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See, I have no problem learning a tune head and changes. I do a bit of the opposite of what you do and really try to read the tune with a metronome because I always like to work on my reading chops.
Originally Posted by brent.h
What do you do to go about learning to improvise on a tune? I suppose that's where all my questions regarding scales and such comes up.
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01-16-2026 10:23 AM
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Reminds me of the Segovia scales wherein you'd have to alternate PIMA on the right hand. I'll look into this, might be fun. Originally Posted by PMB
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Perhaps a good way to integrate the scale routine I drummed up in a more musical way is to contextual the practice to a tune. So, first pick a tune (let's keep it in the original key for now) and using its home scale (and modulations if we want to be thorough) then run the scale routine I laid out using these keys rather than just running arbitrarily through keys week by week (i.e. CM this week, GM next week, Am the week after, ...). This way I'd be learning a tune, practicing scales/arpeggios, and also practicing improvisation/ideas while also being musical. Let me know what you guys think.
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Brent, are you playing gigs yet?
If you know 70 tunes, you should have been out gigging 50 tunes ago.
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If I wanna practise improvising the traditional way, I add jazz rhythms to reduced melodies. Really fun stuff. No theory, no scales, no arpeggios. Originally Posted by chris32895
If I wanna practise improvising the typical modern way, I practise small licks on different string sets and keys. Sometimes I use BH bebop lego to compose my simple but long lines and then apply them to tunes. Sometimes I do it the Lester Young way - so for example majority of the tune that's in C, I just think C6 sounds or C major, then when there's a D7 approaching, I just make sure I land on the F# real hard and obvious to foreground the changes. I don't practise scales and arpeggios much. Maybe I should.
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Christian goes over this at 6:09. This example is all dominant, but you can pick a different tune and make it as hard as you want with substitutions and modes. I wrote out scales over Mellow Tone and started using the Dizzy Be-Bop over Imaj7 landings. It worked for me. Originally Posted by chris32895
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My weekly jams, yes. Gigs, no. Don't have much to offer. I'm a guitar player who has a narrow, conservative view of jazz. There are many pianists and horn players that can offer a lot more, play a lot more, improvise a lot more, and play in many different styles/rhythms.
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Then you lead the group. Get a couple phone numbers at the jam(bass and horn, or piano), then book a gig as The Brent H Trio, send out a setlist (you might need to learn to read/write to transpose for the horn) to your contacts and boom... 3 years later you're getting called arrogant on the forum for talking about your gigs so much. Originally Posted by brent.h
If you book a gig, guys who can play will show up.
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The more I progress the more I realize that everything gets refined into intervals. Melody is intervals, so is harmony and counterpoint. Intervals are also the building blocks of hearing music. When you work on structures, like triad inversions or scales, you are stacking intervals. I find that to be the most important thing to focus on when I do scale exercises. I go up a large interval like 6th or 7th and find different ways (intervals) to come back down. Or do the reverse. You cover a lot of ground with that.
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At least where I am I see that narrowness of focus as an advantage - but knowing what you are about and what you want to do is half the battle. Wish I were so focused! Originally Posted by brent.h
Become the swing guy, or whatever. Go deep, while others go wide. Play cool old tunes that no-one else plays. Master the idiom and vibe of your favoured music. Express that identiity through your music and presentation.
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Regarding taking ideas through scales, here is a popular jazz youtuber demonstrating a similar way of taking an idea through a scale and making variations with it. It is "similar" to what I was saying in the sense that his idea links to the next scale degree. That's a special case. You can also start an idea on each scale degree without blending them into each other.
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You got it, that's the way to go, whatever you practice should be applied in real time. Originally Posted by chris32895
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Jimmy Bruno's very pithy advice about practicing: practice is repetition. Repeat it until you can play it correctly every time. Pick something to practice, repeat it lots.
I originally intended to leave this there, but at the risk of diluting my argument I will carry on possibly unnecessarily:
Jimmy's five shapes were posted above and those are a great starting point. Then, change the pattern instead of just running up and down the scales- e.g., by thirds such as 1-3, 2-4, 5-3, 6-4, 7-5 and 3-1, 4-2, 5-3, 6-4, 7-5, etc. Then by fourths, fifths and so on. Use a metronome, set it at 60 and study how your fingers move. This helps train the muscle recruitment patterns in your brain. You might even initially do the scales as whole notes and progress to half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, 16th notes, 32nd notes for working on speed and keeping your speed in time. Sloppy speed is not helpful. This is basic classical music pedagogy. I saw a video by a classical guitarist whose practice routine with a metronome starts with studying any piece of music this way. Once he had the notes under his fingers at four beats per note, he would play it at two beats per note, then one beat per note until the movements were fluid and completely under control, then play it as written.
Within those shapes, play the arpeggios for the I chord, then the ii chord, then the iii chord, etc. Start with triads, then add the 7th. Then play cadences in arpeggios (ii-V-I, vi-ii-V-I, etc.).
But none of that will teach you to play music. It will teach you the mechanics of scales, arpeggios and the fretboard. To play music, learn the melodies for many songs, seeing where the chord tones are in the melodies and what the connecting notes are relative to the chord of the moment. The goal is not to play scales really well, we are aiming to play music. Music is rhythm, melodies and harmonies. If all we practice are scales, scales are what we're going to play. Learn the melodies; learn to transpose the melodies in all 12 keys so that you can sing them through your guitar by hearing the intervallic structure of the melody and find those intervals with your fingers automatically. Probably even better if you learn the melodies from recordings rather than from sheet music, in terms of developing our ear. If there are lyrics, learn them as that makes this a whole lot easier. Start with Happy Birthday and Frere Jacques. Working through simple melodies like that in all 12 keys does a world of good.
I will add Gene Bertoncini's advice about practicing: repeat it until you can't play it wrong.
Say, all this reminds me: I need to practice!Last edited by Cunamara; 01-17-2026 at 05:12 PM.
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Kind of with you here. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
If you’re doing bare mechanical stuff, I think it should be limited to sort of a handshake. Like a thirty second reminder of what correct looks like after a coffee break or a trip to the kitchen for lunch or whatever.
The trick is that it HAS to be correct. If you’re doing it for speed or you’re not monitoring your idle fingers or you’re letting your hand get tense, it’s counter productive.
I’ve done that only really for classical guitar and only for giving my hands a moment to release their tension. Not sure I buy it for many other purposes and definitely don’t buy it for any considerable amount of time.
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Man far be it from me to disagree with Jimmy Bruno but I usually tell folks the repetition is what comes after that practice. Originally Posted by Cunamara
If you’re playing something until you get it right, say it takes you forty tries. Then you play it forty more times right. You’ve played it forty times wrong and forty times right. How likely do you think you are to play it right when you’re called upon to do so?
Repetition is an aspect of practicing, but having some frameworks for problem solving is just as important. What do you do to make sure you find a decent way to play the line? How do you decide fingerings? Can you breakdown the component parts to focus on the challenges? How do you memorize?
I see people all the time who play something about 85% well … either they hit it most of the time but never quite shake off the mistakes, or maybe they play it fine all the time but it’s always a bit sloppy. Either way, that last bit is hard to get, and I’m pretty convinced it’s because they jumped to repetition before working out the bugs in the passage and never went back.
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The best example I think is in the right hand. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve seen someone who has been playing Billie’s Bounce for six months and can’t quite nail it.
Almost without exception, it’s because they play it over and over again without ironing out what their right hand should be doing.
So they think they’ve played it the same way 1000 times and that maybe bebop is just not for them or they just don’t have the talent or whatever. But what’s actually going on is that they’ve played 200 different right hand picking patterns five times each and it just never comes together.
Some things are hard because there’s a pithy simple solution and people just don’t want to do it. Other times things are hard because there is no pithy simple solution and people pretend there is one.
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This is the kind of academic analysis he would call BS on and say “just play the damn thing, until you get it right. It’s not rocket science.” Originally Posted by pamosmusic
But I think behind that, the idea is the same.
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What’s academic about it? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
And blunt is not the same as true. With all due respect … go ahead and play Donna Lee a bunch until it hits 220. Good luck and god speed.
Or think critically about some of the challenges it presents and solves them before you beat your head against a wall for two months. Generally that’s going to be the move.
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Only perfect practice makes perfect
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Are you secretly my old classical guitar teacher? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
John?
Is that you?
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Can't we all just think-critically ourselves into amazing musicians? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Paragraphs on the idea of practice is the academic part. Thing your saying to do is the same, I think, as what he says to do. Which is to get the guitar out and work the tune out. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I don't really know man, I'm a hack who gave up on donna lee in free time. I just watch his youtube videos.
What I do is play it awkwardly, in different ways always pivoting to new ideas on the tricky bits, remembering the ones that laid well on the guitar. The first one is the hardest, but they get easier, if I put focused time in.
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Can we become amazing musicians without thinking critically? Originally Posted by James W
You have to sit and figure something out and think about what’s going on and why you can’t just play it already before you sit down to just play it until it’s right.
Im open to the idea that Jimmy Bruno means the same thing, but it seems like he would just say that then.
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And repetition is important … but after you actually sit and figure out what’s going on and what the best way to approach it will be.
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Consistent practice is important. Set a time for practice and do it, every day, without fail.
Set realistic goals. Practicing a half hour every day is more effective than practicing for 2.5 hours once every 5 days. Yes, sometimes sh-- happens. My workaround for that is to promise myself to pick up the guitar for 15 minutes no matter what. Often, that 15 mins turns into a half-hour. Sometimes, it's just 15 minutes. But at least I played instead of not playing.
Keep a notebook. Write down things to work on. As the notebook starts filling up, prioritize things to work on daily vs things to work on less frequently. You want to keep track of things you want to improve without turning practice into something that is overwhelming.
Peter and others alluded to working out the sticking points. This is critical. If you don't clean up problem areas in a passage, a fingering, a position change, your ability to recall something, and so on, repetition will just ingrain the problem. that is, practice getting it right, not ingraining mistakes. Here's where your prioritized notes will come in handy. Taking notes about things that work and things that don't will help you to remember important goals and concepts. Prioritizing them will allow you to focus on one small manageable task that feels doable, without losing sight of the bigger picture.
HTH
SJ
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