Assignment: Improvising over a chord change

Simplifying Chord Progressions

Alright then! If you're struggling to follow a four-chord progression, here's a helpful tip:

• Reduce it down to a two-chord progression.
• For example, let's focus on the first two chords of the last example: C to A minor.

Looping the Chords

By looping these two chords, we can explore their chord tones. This is interesting because:

• Two of the three tones are common in both chords.
• There's only one note that changes between them, which is pretty cool.

Here we go:

1, 2, 3, 4.
There's our C major and A minor.

Common Chord Tones

A simple thing we can do is focus on the chord tones that are common to both chords:

• C
• E

This combination kind of sounds like an indie rock intro or something.

What I've done is embellish this with a note that's not a chord tone on either side of it, just one, and then resolved it back. It's a really simple thing that you can do.

Back to Basics

Let's get back to the basics and just play the chord tones of those chords:

1, 2, 3.

You could spend all day experimenting with those two chords, playing the chord tones in various positions.

It's great fun!

Getting Creative

You'll see very quickly that even with simple ideas, the progressions can start to sound really musical. Who knows? That could be an intro to a song you might start writing!

• Have fun with it.
• Get creative.
• Don't worry about making mistakes.

Mistakes are inevitable, whether you're improvising or playing anything else on the guitar.

Embrace Mistakes

It's a good thing; it means you're pushing yourself. As long as you:

• Recognize the mistake
• Understand what you did

Then you can hopefully avoid making the same error again.

Just remember to have fun with it, it's really great fun!