A lot of guitarists out there neglect improvisation. In my opinion, I think it’s the most ignored technique as a musician. If you want to become a better musician and if you even wanna play in a band, ya gotta be good at improv and ear training ’cause if you’re not, you’re gonna get lost. I learned that you don’t become a good improviser over night. It could take years and hours of hard work. Becoming a good improviser on guitar requires a couple of things: 1) Good listening skills and 2) Dedication.

To become a good improviser there are tons of perfect pitch trainer courses out there and I work with one called, “Complete Guitar By Ear” by Mark John Sternal. It was a CD instructional course that I picked up from the old Borders store years ago and I still have that CD. Still work with it too.

If you prefer not to work with perfect pitch courses, there are other options. Stop looking at guitar tab when learning songs and figure ’em out by ear. That’s one way of getting good at improv. That’s how a lot of famous guitarists out there became virtuoso’s ’cause all they did was sit in front of the stereo trying to figure out riffs & guitar licks by ear. Not looking at tab or sheet music or nothing like that.

I’m not trying to become the next guitar god or anything. I just wanna improve and get better. Just wanna take my guitar playing to the next level and move forward. Just wanna play and have fun. Learn new things. I got pretty good rhythm guitar chops but wanna improve my lead playing. I really wanna get good at lead guitar ’cause I wanna jam out and have fun when I jam with other musicians someday.

The key to getting good at improv is memorizing in your head of what each notes sound like. There are only 12 notes of music and if you can memorize the sound of each note, then you pretty much mastered music.

I’m trying all I can to improve and get better so I can start jamming in bands and stuff. That’s what I wanna do. I love learning guitar. I just got tired of playing the same old things all of the time and just wanna get better. I still prefer to be self-taught ’cause it’s better that way, in my opinion.

Kev