Guitar & Musician Forums

Like a lot of bands do this live on solo stuff where they solo and improvise on the solo but still keep the fundamentals. how does one do that?

Play the melody, like the vocal melody, and improvise using that as a base.

I never bothered figuring out solos note-for-note. I would just get a sense of what scale the player was probably using and where they were playing on the neck and the general feel of what they were doing, then I'd improvise my own solo around those parameters. If the solo had some identifiable licks that the average person in a bar would recognize, I would usually make a point of throwing those in as well.

Once you have all of your skills down, the improvised lines will just come to you.

Stick to the basic form of the existing melody, but find ways to vary note choices. I think the best way to begin is to listen to players who do this. Check out some live jam bands like the Allman Brothers. Compare the live version to the studio version and check out what’s different in a given solo.

Ultimately, the process sounds like magic for a newcomer, but that's how it actually works - a good improviser just intuitively knows where the harmony of the song goes and what notes they can play that will sound good and they just hear in their head this "the harmony goes here and when I play this line it works" and then it works because the improvisers head had it unconsciously figured out. There are no shortcuts, this magic only happens in real time after hours and hours of practice to get in your head and fingers what works in the style of music you want to play.