Improvising Tips

[Creme Fraiche]

I was messing around with various chords yesterday, but I was struggling to come up with a decent melody to go with them just ad lib. Are there any things I can focus to make my improvising skills better?

 

[YeahDoIt]

Practice various kinds of scales. Pentatonic scales might be a good start.

 

[The Y_man]

The other way is to play a song you know really well, but start altering the melody in a way that sounds good for you (i.e. keep the same chord progression, altered melody)

The Y-man

 

[The Y_man]

The other way is to play a song you know really well, but start altering the melody in a way that sounds good for you (i.e. keep the same chord progression, altered melody)

The Y-man

 

[petes]

These are good suggestions above. The secret I think is to practice ad libbing a *lot*. Also to get your quick thinking and chord recognition abilities to speed, play with the radio (or youtube or internet radio).

 

[brenden]

Play some chords... sing a riff in your head,.. a short one,...even as little as two or three notes... then play it a few times.. then sing a completely different riff to the same chords... play it a few times.... then add them together. And try using longer notes to start the riff to force yourself to think rhythmically aswell as melodically.
Try to develop a natural sense of listening to your own head and transferring that directly to the keyboard.
....just an idea,. good luck !

 

[Creme Fraiche]

Your replies are appreciated!

 

[KeysDude]

Something that helps improvisation and creating melodies is to sing or hum ideas over whatever piece music you're playing with (you don't have to do this out loud as well), sounds a bit daft but it helps paint ideas in your mind and gives more direction. When creating your own music, it helps to know all the basic minor and major scales but get on the web and learn some not so ordinary scales like the whole tone scale (there are only two ways to play it) or diminsihed whole half or half whole, these are great for adding some suspense into your music and they are very common jazz scales too so mixed with some chromatics will give you a jazzier sound. Just some more ideas.