That said, we all have to start somewhere and copying riffs and fills of the great players is something that many do and get great pleasure from. However, you can’t play riff after riff of other players and call it true improvisation because all you have done is learnt a solo!

So, lets say that lesson one is really our goal, rather than our starting point and work towards being able to improvise in a similar manner without playing the same phrase twice.

From here on, we’ll adopt a minimalist approach. You may have heard it said “you can create a solo improvisation on just one note” well...it’s true ... It may not sound very good and you may not impress many people but it’s what you do with what you have, rather than try to impress with lots of notes ... that is really the sentiment behind the saying.

If you buy a book on improvisation from your local music shop, you’ll probably see page after page of examples as in lesson one. That’s fine, but it’s my experience after more than thirty years of teaching, if you start with too many notes and too many options you’ll probably suffer from overload and not be able to make that important initial breakthrough. There is a huge difference between copying phrases etc. and playing ideas which come into your mind “on the spot”.