of how to use them, and how to apply them to your lead improvisation.

So, when you're ready, it's time to start an incredible journey with Thomas, all about setting the foundation to your improvisation. Within the walls of this course you will learn the essential skills and mindset you need to become a great improvisational master, and as we branch out into the more technical stuff in later Levels, this becomes your bible to refer back to again and again.