I couldn’t sleep last night, so I dug around and found some old video footage of master harmonist Ted Greene improvising two- and three-voice counterpoint in the style of Bach on a Telecaster. It’s a relatively long, five-video series of guitar lessons on YouTube, but if you’re curious about the master, check him out in part one here. Definitely plug in a good pair of speakers or headphones, so that you don’t miss the beautiful bass lines he’s improvising:
Ted said something (in one of the later videos of the series, I think) that I find illuminating. To paraphrase:
What seems improvised and spontaneous and effortless seems that way precisely because there are hours and hours of practice backing it up.
Ted seemed to be saying that his improvisation in these videos is actually made up of favorite melodic phrases that he strings together. Of course, discovering and developing those phrases takes a long time.
If there’s any one virtue that music will reward you for, it’s patience. When you’re sounding out one of your first few scales and you drop the ball for the fifteenth time, it’s all too easy to just throw your guitar down and storm off. But that act of giving up is the only thing that can guarantee that you won’t learn the scale. My advice is to breathe, slow down, and take it a few notes, a few ideas at a time.
This is true for songwriters also: it pays to learn the technical aspects of the craft so deeply that they’re ingrained, and come out naturally in the heat of composition. When you internalize technical knowledge, you’re adding a weapon to your arsenal. Then when an opportunity arises when your technique or knowledge will make a beautiful phrase, you’ll be glad that you worked so hard.
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