From Good to Great: 8 Key Tips to Improve Your Guitar Improvisation

Ever wondered how to transform your guitar solos from mechanical to magical? Join me, Steve Stine, on the Steve Stine Guitar Podcast, where you'll uncover the essential secrets to elevating your improvisation skills. Together, we'll explore the importance of understanding your musical context, from mastering scales and chords to practicing with a metronome for technical refinement. With my eight essential tips, you'll move beyond just hitting the right notes to creating memorable and expressive solos.

Instruments in hand, we navigate the dynamic landscape of various musical styles. Whether you're tackling the high-octane energy of rock, the soulful licks of blues, or the catchy melodies of pop, adapting your solos to fit the song's stylistic elements is crucial. We'll dissect the critical aspects of chord changes, tempo, and groove, ensuring your solos are both harmonically and rhythmically compelling. Learn how to handle non-diatonic chords like a pro and speak the musical language that resonates with your audience.

Lastly, we delve into the finesse of connecting musical elements within your solos. Inspired by guitar legends such as Joe Bonamassa, we emphasize the power of rhythm and chord alignment. Discover how to construct musical sentences, much like a storyteller, using bends, vibrato, and slides to add emotional depth and color. And remember, the journey doesn't stop here—continuous growth and a commitment to pushing your musical boundaries are key to avoiding stagnation and achieving guitar mastery. Tune in and take the next step in becoming the guitarist you aspire to be!

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:36 Improvising Solos
• 7:59 Musical Situation and Skillset Assessment
• 18:20 Connecting Musical Elements in Guitar Solos
• 28:29 Adding Musical Elements in Guitar Solos
• 38:47 Continuous Growth in Guitar Playing

Transcript

Steve [00:00:01]:
Hello, everybody. Steve Stine here from guitarzoom.com dot. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the Steve Stine Guitar podcast today. What we're going to be doing is talking about eight things that I think would be very beneficial for you if you're trying to learn how to improvise solos, but you're struggling with making them sound musical, okay? And a lot of times, it's not just your skill set, but it's your mindset that can make a really big difference. So today, what I want to do is we want to discuss the difference between a fundamental or a rudimentary practice, and then eight things that I think could benefit you in trying to make your solo sound more authentic and more creative. So the first thing we need to understand is our skillset, right? What are the capabilities that we have on the guitar that we have to offer to this particular musical situation that we find ourselves in? Right? Do we just know pentatonic, or do we know some diatonic? Do we know our triads on the fretboard? Right? Do we know the arpeggios? And it's okay if you don't. I'm just saying, what do you know about the elements that exist on your fretboard? So, let's say you say, well, all I know is a minor pentatonic, or all I know is a minor pentatonic scale. Okay, so let's say you knew a minor pentatonic in this first position, but you don't know the second position or you don't know the third position.

Steve [00:01:31]:
You don't know any other position than that one position. Now, you know that with practice, you could learn more of your fretboard, which is something that you should certainly work toward. Right? But if you're gonna solo over something today, you're gonna be called up on stage to improvise over something. Your skillset is your skill set. That's what you have to offer right now. And, yes, I would highly recommend you continually try to expand your capabilities on the guitar, you know, both intellectually and physically. But let's. Let's just say that's what you have is just this one position.

Steve [00:02:05]:
Well, that's what you have to offer. That's your skill set. And then you also have your capability of playing that, not just seeing it and understanding it, but your ability of being able to execute it when you play it. So all of these questions are things that you want to acknowledge and decide for yourself where you need to go on your guitar journey and what it is that you need to practice. So you develop more skill, confidence, understanding of the various things that can happen on this fretboard, from chords to scales to connection of those things, ways of seeing scales both vertically and horizontally, being able to make connections between the chords or the arpeggios, whatever you want to think of them as, and the chords that are happening, the theory behind all of this and how they work together, all of this stuff is available to you. Okay? So let's go ahead and just talk about fundamental practice for a second. So when you're going to practice something technically or fundamentally, you might set a metronome at whatever tempo, and then you practice your exercises to develop strength and speed and stamina and all these sorts of things. And then you might go and start practicing some scales, right? So maybe you set the metronome and you practice the g major scale, and, you know, practice the shape over and over and over.

Steve [00:03:42]:
And then you go to the second position, you practice that. These are all fundamental, rudimentary practice elements to develop your ability of being able to play on the fretboard, visualize your fretboard, all of these sorts of things very, very important. Okay. But when it comes to improvisation, there's some questions that we need to ask ourselves, because all of these skill sets that we're developing are great, but we've got to find a way of being able to make them connect to the musical situation that we're going to be playing over. So let's say, for instance, we're going to play over this musical situation. So this is tip number one. This is one of the most important things I can ever tell. People know the musical situation you're going to play over.

Steve [00:04:29]:
Okay. This might not be you, but I see this all the time, where somebody might grab a backing track off YouTube or something like that, and they want a jam over the top, so they grab it and they go, oh, it's an a minor, right? But they don't figure out anything else about the jam. Like, they don't know the chord changes. They haven't listened to it to see if there's maybe a couple of different sections of the song. Maybe there's a kind of a verse sounding thing and a chorus sounding thing or something like that. They just play. Now, again, that's okay. But the more you understand about that musical situation, the more you can interact with it and make closer connections to the things that are actually happening.

Steve [00:05:11]:
This is what a lot of the players that you like to listen to. That's exactly what they do. They don't just roll the dice and hope for the best. Right. Now, improvisation does have an element of that, but there's also elements of absolute connectivity. Okay? For instance, the most crucial one of all, if the song is in a minor, you choose a minor, whatever, pentatonic, diatonic, whatever, to play over the top. You don't just go, I'll just use any scale I want. Right.

Steve [00:05:42]:
Because that wouldn't make sense to you. But the second part of that, which is what else is going on in this song or in this chord progression you haven't figured out, and that that's perfectly okay. I don't think that's perfectly okay. I think you need to know more about it. Okay, so let's break down this musical situation thing. So, for me, step number one is, what am I trying to improvise over? What style? What is this musical situation telling me? When I say musical situation, what do I mean? Could be a backing track, maybe. I've been hired to do a solo, a guest spot over somebody's song. So they send it to me.

Steve [00:06:21]:
Well, I want to listen to the song and get a feel for all the things we're going to talk about. Maybe I'm going to get up on stage and play with some friends, right. They call me up to improvise over something. So if they say, oh, it's a blues thing versus, oh, it's enter Sandman or whatever it might be, right. These are different musical situations that I'm going to think about. I might approach a blues thing far different than I would soloing over Enor Sandman. Right. Or whatever the case may be.

Steve [00:06:51]:
Maybe this is. You have a band that you play with, and you play all kinds of solos, and you're just not sure how to approach soloing in general over really anything. So if we start with stylistically, what are we dealing with here? Right. If it's blues, it's going to tell me something about the music that I might want to try and make a closer connection to that is bluesy. If it's hard rock or metal, well, then I might not be as concerned with the melody as I am with some technical flash. Right. Or something to do with the. Again, all of these things overlap.

Steve [00:07:26]:
It depends. It's not like one band just does the same thing all the time. I mean, you could have bands that do all kinds of different things, and therefore, you know, you have to have different approaches to different songs within even the structure of one band. So. But this is what I'm thinking about. If it's really high energy, I might want to add to that energy. If it's a slow blues thing, I might be thinking more about relaxing and kind of dialing into that and trying to add to the feel of it. If it's more of what I'll call a pop style.

Steve [00:07:55]:
And by pop, I don't just mean, like, Ariana Grande or something. I mean anything that's really just holistically major or minor. Right. I remember you by Skid row. Skid Row is a rock band, no doubt about it. But I remember you as really just that g to c. Right. Or if I'm playing more, whatever it is, those are all just regular kinds of songs.

Steve [00:08:23]:
They're not really blue songs, they're not hard rock songs. They just kind of fit in the middle. Right. So that's the first thing, is what am I dealing with stylistically? The second thing I ask myself is, what key is this in? And what do I know about the chord changes for the part I'm going to improvise over, because it's very possible that the song uses these chords, but when it gets to the solo, there's a key change or a modulation or the chords are different or whatever. Well, that's the part I need to focus on. I want to know the whole song. I want to. I want to spend some time trying to kind of listen to this and get a feel for the vocal, the melody, blah, blah, blah.

Steve [00:09:00]:
But I do really need to know the part that I'm going to be soloing over. What's happening now, oftentimes, it'll be the same part as the rest of the song, but that's not always the case, and I need to be aware of that. And then I'm going to go even deeper, and I'm going to start thinking about tempo and groove. Now, I might not have time to figure out exactly the tempo. Like, oh, it's 126 or it's 138. You know, I might not have time for that because I've been called up on stage and I'm gonna play with somebody. Well, I don't have that, but I do have a roundabout understanding, as soon as they start playing, of what the tempo is going to be. Right.

Steve [00:09:34]:
So if the tempo's like, let's say that's my quarter note, 1234. Well, the first thing I do is do the quarter note, 8th note, 16th note, thought process. So if this is my quarter note, my 8th notes, then would be bum bum bum bum bum bum bum 16th. So I can quickly make an assessment off of that tempo, of whether those 16th notes are playable in some capacity with my skill set. Now, this is where I get. People get confused about this stuff. I'm not trying to make anybody into a speed demon, but music uses these things. You can't just play whole notes.

Steve [00:10:19]:
Like, you can't write a song that's just whole notes. The singer's singing whole notes, and you're playing whole notes, and your drummer's just hitting a snare drum on whole notes. It would be really, really, really boring and would sound silly. So people get in these weird arguments about fast versus slow. Music uses whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 8th notes, 16th notes, 32nd notes, blah, blah, blah. That's what music does. And then triplets and everything else on top of that. That's what music does.

Steve [00:10:49]:
So it's not whether or not you can play everything at 128th notes. That's not it. It's, can you play things that are functional and useful, which is really quarter, 8th, and 16th? That's really what you're gonna be dealing with most of the time. Now, if my, for instance, if I was playing just an aim minor seven, so now I'm thinking that's my quarter. So my 8th, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. 16 deca. Deka deka deka deka deka duh. Those are my three parameters that I'm gonna spend most of my time with.

Steve [00:11:27]:
So, again, I might not know the tempo, but I do. I've already assessed these three elements. So my quarters, 8th notes, 16th. See, I can. I can move between these three worlds as needed because I'm comfortable with the skill sets at that tempo. So, these are the quick assessments that I'm making about this musical situation. Right. Right away, the style, the key, which is telling me what scale options I have relative to my skill set.

Steve [00:12:07]:
Okay. And then the chords, any changes? Are all the chords fitting in the key, which we call diatonic, or are there any chords that don't fit, especially when I'm going to be soloing? Right? Is there a chord that might not fit? And I need to be aware of that, because when that chord comes up, if I'm just playing whatever scale and this chord comes up and it doesn't fit diatonically in the scale, it's going to sound terrible. When I try to solo over it. If I'm aware of it, I can go, okay, so here's e minor, here's d. Here's CDH, but then there's c sharp, which doesn't fit. So I might be playing e minor, d, c, whatever, right? And then c sharp comes up. So let me just put that together real quick. So we have e minor.

Steve [00:13:09]:
See, over that one chord, I'm gonna have to make some adjustments. That's what I have to do. So that's knowing the musical situation, spending some quality time figuring out a plan. And again, it's not that you always have a lot of time if you're called up to play on stage. First of all, you probably have the ability of being able to do this, or they probably wouldn't call you up on stage, but they're not calling you up and going, okay, we're not gonna tell you what key. We're not gonna tell you the song, we're not going to tell you the jam. We're not going to tell you anything. We're just going to start playing.

Steve [00:13:40]:
The drummer's going to count it off, and then we're all just going to start playing and see what happens. That doesn't. That doesn't really happen. They're probably going to tell you, hey, let's do tush by ZZ top, and we're doing it in the key of g. Okay, I know what tush sounds like. Don't get. You know what I mean? I've got an idea. Or we're going to do a slow blues in the key of a minor.

Steve [00:13:58]:
Okay. Slow blues that tells me a minor that tells me what we're doing might not tell me everything, but as we start playing, I can listen and go, oh, okay, so that's where they're going to the forecourt, or that's where they're going to, or, oh, there was something else happening there. Real time improvisation on stage is a little bit different because maybe they didn't give me all the information, so I've got to make some assessments. But your situation might not be that you're involved in real time improvisation on stage. You might have a backing track that you're playing or a song that you're writing or a band that you want to try out with or a song that your band plays that you've got time to work on. Okay, so number two, understand how your skill set can be used with the musical situation, which we've already kind of talked about. But that's really important. You've got to become intuitive and aware of your abilities as well as your inability.

Steve [00:14:53]:
So if the tempo is the 16th notes are too fast for said tempo, you're already aware of that. Now, that doesn't mean that you couldn't do 16th notes at all, right? You could do something, but maybe you're just doing something where you've got your eighths or quarters, 16 or 8th notes. Excuse me. And then 16th notes. Maybe you're just doing some pull offs or some hammer ons or something like that to acknowledge that 16th note speed. But you're not doing big, elaborate licks or something like that. Maybe you don't have that available. But knowing what you're capable of, knowing your fretboard and the limitations you might have, or the scales that you have available to you, or the soloing paths that you have, right? Blues, you could play major or minor or both at the same time.

Steve [00:15:51]:
You could play mixolydian or dorian, like, all of these different things that are possible if you have the knowledge and you have the understanding on your fretboard. Maybe you don't have all that. That's okay. I'm just saying these are all things. This is why we play and we practice and we get better and we get smarter. Again, not just from the guitar standpoint, but the ability of being able to work with and interact with a musical situation. Okay, number three, avoid the guitar brain. Now, what is the guitar brain? The guitar brain is this crazy thing in your head that tells you you gotta play more, you gotta play faster, you gotta play every lick that you've ever learned, certainly the ones in the last three months that you've been working on.

Steve [00:16:33]:
And your solo is like 12 seconds long. And you gotta try and play every scale you've ever learned, every lick that you've ever learned, and as fast as humanly possible. The guitar brain is what gets in the way of music. The guitar brain is what we use when we're practicing and studying and developing and blah, blah, blah. When it comes time to actually play improvise, we need to shut that guitar brain down, because what we need to be able to do is listen to the music and respond to the music to the band, right? All of these things that are happening right now in real time, we want to be experiencing that and then respond to it. The guitar brain is just like, go, go, go. Do everything that you've ever done before. And the problem is, is that it sounds like that when you solo like that, it just sounds like you're just losing your friggin mind, just trying to do everything all at once.

Steve [00:17:27]:
So you've got to put your guitar brain in check when it comes time to improvise. Now, again, you could listen to anybody out there. I'm just using Joe Bonamassa as an example. But if you were to listen to Joe Bonamassa, the first thing he's going to do is probably not play right away. He's going to let it, you know, the rhythm, kind of play a little bit, and he's going to go, oh, okay, I see. I'm figuring out where I need to fit in, and then he's going to go, and he's going to start deciding what he's going to do. Maybe he's decided on a blue scale, minor or major or whatever the song requires. Right.

Steve [00:17:59]:
And he might be thinking, which goes into something else, but he might be thinking, like, where do I want to be on the fretboard? Where do I want to start? We're going to talk about that as well. So avoiding the guitar brain. So number four, connect with phrasing. So now you've established the musical situation tempo wise, groove wise. What I mean when I say groove is, is it a straight feel? Is it kind of a swing feel? You know, ticket? What do I know about this? So now when I get in there and I start trying to phrase, what that means is I'm going to try and create sentences. I'm not just going to go, because that doesn't sound like music. Right? Even if I go, it still doesn't sound like music. Okay, you've got to learn to talk in sentences, which means you have to stop playing.

Steve [00:18:57]:
Just like I have to breathe. I have to stop talking. Okay. Something very, very important. I can also change the way I'm speaking. Sometimes I speak faster, sometimes I speak slower, and sometimes I stop talking altogether to create more impact on the next thing that I'm going to say. Soloing is exactly the same way. So when I get in there, what I can do is start thinking about instead of all six strings, you know, pentatonic, diatonic, whatever, all the frets, all this stuff.

Steve [00:19:29]:
And again, there's guitar brain going at it. What I have to do is decide on a couple of strings and just start making something happen. Now, let's say again, I'm over this. Okay? So, for me, a lot of times phrasing with the groove, with the tempo, quarter note, 8th note, 16, I'll start thinking scat singing in my head. I'm not thinking pitch. I'm not thinking that deep. I'm just thinking da dum ba ba ba. Just thinking some sort of rhythmic thing that matches, see, whatever it might be.

Steve [00:20:22]:
So that's what phrasing is to me, is it has a beginning and it has an ending, but it can also, be rhythmically interesting in between. It doesn't just have to go right. It might be. Or, I mean, it could be anything. And it doesn't just have to be those two strings. But my point is, I'm not overwhelmed by the fact that I have to play all six strings and all the notes all the time. That's guitar brain. I got to figure something out here.

Steve [00:20:51]:
If it's an a minor, this leads to the next thing. Number five. Connect with the chord connection. It's called chord connection. Okay, so, you're connecting with the chords is what you're doing. Not sure why that was so difficult to say, but. So, if this is a minor, I already know. One of the prime notes for me to try and target while I'm phrasing is the a.

Steve [00:21:13]:
It's the most obvious thing. I need a to be more important than the other notes that I'm playing. How do I do that? I need to emphasize that note. I need to make the audience understand or the listener understand that that note at this moment in time is very, very important to me. Now, as you get better at this, of course, you can go to other notes and emphasize other things, but the problem is, is if your guitar brain kicks in, you're just gonna be emphasizing, oh, that was the 9th, and that was the 7th, and that was the 11th, and then that was the third, and that was, okay, so, what that means then is you're just playing everything. Your listener isn't getting that. Your listener's just going, oh, he's just playing everything, or she's just playing everything all the time. So don't get caught up in, oh, I got to do everything, because that's what my teacher said, or that's what the book said, or that's what I've been studying.

Steve [00:22:05]:
That's fine if it works. But start very simply. If you've never done it before, the first thing you need to do is try and make connections to that a in whatever way you want. Right. Whatever you like. I mean, there's a million things you could do, but I now have a purpose, and that purpose is the a. I'm trying to get to the a. I'm trying to make the a sound more important.

Steve [00:22:40]:
Does that mean I have to play it all the time? No. Does that mean I have to start and end on it all the time? No. Again, there's no parameters like that, but you have to find a way of making that sound more important than something else. That's the way this works. So, connecting to the chords if the next chord in the sequence was d minor, obviously d would be a great place to go. And I'm telling you, even if you just emphasized a over the a in some capacity, with your phrasing, with the groove, with your skill set, and then the D minor comes along and you start trying to direct yourself toward the DH already your solo is going to sound a lot more authentic because the audience or the listener is able to hear. This person is making connections to these chords, which is way different than. Or you're just playing notes again, there's no real phrasing happening.

Steve [00:23:40]:
You're just doing the same thing over and over and over, and there's no direction, there's no purpose. You're just playing. And you've probably done that before, especially if you've played over jam tracks and you've never tried to figure out the chords. You're just moving around, hoping that things again, rolling the dice, hoping it works. Well, sometimes it does work, but unfortunately, there are times when you're nervous or there's a lot of people in the audience, or somebody famous is in the audience, and it doesn't work because you're relying on chance. Do not rely on chance. Rely on your skill set, on your knowledge, on your confidence. That's what you want to do.

Steve [00:24:20]:
Okay, so moving on. Number six, dynamics is really important. Now, dynamics doesn't just mean I'm going to hit a bunch of buttons on my foot pedal to change from clean to dirty. Yes, I can do that, but I have lots of stuff in between that just by playing in between there. Now, the song might not need that. If I'm playing over a slayer song, I'm not really getting dynamic, right? I need energy and I'm on ten. But if I'm playing overdose, the softness and hardness in which I'm picking that string can make a difference. Maybe changing my pickup selector from, you know, the bridge to the neck or something like that, or the volume on my guitar.

Steve [00:25:14]:
There's lots of different things I could do on this channel right now before I have to switch over to another channel. When I switch over here now, I'm. I'm rocking right now, I've got a lot more distortion here. So moving from there to there are dynamically different. Okay, so I might want to move to that distortion, or the song might have wanted that to begin with. Again, this is the assessment I made in number one, right? But once I get to that channel, there's a lot of variety, dynamics that I can use. So for me, dynamics start with volume, the way you're picking the volume of your guitar, the pickup selector, all of these different things. But I also want to mention here in number six, something that I call dynamic contrast, which is, again, once you've shut the guitar brain off, you start thinking about contrast.

Steve [00:26:12]:
High, low, fast, slow, loud, soft. Play, don't play, play. You know, go, whatever. I mean, there's a million different things that you could do. Repetition, not repetition, and diatonic, pentatonic. I mean, it could go on and on and on. But the point is, there's a lot of different things that you can do to create some dynamics that aren't just volume, although volume is a great place to begin. Okay, then we move on to number seven, vocal tools.

Steve [00:26:42]:
Okay. For me, vocal tools are hammer ons, pull offs, slides, bends, and vibrato. These are the things that make the guitar sound like the guitar. Okay. Without those, we're just playing up and down. Okay. So it's learning how to manipulate and squeeze music out of the notes that you're playing. So when I go to play, I know I've got dynamics, but see how I did a little bend on that note right there? And then I went to my a, my root right there, and I'm adding vibrato.

Steve [00:27:20]:
I also slid in and slid out. So I'm creating a phrase, but I'm also using these vocal tools to make it sound more like a voice, more authentic. It's not just piano notes, but the way I can. And again, the guitar brain says, you know, do it all really fast and do everything at once. No, I need to be careful that I'm trying to connect to the music, and I'm doing this in a musical sense. I haven't lost my phrasing, I haven't lost my direction of what note I'm trying to emphasize at any given moment in time. I'm not trying to emphasize way too many things at once. So it just sounds like I'm not really emphasizing anything.

Steve [00:28:08]:
Always remember, if you can play all the notes, you could emphasize all the notes. But the truth is, is by that point, you're not emphasizing anything. So you've got to learn to be particular when you do these things. And vocal tools, the great thing is, is that they add this human. So you want to learn how to play so it sounds very smooth when you play. Now, again, if I'm playing over Slayer, I don't know how smooth I need. It depends. And I'm not picking on Slayer.

Steve [00:28:41]:
I'm just saying the musical situations change. Therefore, my approach is going to have to be different if I'm going to play Slayer anyway. I've got to have more technical skill probably than I do if I'm playing over a slow BB king song. Now that's a general statement, right? Because the BB king blues song is going to need bending and vibrato and all these things where maybe the slayer one doesn't need as much as that. So who's to say, right? I mean, it's hard to say what. Maybe different technical skills is a good way to put that. So when it comes to these vocal tools, what you want to get comfortable with is not saying, oh, yeah, I know I've done that before, or I know how to do that. That's not what we're looking for.

Steve [00:29:22]:
What you want is confidence in your output, okay? In your execution. When you go to play a bend or you're going to do a vibrato, or you're going to do a hammer on or a slide or whatever it might be, the execution's got to sound good. It's got to feel good and sound good. It's got to be in the right musical context. Which goes back to number one. I have had many students, back when I used to teach a lot of private students, where we would jam together and a student would try and go for a bend or try and do a vibrato, and it would fail. And then they'd get panicked and they'd get nervous, and then they'd stop and they'd stop doing it. Like, the big thing is you've got to find a way of being able to execute these things with confidence.

Steve [00:30:04]:
So when you go for it, the bend is there, it's in pitch, it sounds good. Your vibrato is there, right? For me, I've always loved a smooth vibrato. It doesn't need to sound like you're underwater. And you do it on every friggin note. Like, it just sounds weird when you do that stuff. Save it for when you get there. Then you add the vibrato when you've got time to add it. Don't just add it on everything all the time.

Steve [00:30:39]:
Avoid guitar brain. Okay, next thing. Number eight, which is the last one, is color. Now, there's lots of other things, but I don't want to make this 5 hours long. So color expansions, okay? Taking, for instance, the pentatonic or the diatonic, it wouldn't make any difference. And you learn how to expand it in a creative way. So, for instance, if I was using pentatonic, a simple color expansion could be something like the blues note, right? So if I'm playing the pentatonic scale, that note right there, the flatted five, which also exists on the 8th fret of the third string. Now, that's a note, that 8th fret of the third string.

Steve [00:31:21]:
Because I'm playing five and seven on the third string. Because I'm an a minor pentatonic, I will slide to it and back all the time, you see? So the blues note may or may not be, you know, fitting the musical situation that I'm in. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I don't know. Right. I don't know the musical situation right now. But that's a note that I could add in. That's going to sound great.

Steve [00:31:49]:
And I don't just have to add it in. In terms of playing again, that's great, but it. I'm kind of wasting the note. So if I'm going to use that blues note, number one, I'm going to use it sparingly. I'm not just going to use it all the time. And number two, I might use it in a more creative way instead of just playing it, which I would do, don't get me wrong, but I might also use, like that sliding to add that in. And again, not added in all the time. The pentatonic.

Steve [00:32:26]:
The beauty of the pentatonic is it's this, like this skeleton. And when we start adding in other color notes, they're like meat that go on the skeleton. The skeleton is always there. And it's crucial. Cause it's what holds everything together. Right? But we need the meat on there to make it look like something. Sound like something. So that's where those kind of notes can come in.

Steve [00:32:48]:
So that's one thing that you can do, is add that note. Another note is, let's say we were doing something that isn't so bluesy. Again, maybe I'm playing over an a minor chord or something like that. And I add in what we call the second or the 9th. So if I was in a, I'd be adding in the note b. And you can hear just by playing that note that it adds this beautiful melody that the pentatonic did not have. Because the pentatonic is all either whole notes or larger or, excuse me, whole steps, not whole notes. Whole steps are larger.

Steve [00:33:32]:
Right? So there's nothing that close together. So when we add this 9th in or this second, we get a half step and it adds this beautiful sound. It might be too nice for the musical situation. I don't know. Gotta figure it out. I could add the blues note at the 9th. I'm just not guitar braining it and adding them all together at once as fast as humanly possible. I might want to save them and use them sparingly and use them in separate situations.

Steve [00:34:06]:
Different phrases that I'm playing. That way, I can constantly change up the way it sounds to the listener. Here's the bass element, which is the pentatonic. Okay, so here I'm adding in some of this blues note. Okay, so that's a little different, moving back and forth. Now I'm adding in this night a little different again. So it's changing up the way it sounds to the listener. Certainly changing up the way it feels to me.

Steve [00:34:26]:
Right. Another thing that you can do is what we can call grace notes. And basically, for me, a grace note is anything. I tend to use these moving forward, going up, but, you know, you got to figure out what works best for you. But basically, I can take any note of the pentatonic or really any note of a diatonic and play a note that doesn't fit in the scale a half step before the note that I want, and I just slide up. So let me show you what I mean. I'm going to play a minor pentatonic, and when I get to the first string, which I'd play five and eight, I'm going to play a four as a slide. I'm gonna do the same thing, four to five on the second string.

Steve [00:35:14]:
Okay, now, we've already talked about in the third string, I'd have five and seven, but I'd also have four if I added in the 9th. But watch this. I'm gonna play four five right there. So I'm playing seven on the fourth string, which is the root. And then I'm playing four five on the third string. But there I'm sliding from the three to the four on the third string, and it sounds really nice. It's almost kind of jazzy. And I'll use those all over the place.

Steve [00:35:47]:
These notes that I'm playing, these grace notes, if you want to call them that, they don't fit the scale, and I'm not emphasizing them. They're just there to push me from something that is a bit dissonant to something that sounds more comfortable, more like it belongs. So grace notes are great. Another thing that you can do is adding in chromatics, and you gotta be a little careful with this. But really, you can add them in anywhere. So let's say I was on the first string. Again, I was playing five and eight, and then I now know I've got seven, which would be the second or the 9th. But in between the seven and the five, I add that 6th by doing pull offs from seven, six, five.

Steve [00:36:31]:
On the third string, I have seven and five. I could play the six in between. Sounds really nice. Now, again, I don't need to be in a big hurry when I do this, but it sounds really nice when I do that. So I tend to do these as pull offs versus hammer ons. I like to go backward more, but I can add all of these things that I've been talking about in various different stages as I'm playing. So there's lots of other things that you could do, but this is a great way to get started and rethink the way that you're thinking about improvisation. Maybe do some more planning.

Steve [00:37:12]:
Maybe this will also give you answers on your rudimentary or fundamental practice on some things. Oh, I need to learn more positions, or I need to be able to move through here a little bit better, because it's hard for me to play 16th notes at all. And again, people will shut down and go, well, it's better to play one note than a million notes. And. Okay, but the reason why people say that is because they can't play a million notes. Okay, so it's not a matter of should you play 16th notes all the time? I've already said no, you probably shouldn't. Okay, but you should be able to tap into it. If you can't tap into it, well, you're left with quarter notes and 8th notes.

Steve [00:37:48]:
Well, let's just hypothetically say you couldn't tap into 8th notes. Now you're just playing quarter notes the whole time. How fun would that be, right? Or you can't play quarter notes. So let's just play whole notes the entire time. Again, you gotta be reasonable here. This is music. It requires a skill set. It doesn't just require knowledge of something, but it requires the availability of being able to execute something that fits musically.

Steve [00:38:11]:
That's what you're looking for. And music can be fast, it can be slow, it can be high, it can be low, it can be rock, it can be blues, it can be country, it can be all kinds of different things. So don't try and change the narrative to fit your parameters, because that's where you are in your journey. And you don't want to learn anything further than that. Do just the opposite. What else can I do to expand to make what I'm doing right now, even better than what I'm doing. And yes, it's going to take work. Welcome to the world of being a guitar player.

Steve [00:38:39]:
I will practice until the day I die or I can't play anymore. I physically cannot play anymore. That's what I do. It's not just, you know, what did I learn 30 years ago? And that's all I do. Every day is the same thing I did 30 frigging years ago. I do not. I got to keep learning, trying to get better at what I do. All right? So take care.

Steve [00:38:58]:
And thank you so much for joining me. All right.