What are some ways to improve your ear training and improv skills? Not only you have to have some music theory knowledge — you have to do a lot more work than that. Having a good skill at improvisation requires having a good ear. Having a good ear is tough to do but I’m trying my best. Here are some simple tips on improving your ear as a musician:

• Ear training instructional material – There are all kinds of great books, CD’s, DVDs and Iphone/Ipad apps that can help you improve your pitch in music. I try to go through this as much as I can and being self-taught at ear training is good stuff.
• Singing along to each note you play – To get the note memorized in your head easier, singing along to it is key. You don’t necessarily have to have a good singing voice to sing along to practice your pitch. I do this all the time and it works. You may have a shitty singing voice but doing this helps.
• Record yourself playing notes and see if you match it with your guitar – This helps too. Play anything random and see if you match the note without even looking at the fretboard.
• Jamming along to backing tracks – If you want to jam in a band playing along with recorded backing tracks is good practice. You can find all kinds of backing tracks in youtube. If you’re good with MIDI, you can even create your own backing tracks if you want to. Another good idea is get a loop pedal and jam along with that and I’m thinking about buying one of those sometime in the future.
• Jam along with your favorite recordings, try to copy solos off that song – Trying to figure out solos to your favorite songs without looking at tablature really helps too. Don’t look at guitar tab. Guitar tab is for babies. Be a real guitar player and figure it out by ear!
• Jam with actual musicians – Jamming with other musicians really helps your improvisation skills greatly and I’m gonna start doing this soon. Get yourself together with a guitar or bass player and just jam for fun. Or even better go to your local open jam night at a bar and I’m sure you’ll find plenty of musicians willing to play with you. Playing with as many musicians as possible will help improve your skills and I gotta start doing this myself.
• Just listen and think – You can even improve your improvisational skills by not even touching the guitar at all. Listen to as much music as possible. Listen to your favorite guitar heroes. Another good tip, don’t listen to any music at all and you can still hear music in your head. Listen to music in your head and try to copy what you hear in your head. I think the correct word I’m looking is “visualization”. “Visualizing” really helps too.

I’m sure there’s more tips and advice but those are some of the big ones.

I really want to become great at improv. That has always been my goal as a guitarist ever since I picked it up 19 or 20 years ago.

Kev