If you like to improvise but you want better phrasing and more interesting ideas, it's worth changing how you spend some of your jamming time. If all you ever do is free improv, you'll get quite good at flying round the fretboard, but your ideas might stagnate.
So fairly often, I'd take some time to deliberately develop phrases of your own, or at least learn licks from solos you like and adapt them to your style. Here's how I go about it, with the two phrases I came up with over a backing track in B minor.
Exploring is different from jamming ▶ 0:12
This isn't the usual free-flowing improv where you're trying to sound good. It's explorative. You stop, you repeat ideas a lot, and you're not worried about everything sounding great. The aim is to develop your phrasing and come away with a lick or two you can save for later.
I think of it like fishing. You cast the line, try different things, and most of them don't work. At some point one does, and then you develop that phrase.
The track is in B minor, but it leans quite a lot towards B Dorian, and goes outside the key at times too. So that's mostly how I'm thinking about it.
Phrase one: from a big jump to sixths ▶ 4:51
The idea started with a bigger interval jump. My first go used an octave, but it felt a bit too clean and I wanted something quirkier, so I tried a major seventh instead. Then I liked the idea of finishing on the Dorian-sounding bend at the 9th fret on the B string.
I still wanted something more interesting at the start, so I tried a sixth interval: the 7th fret on the G string with the 7th fret on the high e. From there it developed like this:
- Slide into the 7th fret on both the G and high e strings, then slide both up to the 9th fret.
- Keep the 9th fret on the G where it is, and move the high e up to the 10th fret.
- Bring the high e back to the 9th fret, still holding the G.
- Move chromatically down to the 8th fret on both strings.
- Then 7th fret high e, 7th fret B, and bend the 9th fret on the B string.
e|-/7/9--10--9--8--7--------| B|--------------------7--9b-| G|-/7/9--9---9--8-----------| D|--------------------------| A|--------------------------| E|--------------------------|
That's not something I sat down and planned. I played around, kept the bits I liked, swapped out the bits that felt too obvious, and played it again and again until it held together.
Phrase two: the E9 chord ▶ 8:43
An E9 chord comes up a lot in this progression. It's a very bluesy chord, and it belongs to the key of A major, so the simplest option is to play A major over it. That works, but when I tried it I was mostly just outlining the scale.
A more interesting option is to outline the chord itself. The easiest place to find it is the 7th fret on the A string, 6th fret on the D string, 7th fret on the G string and 7th fret on the B string.
Those notes also fit into B Dorian, which contains the same notes as A major. So if you're thinking in B minor, it might be easier to just switch to B Dorian when the E9 comes up. It actually kind of works to play B Dorian over the B minor chord throughout, too.
Bend into chord tones from a fret below ▶ 11:10
Here's the idea that made phrase two work. Instead of fretting a note of the chord, bend up to it from a semitone below.
- Instead of the 6th fret on the D string, play the 5th fret and bend it up a semitone to the pitch of the 6th.
- Instead of the 7th fret on the B string, bend up from the 6th.
- On the G string, bend the 6th fret (C#) up a semitone to D, which is in the E9 chord too.
I also palm muted the first note, which just adds a bit of texture. It's only three notes, but bending into chord tones like this sounds quite cool over that E9. Once I had it, I turned the track off and just played with the idea on its own for a bit, then brought it back in.
Put the phrases back into the track ▶ 13:40
With two phrases in the bag, play through the track again: phrase one plus a bit of noodling over the B minor, then phrase two plus a bit of noodling over the E9. Don't worry if some of the in-between stuff is guesswork. Some of mine was.
The progression also has an F#9 chord. That's the same chord type as the E9, just two frets higher, so you can move the same idea up two frets and it works there too.
Then play your phrase in different ways ▶ 15:58
The next step is taking the licks you've made and playing them differently. Try them in a different order, or backwards. (The chromatic bit of phrase one doesn't work backwards so well, but other bits do.) Start on a different note. Repeat a section. Turn it around.
A lot of what comes out will be messy. That's fine. This isn't alchemy, I'm not turning notes into gold. It's just a step in the right direction.
The more you do this, when you then go to noodle and just play over tracks in a free way, you build up a bank of ideas and you teach yourself how to think about playing.
So next time you put on a backing track, don't just play. Fish for one idea, repeat it until you like it, then try bending into the notes of whatever chord gives you trouble. Save what you find, and have a go at playing it backwards.
