Improvising with the Major Scale

By now you're familiar with the Major Scale and the 1-4-5-1 Chord Progression.

Let's put them together and try improvising with the Major Scale!

We'll be playing over a 1-4-5-1 in C, that gives us: C-F-G7-C

Try playing through it now, to get comfortable with the tempo and timing of the strumming. Don't forget about the tied notes!

Getting a feel for the chords you'll be playing over is always a good idea before improvising - we want what we're playing to feel connected to the music, and the other musicians.

Now that you've got a feel for the rhythm section - we can get started improvising over it.

Today we're using the Major Scale, and since our backing track is in the key of C, we're going to use C as our root note here. That means our Major scale will start on the 8th fret of the low E.

Warm up by playing the scale top to bottom a few times. You can even spend some time Digging Deeper if you'd like to get prepared to try out some more complex patterns.

When you're ready, try playing along with the YouTube video below. Note that, despite the changing parts, the entire song is built around the exact same chord progression from start to finish.

Now that you've given it a try for yourself - here are some simple pointers and ideas you can try for yourself. Read this over and try improvising one more time with some or all of these in mind.

• Try starting or ending your phrases on a root note. This will keep your playing grounded in the key we are centered around. You can think of returning to the root note like coming home.

• Try focusing on the higher strings. With the rhythm focused on the low end of the guitar, it's often a good idea to place the melody above it.

• Make silence part of your sound. Many improvisers feel the need to constantly be playing. This can actually be counterproductive! Try spending about 50% of your time quiet - this gives the music room to breathe and makes your playing sound more interesting when it is present. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

• Keep it simple! Often, the catchiest riffs are the ones that are slow enough and simple enough for someone to hum along with.

• Repetition is not boring. If you really like something you just played, try playing it again! Bonus points for playing it again over a different chord. A really neat trick is to play a riff a couple times over, and then to play it once more but change the ending. This leads to a feeling of surprise in the mind of the audience.

• Explore! Spend some time with each note and see how it makes you feel. Notice how strange the tritone sounds if you play it exclusively. Go ahead and try some notes that are outside the scale. Do you like any of them?

Great job! If you've been following along, you should have already tried Improvising Over the 12 Bar Blues, feel free to give it a try otherwise.

If you'd like to take your improvisation on this track to the next level, check out Using Arpeggios with the Major 1-4-5-1!