Jimmy Bruno's CAGED system of guitar improvisation

[guitarplayer007]

thanks Kman i appreciate it, i'm trying to becomes a jazzman

[brwnhornet59]

So many good points were brought to the table. Speaking from personal experience, i know that phrasing is my most underdeveloped aspect. One thing that helps me expand my phrasing is mixing up my lines via alternate fingerings, crossovers etc... There are many ways to do this. I have a bad habit of playing long lines in set, linear ways. So now i am compartmentalizing these long phrases into more concise and out of my comfort zone, type ideas. This helps me in several ways. It forces me to think about more than just a few ways of saying whats on my mind. Using these micro ideas has opened up many new ideas, especially rhythmically, to bringing out a stronger and more developed voice. Leading tones, target tones, playing arp's against the chords are all established and valid tools of the trade. I just want to get better. Don't give up. Explore. When i get overwhelmed, i pull out some Bill Evans, circa early sixties. Talk about saying whats on your mind in such a wonderful way. He still blows me away. Sometimes less is more.

[JNGuitar]

Hey there, whats that lick you got goin on from 4:04 to 4:10. Do you have it written out?

[digeorge]

Hey there, whats that lick you got goin on from 4:04 to 4:10. Do you have it written out?

Hi Reg, the video cuts out at 6:06... Does it have anything to do with IE9? Great stuff, thanks for posting!

[TH]

I was taught to improvise by improvising. Mick Goodrick is an advocate of this. Take melodic and harmonic material and move it around. Take the material you presently know, figure out some uses for it and improvise on it. Learn devices for leading to chord tones etc.

Mick also stands in a different place to those that say the key is transcribe transcribe transcribe. His is an approach that says you have a limited time in your life and it's hard enough to come to realize what makes YOUR approach without spending time transcribing and assimilating someone else's thought process. Sure, if there's something you admire and want to understand, transcription is a useful tool, but don't play someone else's ideas; transform them and make them your own. Own the music you play and approach your learning process this way, it definitely is an approach and attitude that you need to make part of the practice process.
This is only one way of looking at things, you decide which way is best. Dave Leibman's approach is very much rooted in note for note, nuance for nuance transcription. Dave and Mick are polar opposites that way, yet they have the greatest respect and admiration for everything about each other.
Realize that the proof of a philosophy is not who's camp you're in but the validity of the solo you make.
David

[princeplanet]

One thing that seldom gets mentioned in these threads is the importance of acquiring devices in all 5 positions, not just scales and arps. If you learn say bebop scales alone, they will not give you jazz, but if you learn a dozen or so ways to play them incorporating enclosures and approaches, deflections etc, then you are getting closer to acquiring the basis for the language of jazz. This way you can recognise what goes on in licks or solos in a way that can be absorbed, understood and reworked. Study David Baker's work on this and you will then see certain patterns cropping up all the time in the Omnibook. But without such a basis, you will struggle to recognise what is going on, or, like I did for many years, make wrong assertions about what Bird may have been thinking. This is my beef with the fellows that say transcribing is the key to it all. I still say that understanding what the greats were thinking (or trying to) is more important. That way you can implement the idea in your own way.

Playing rote licks from solos you don't understand is a dead end. I've been there....

[Nuff Said]

"learn theory, but not much more than you can use at a time; learn to use what you know until it is part of your natural playing, and your ''internal ear''" Matt Otten

[JazzFanatik]

Reg, just a thanks on behalf of the board--you've really put some time into all this free teaching and I know for one I'm grateful!

I second that! Reg is a monster, a very GENEROUS monster....

[brwnhornet59]

This is my beef with the fellows that say transcribing is the key to it all. I still say that understanding what the greats were thinking (or trying to) is more important.

One without the other is futile. You can have a PHD in theory, but if you can't implement it, it's pointless. What good is being a desk jockey? That is not what I signed up for. Knowledge is power. I have seen and heard mediocre technicians produce remarkable work because what they did was musical, based in theory. Think what a technique monster can do with the same knowledge if he/she applies themselves! IMHO