Developing improv using certain exercises

[Mike McGibney]

Hey Janek,

In order to improve my soloing (particular the form, structure and motivic development) I've been using "containment" methods (not sure if this is the correct term) where I will impose a limit on myself. For example, over a 4 chord vamp, I can only solo using notes on the G string, or just chord tones (1 3 5 7). I've found restricting myself this way as forced me to make my solo a lot more interesting in terms of rhythm and developing ideas.

Have you any ideas or tips on how to develop this further? The obvious I guess is to increase the number of possible notes, or use a semitone above and below each chord tone or something.

Your thoughts (and anyone else's) welcome!

Cheers

Mike

[janekbass]

Mike,

I think this might be something covered in the first episode of my premium podcast......

Janek

[christoph h.]

Premium podcast?

[janekbass]

Originally Posted by christoph h.

Premium podcast?

Yes, I'm shooting a series of 15 min video podcasts with performances and lessons in them that will be available for 99cents an episode. I'm trying to keep the price point down and the number of subscribers up so everyone can benefit from them. The regular podcast I've been doing for a couple of years has been quite popular and I'm hoping I can transfer that same audience over to the video podcast too. I'll still be doing the audio ones for free, but the video ones will be a little more frequent and slightly more rich in content.

Janek