Cover...Cover...plus Improv?

[fluffypants]

Hi guys! It's me again.

So just now, I've been listening to Jack Thammarat's cover of Manhattan by Eric Johnson<--- (though I'm sad, coz now he's a "Guitar Hero" song and everytime I talk about him to my friends they think "Oohhh I know him, he's the guy from that game")

Anyway, I've noticed that he covered the most essential parts of the song and added some improvs to it in between melodies and this is what lead me to this question:

Can anyone give me a headstart on covering the chords and notes of a particular song without looking for sheet music and how you could add improvisations to it? (right now, im trying to avoid tabs as much as possible)

Thanks again in advance!

[Goofsus4]

It sounds like you are talking about creating your own arrangement of a song. If you don't want to have reference to anything written at all, then you'll have to transcribe a recording. Much easier for me is to just Google the chords to a song (if it's not in the Real Book or something). Then you can pull the melodic content from a recording of someone doing it. Armed with the basic song progression and the melody, then the rest is up to your own creativity. You just have to sit down with it and work on new ideas - you can embellish the melody, make substitutions to the chords, add in passing/approach chords. There aren't any rules, but one easy way to start is to come up with a motif (or just use the melody) and then on each successive chorus come up with new ways to treat the melody, i.e. play it single note, then harmonize it with double stops, play it in octaves, make a full chord melody out of it, etc. You can also substitute runs/licks for certain parts of the melody. So for a bar or two of the start of the melody, blast off with a lick that resolves to the beginning of the melody starting in the bar in which you want to rejoin the melody. If you want to see how this is done, get a transcription of somebody's cover of a standard and see how they took the melody and then made it their own. You'll these kinds of ideas repeated frequently.