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20 Ways to Improve Your Improvisation Skills

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May 14, 2019 by Klaus Crow

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Learning to improvise is a covetable skill and it is the next step to becoming a more accomplished guitar player once you’ve mastered a decent amount of guitar solos.

Improvisation gives you the freedom to express and explore your creativity on the guitar.

When you’re the lead guitar player in a band it’s a necessity but also an incredible feeling to be able to compose a solo on the spot anytime it’s required.

Delivering a fresh, original, sweet rocking solo will be the icing on the cake.

In truth, improvisation is really the spontaneous and creative reorganization of things you already know. So you need to build and accumulate a soloing vocabulary from which you can create.

Here are 20 ways to build that vocabulary and improve your improvisation skills.

Apply these tips to your daily practice routine to get the best out of yourself!

Here are the keys:

1 – Learn new licks
Keep amassing fresh original licks from different styles and genres.

2 – Listen good and listen a lot
Listen, really listen to guitar solos of your favorite guitarists and also listen to various guitar players to expand your horizon. Study their phrasing.Continue Reading

How to Play Guitar and Sing at The Same Time

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August 11, 2023 by Klaus Crow

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Learning to play and sing at the same time can be challenging in the beginning, but this is a skill you can definitely learn. Once you know how to play some chords and strum a few songs, the next step is to sing along with the rhythm you’re playing. It’s a great feeling being able to play and sing at the same time.

Developing this skill will open up a whole new world for you. You can entertain friends and family or learn to perform and play for an audience. For me it’s also a feeling of freedom. Whenever I feel like it, I pick up my guitar and start playing and singing my favorite songs. It makes me feel good instantly.

Learning to play and sing at the same time is tough in the beginning, but if you follow the tips below and practice regularly you will get the hang of it.

Work hard, have fun and reap the benefits!

1. Start easy

First things first. Pick a song you like and something that is easy to play. A familiar song with easy chords and an easy strumming pattern.

2. Listen first

Before you start trying to play and sing simultaneously you first need to listen to the song quite a few times. Listen to the song on your iPod, iPad or whatever device you prefer, until you know the song inside out. Listen to the melody, listen to the lyrics, listen to the guitar and listen to the beat of the song. Try to count the beats. You can do this by listening to the kick (bass drum) and snare of the drummer.

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50 of The Best Alternative Guitar Songs of the 90s

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May 16, 2021 by Klaus Crow

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The 90’s. Oh dear, they were really good times for young guitar players like myself who adored rock music.

There were so many alternative rock bands back then you got lost in the woods, but that didn’t bother most of us.

Not that everything was great, but at least it was guitar music playing on the radio, just like in the 60’s and 70’s authentic bands playing real guitar songs.

Nowadays I even like some of the songs that I didn’t really dig back then. It has all become nostalgia.

They make me think of the good times or maybe I just listen to those songs differently now. Has my alternative taste expanded? It doesn’t matter. The bands and their songs that were so awesome then have just become more awesome after all these years. Those cranked up guitars just got better.

Favorites? Of course: REM, Radiohead, Alanis Morissette, Oasis, Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but it was great putting the entire list together.

Yes, there were many more songs that i wanted to add, but fifty seemed like a nice round number. So here you are. Continue Reading

Double Stops and Blues Licks Around The Entire Neck

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May 14, 2019 by Klaus Crow

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A double stop is when you play two notes at the same time, also called “dyads” (you might have heard of the more familiar term “triads” where you play three notes at the same time).

While solos usually consists of single note lines, you can give your phrasing some extra colour and more chunk by playing some double stops here and there.

Double stops is just guitar slang for “harmonic intervals”. An interval is the distance between any two notes and harmonic means simultaneously sounding tones. Harmonic intervals can be played in thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and sevenths.

You can hear them a lot in rock and blues and guitar players love using them to enhance their soloing.

Here are two examples of classic blues double stop guitar intros:

Cold shot – Stevie Ray Vaughan

Johnny B Goode – Chuck Berry

You can apply harmonic intervals to every scale, but today we’re focusing on playing fourths in the A minor pentatonic scale. The application of fourths is one of the most used double stops in blues and rock.

In the tabs below you can see that almost every two notes are on the same fret, so you need to bar two strings with either your first finger (index finger), third finger (ring finger) or fourth finger (pinky). Continue Reading