How Do you Improvise

Hey Hippie, nice lesson. One nit picky thing I have to say about it though. I am pretty sure that *technically* if you are into the whole "scale X goes with chord type Y" approach, you play a D major scale over A7 (A C# E and then G natural instead of G# from the A major scale.) but that is only if you want to be a theory nerd. which I am occasionally guilty of ...sorry... :eek:
 
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I wrote a short piece on soloing at: http://liveukulele.com/lessons/soloing/

Hopefully that gives you something to work with.

being self taught without any formal training in music theory, freestyle soloing has always been a holy grail for me. so i enthusiastically clicked on the link and started reading. then i got to the point where you say "if you dont know your scales, go lean them. right now."

dammit!!!

hahaha.
 
scales

where do I get the scales for the uke? I have them for the guitar, but transfering the form over to the uke and remembering what the root note is can be hard. Is there a source for scales on the uke?

Thanks
 
dis is one of da tings i wanna learn on da ukulele too. I got a couple of books dat helped me get used to picking:

Both of Herb Jr's books is full of info ... an da odda one I REALLY like is Fretboard Roadmaps for the Ukulele.

In dat book Jim Beloff goes through a TON of useful info on how you can get around da ukulele fretboard, from learning da positions of ANY chord (maj, min, and 7th) all da chord inversions, and den important scale patterns on da ukulele. Even get stuffs on chord progressions, blues boxes an all kine stuff liddat.

I still not pau da whole book, since i wen get one brain ovaload :eek:

But, I did learn how fo pick out melodies and try come up wit some intros to songs I like fo sing. Da odda plus side fo Beloff's book is dat it's real cheap, fo pake guys like me, and da ting even comes wit one CD !
 
dis is one of da tings i wanna learn on da ukulele too. I got a couple of books dat helped me get used to picking:

Both of Herb Jr's books is full of info ... an da odda one I REALLY like is Fretboard Roadmaps for the Ukulele.

In dat book Jim Beloff goes through a TON of useful info on how you can get around da ukulele fretboard, from learning da positions of ANY chord (maj, min, and 7th) all da chord inversions, and den important scale patterns on da ukulele. Even get stuffs on chord progressions, blues boxes an all kine stuff liddat.

I still not pau da whole book, since i wen get one brain ovaload :eek:

But, I did learn how fo pick out melodies and try come up wit some intros to songs I like fo sing. Da odda plus side fo Beloff's book is dat it's real cheap, fo pake guys like me, and da ting even comes wit one CD !
thanks joka. i just ordered the roadmaps book. cant wait to get it.
 
Hope this makes sense

Dont know if this will help at all but i took a clasical guitar class in college (counted tward my aa) and my teacher told me as long as you look confident and you dint show when you make mistakes that know one will know. Soloing is most of the time the musician letting out how they feel. know one will know if you messed up or missed a chord aslong as you keep your timong and dont make that face like ooooppppsss when you do mess up.....

Hope this makes sense. im really tired..

Howlie Boy
 
Nuke, through what distributor did you order the roadmaps book through?
i just went through amazon.

i tried ebay, but the ones selling for cheaper didnt specify whether it came with the cd or not. so i didnt wanna take a chance.
 
Regarding info for scales:

Mark Kailana Nelson's book "Learn to Play Fingerstyle Solos for 'Ukulele" has C,F,G scale in tab form at the beginning of the book. From there you can sort of figure out other scales.

Curt Sheller's, "Quickstart Scale Fingering for Uke, Volume 1 key of C Tuning" covers Blues, Pentantonic, Dorian, Mixolydian, Aeolina & Ionian scales. Each page has music notation with tabs and a graph of the fretboard plus a chart (root note/fret).

I purchased these books directly from the authors. Marks site is Mark-o- dot com. Curt's site is curtsheller dot com...
 
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Regarding info for scales:

Mark Kailana Nelson's book "Learn to Play Fingerstyle Solos for 'Ukulele" has C,F,G scale in tab form at the beginning of the book. From there you can sort of figure out other scales.

Curt Sheller's, "Quickstart Scale Fingering for Uke, Volume 1 key of C Tuning" covers Blues, Pentantonic, Dorian, Mixolydian, Aeolina & Ionian scales. Each page has music notation with tabs and a graph of the fretboard plus a chart (root note/fret).

I purchased these books directly from the authors. Marks site is Mark-o- dot com. Curt's site is curtsheller dot com...

How do you incorporate those scales into solos though? do you use them? Like I know a bunch of those scales because I took some music theory classes, but idk how to make use of that knowledge.
 
Well, it looks like I won't be improving solos for a while, since I dread learning scales. Even when I took private lessons for my band instrument, I tried to put aside scales as much as possible. I'd end up spending several weeks on one scale simply because I refused to practice it. I mean, who needs to know a scale with five sharps? They were just no fun. But it looks like I'll need to get around to learning them for ukulele and guitar eventually.
 
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