I’ve been playing guitar for almost ten years now, but I’ve never taken the instrument seriously. I started actually learning how to play and understand music theory (very basic grasp of it, nowhere near competent yet). I’m trying to get up to speed with my legato and alternate picking techniques and learning the modes of the major scale through three notes per string. I wouldn’t say that I know the notes of the guitar by heart but I can figure them out pretty quickly. However when I try to improvise it sounds super beginnery and doesn’t have direction.
Say I start a Blues backing track in A Minor. I’ll use the A minor pentatonic with the blue note. I can only really play on the downbeat and the &. So my improv is 1&2& so on and so forth. I’m assuming the legato and alternate picking will help with this as I get it up to speed but how in the hell do I make my improv sound more melodic and meaningful? Do I only use the A minor blues scale or can I use the E minor pentatonic when there’s an E chord playing? How do I follow chord changes because I can’t for the life of me figure this out. It’s like guitar improvs best kept secret at least from me.
tl;dr I’m working on getting my technique up to speed but I don’t know how to make improv feel melodic and meaningful or follow chord changes. Please help me XD
submitted by /u/tdiggle_af
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