viala v1.0

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.