Improvisation Lesson 1: Understanding the fretboard
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
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This lesson is part of my complete video course for guitar. This transformational course goes beyond everything you have seen about how to learn the guitar. You will learn to understand the entire fretboard at once, allowing you to break out of memorized scale drawings and truly express yourself creatively. You will learn how songs and chord progressions are made, and how to express your own musical ideas over these songs. If you have always dreamed of truly understanding music and being able to improvise with complete freedom on the guitar, this is the course for you!
You do not need to know anything at all about music theory to begin, and you don't need to be able to read sheet music.
This course will give you a solid foundation in both harmony and improvisation on the guitar that will serve you for the rest of your life. Here are some of the skills you will learn in Module 1:
- Improvise freely in all 12 keys across the entire fretboard
- Master improvising over chord progressions, bringing out the harmony in your solos
- Master the 2-5-1 chord progression in all 12 keys (the most important progression in all jazz music)
- Method automatically gives you a deep, personal knowledge and mastery of all seven "modes" of the major scale
- Learn to create a wide variety of chords and harmonic environments on the guitar
- Method 100% integrated with your ear, with creative exercises for both guitar and voice
- Complete creative freedom make music however YOU want to at each level of the method
- No prior knowledge of music theory or the IFR method is required. Everyone is welcome!
Get the complete course here:
improviseforre...
#Guitar #MasterTheFretboard #ImproviseForReal
Thanks for watching! If you like this approach to harmony and improvisation on the guitar, you'll find the complete method here: improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/the-ifr-method-for-guitar
Of all the tutors on youtube, you are by far the best!
Thank you! I really appreciate the kind words.
Lol I was watching a Victor Wooten workshop where he said to his students "I bet there's this one scale you never practice, the chromatic scale", this is an excellent way to get a grip of the whole musical system and how each note sounds in relation to each other. Great excercise, very simple and usefull.
GREAT STUFF ,TERRIFIC TEACHER .INCREDIBLE . THANK YOU .
Thank you Vincent!
I love this course!
Thank you Pablo!
The cloud visual is very helpful. Aha moment is continuing. Thank you.
This was valuable stuff ! Cheers 🍻
excellent method learned it fast and was creative right away! Great work man! Peace!
Thank you! You'll find more videos in this same series on my guitar blog: improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog
Hi David, i enjoyed this. I play sax mostly but also really enjoy ukelele. So am trying this method to the uke. Has anyone asked you if you could do a uke section? There are lots of people that play. Could be an untapped market for the IFR Method. I am currently a member of IFR. Love it! Thank you!😎
Thanks Sabrina! Yes, we have lots of IFR ukulele students. Currently they are using the guitar materials because the top few strings of the guitar are tuned the same as the ukulele. But I agree with you that it would be wonderful to have entire courses just for ukulele! We'll definitely keep our ukulele students in mind for everything we do in the future.
I like 👍 I've got left side head damage but I'm picking it up as your teaching is good for me visually .
That's great, Dave. Don't hesitate to reach out anytime you have questions or need help in any way. I'm glad this visual approach works for you! - David
Thanks for your help.my mother long ago , seid to me if ever you want to ,tune a guitar .River boy where are you .
I was wondering where David was, good to see he is still around. I have a question about the method as it doesn't refer to rhythm practice as far as I know.
Hey Rogelio, thanks for your comment! I'm definitely still around. :-) I just haven't been as active on UA-cam and Facebook because I've been working hard on a new video course for brass and woodwinds that we will be publishing soon. It's great that you're thinking about rhythm. A lot of people ask me why I don't talk about rhythm, since they've often heard me say that rhythm is the most important and beautiful aspect of modern music. The reason is simple. There are so many great teachers in the world, I only want to teach in the areas where I feel I can make a unique contribution. I love rhythm and have played percussion for much of my adult life. And obviously I do have things that I could teach about that. But it's nowhere near what I can teach about harmony, so that's why I focus on harmony. Here are some ideas that might give you some direction though: improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/practice-tips/unlocking-your-creativity/suggestions-for-rhythmic-creativity
If you have any specific questions about rhythm, fire away! If there is anything I've learned in my own journey that could help you personally, I would be happy to share that with you. - David
Thanks David! Looking forward to the new material! I'm currently working on your method through the book and enjoying a lot. All the best.
Very good I like it very useful thank you
Thank you Luis!
For the mandolin tuned in fifths like a violin, would you assign 1/2 to pointer, 3/4 to middle, 5/6 to ring, and 7 to pinky? Then it rolls to the next string in a naturally repeating pattern?
Great question Mike! For string instruments tuned in fifths like the mandolin, violin, cello, etc., the Cloud exercise isn't such a tempting concept because we can't fit all the notes under our fingertips as easily as we can with the guitar. But notice that even on the guitar, the Cloud doesn't fit entirely underneath your fingertips. This illustrates a very important point which is that the "Cloud" is not really how we play these instruments at all. It's merely a visualization exercise to help you get clear about the relationships between the notes. When you move on to the 2nd lesson (Mobility Half Steps), you'll see the complete system we use for moving around the fretboard, and you'll see that this system doesn't require any stretching. So here's how you can apply all of this to the mandolin:
1) First watch the video on the Cloud exercise and make sure you can picture the entire Cloud of notes on your mandolin. As you said, there will be seven notes per string on the mando. So you've already done this step.
2) Then move on to the Mobility exercise in half steps. (ua-cam.com/video/wsQIOuxVqcA/v-deo.html). Practice this Mobility jump on your mandolin, which will be quite a bit larger than on the guitar. Make sure you can see this displacement clearly and practice the physical movement until it becomes natural.
3) Now you can go back to using whatever fingering is most comfortable for any phrase you want to play on your mandolin, because what you needed to learn from the previous two exercises is the ability to SEE how all these notes are connected on your fretboard. Once you can see that, you can play them with any fingers you like.
Does this help?
David
@@ImproviseForReal Thanks for getting back to me so fast. I'll watch the second video and incorporate what you mentioned. In the back of my mind, I'm wondering how this will/won't mesh with something in the mandolin world called Four Finger Closed Position (FFCP) which is a series of four patterns depending on which finger you're starting out on anywhere on the fretboard. jazzmando.com/ffcp.shtml
Hi Mike, I would say it absolutely meshes because everything we teach in IFR is pretty much technique agnostic. All we're striving for at the level of Exercise 1 is for you to have a clear vision of the notes of our musical system and how they're laid out on your instrument. This doesn't depend on any particular fingering that you choose to use. It's more of a personal choice to become aware of the chromatic scale that underlies our musical system. People can play string instruments all their lives without ever seeing this underlying matrix, which is what traps them in patterns and licks and prevents them from seeing how one musical idea can connect to another. What we want is to see the chromatic scale very clearly on our instrument, and then see the fingering choices like FFCP as the next layer which rests on top of that. You could think of it just like a physical landscape under your feet. If you can see the landscape clearly, you can improvise all sorts of ways that you could walk or dance across it. But the landscape itself doesn't change. I hope that helps! - David
Hi, would you agree that tuning in perfect 4ths (EADGCF for instance) makes this system even more powerful? I'm planning on taking up IFR with the book and that instantly made me very curious about P4 tuning.
Warm regards from Madrid,
Darío
Absolutely Darío! Combining the IFR method with the P4 tuning is like having super powers. :-)
I've been using the P4 tuning myself (EADGCF) for almost 10 years and I love it more every day. My video course is taught with the traditional tuning because that's what most people are using. But once you understand the concepts it's very easy to apply the entire method to P4 tuning. If you need any help at all with it, I would love to work with you as one of my private students. I have two other students right now using the P4 tuning, and one student who uses the major 3rds tuning. With these perfectly regular tunings it's such a joy to study harmony because you can see everything so clearly on your fretboard. I also find personally that it allows me to see much more deeply into chord progressions and more complex situations like multiple key centers at once. All of that is a nightmare with the traditional tuning, but with the P4 tuning you can appreciate all of these relationships much more easily.
So yes, I would support you 100% in switching to the P4 tuning. I think you'll love it! And if you want help with the first steps, just let me know and we can talk about private coaching. (We can do the classes in English or Spanish. I taught this method for 7 years in Barcelona before I ever learned to explain these concepts in English!)
Thanks Darío, and please stay in touch!
David
Thank you so much for the swift reply, that's great to hear :)
I will definitely stay in contact. As for private messages and such, would support@ImproviseForReal.com be the address to go to?
Sure, that will always work. You can also write me at david@improviseforreal.com. And if you ever have any doubts, just come to our website and click on the Contact link toward the bottom. That will always have a reliable way to reach me. I look forward to hearing about your adventures with P4! - David
Hey David and Dario, I couldn't agree more with David. I have the IFR book and I use it a lot. I switched to the P4 tuning a while ago and I love love love it :) I don't have the video course so I can't speak for that, but the book is easy to apply to P4 tuning. It really makes a lot of sense and gives a lot of clarity of vision if you use the IFR system. Please keep me posted, Dario, if you try it. I would love to hear about your experiences!
All the best, Michiel from the Netherlands
I just snapped my F string by exceedingly bending it to Zappa's Muffin Man (gauge 10 but I might have got carried away) so today and tomorrow's practice are going to have a big focus on IFR :D
Would this work with ukulele with a low g string?
Absolutely. With the low G string tuning, the four strings of your ukulele are separated by exactly the same intervals as the top four strings of a guitar. What this means is that you can follow the exact method I teach in this video, and just disregard everything I do on the lowest two strings. We have tons of ukulele students in IFR and it's a perfect instrument for this method.
Here are links to the whole series of videos where I teach the foundation of this approach to the guitar:
improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/sample-video-lesson-cloud
improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/sample-video-lesson-mobility-half-steps
improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/sample-video-lesson-mobility-whole-steps
improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/free-video-lesson-ifr-tonal-map
Enjoy! - David
@@ImproviseForReal Thanks David, I bought the book a long time ago but it didn’t make sense to me. I just watched the links you posted and the penny has dropped. Can I just ask one question you said for instance you will start on note 6.If you were improvising over a track you wouldn’t be able to go anywhere on the fretboard and choose what number it was on the tonal map. So how do you get from your lesson on moving freely to playing notes in a key?
In your first exercises you'll be given the orientation you need. For example, in IFR Jam Tracks Level 1, Seven Worlds, every single backing track tells you both the key of the music and the tonal center. For example, a jam track in the second harmonic environment will say something like, "key of F (note 2 = G)".
This means that your IFR jamming practice gives you hundreds of opportunities to practice this skill, because you'll be starting each exercise in this way. The thought process is simply to go to the note G on your instrument, imagine that to be note 2 on your tonal map, and build the rest of the tonal map from there. So in these creative exercises, this information will always be given to you so that you can find the key of the music and orient yourself within that key on your instrument.
But something else happens through all of this experience. Through the step-by-step system that we teach in Improvise for Real, you're getting exposed to all of these different harmonic situations in a logical, progressive way. And through the IFR creative exercises you're not just noodling around with these sounds. You're thinking in tonal numbers, picturing where you are in the key of the music at all times, you're exploring the sounds creatively, you're listening deeply to each note you play, and you're even singing these same sounds both in your improv practice and with our "Sing the Numbers" audio course.
All of this is your real music education. What we teach in IFR are just the concepts, exercises and activities that will organize the world of harmony for you and put you in touch with all of these sounds. But your real learning is what you personally discover about all of the sounds when you are working with them. The result of this creative practice is that you get to know all of these sounds personally and you fall in love with them.
What this leads to is a familiarity with the sounds that makes it easy and obvious to recognize them by ear. So now imagine that one day you're at a jam session and there's nobody to tell you what key you're in. Since you already know the sound of each note in the tonal octave, all you have to do is play a single test note on your instrument. You'll play a note, then think to yourself, "Ah, that's the sound of #4." And just like that, you are perfectly oriented in the key of the music. If you like that sound and want to play it again, you can just play #4 again. But if you want to play the more familiar and consonant sounds that are in the key of the music, you'll just move up a half step and now you're on note 5. From there, you can go on to play all of the sounds and melodies that you imagine, because you have learned to picture all of those sounds on the tonal map, and you now know exactly where you are currently on that map.
All of this is described in Exercise 2: Melody from my book Improvise for Real. This specific scenario is talked about in the final section, "Exercise 2 - Mastery Level". But this is what IFR students are doing all the time. It's super easy and it's just a natural consequence of two things:
1) thinking relative to the key of the music (the IFR Tonal Map)
2) truly exploring and getting to know the sounds as the essence of your music practice
Hope that helps! If you're looking for help getting your new IFR practice off to the best possible start, in September we're going to be offering a 12-week workshop called "IFR Deep Foundations" where we are going to work on exactly these skills. We haven't created the sign-up page yet (that's coming in a few days), but just write to me at david@improviseforreal.com and we'll reserve a place for you! (This offer also applies to anyone else who is reading this comment.)
@@ImproviseForReal Thanks David explained very well it all makes sense now.
Will this work with the pentatonic scale?
Of course Hugo! what you're learning in this video is kind of like the "matrix" that underlies everything we play in music. The pentatonic scale is just a selection of five notes from the major scale, which can be expressed anywhere on the fretboard using the awareness that you're developing in this video. You just need a couple of other steps as well, which you'll find in the free lesson videos on our guitar blog: improviseforreal.com/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog
Hi David I was thinking of buying your video guitar course but saw in the comments you are bring out new material, is any of it related to guitar? Wasn't sure whether to hang on and wait if it was. Thanks mark
Hi Mark! No, the product I was referring to is a video course for brass and woodwinds that we will be publishing soon. If you're looking to learn the method on the guitar, the IFR Video Course for Guitar, Module 1 is exactly what you need. Here's the link: improviseforreal.com/Products/ifr-video-course-guitar-module-1
If you have any other questions, please let me know. Thanks Mark! - David
no entiendo mucho ingles, ha version en castellano?
Sí Gerardo, todos nuestros materiales están disponibles tanto en castellano como en inglés. Aquí tienes un enlace directo al vídeo curso completo para guitarra: improviseforreal.com/es/Products/video-curso-ifr-para-guitarra-módulo-1
También hay lecciones gratuitas que puedes mirar. Aquí tienes los enlaces:
improviseforreal.com/es/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/clase-de-muestra-nube
improviseforreal.com/es/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/clase-de-muestra-movilidad-semitonos
improviseforreal.com/es/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/clase-de-muestra-movilidad-tonos-enteros
improviseforreal.com/es/ifr-blog/instrument-blogs/guitar-blog/clase-de-muestra-el-mapa-tonal-ifr
Espero que disfrutes mucho de las lecciones y que te guste esta manera de estudiar la música. Si tienes cualquier otra pregunta no dudes en escribirme.
Gracias y saludos,
David
¡Hola Gerardo! Acabamos de lanzar nuestro nuevo canal UA-cam en castellano. A partir de hoy todos los nuevos vídeos en castellano estarán en el nuevo canal. Por favor suscríbete para ver las nuevas lecciones: ua-cam.com/channels/487-G00ywrY31ZcuWWaTIg.html
Gracias y saludos,
David
Well we cant see the right hand
Yep, I understand. These aren't videos about fingerstyle technique. Students of Improvise for Real use all different techniques (flat pick, fingerstyle, Travis picking, etc.). What I'm teaching in this video is about learning to visualize scales, chords and harmony on the fretboard, so it makes no difference how you prefer to play. You can use any approach you like for producing the sounds with your right hand. But if right hand technique is something you want to learn about right now, there are many wonderful guitar teachers online who do a great job with that. So I would just encourage you to search specifically on that. Best of luck! - David
@@ImproviseForReal thx t u
Huh!
V