Learning to improvise jazz guitar is a long play game.

Rather than skimming over material, learning even just a few of these patterns really deeply can inject much more life, expression and authenticity into your solos. A limited but deep jazz vocabulary is far better than someone that can play a lot of licks but only insert them ‘cut & paste’ style.

Well done for getting this far!

Considering everything we’ve covered, you won’t believe what I’m going to say next. Read on for the final part to this article…

Part 4: Let Go & Transcend

“Master your instrument, Master the music, and then forget all that bullshit and just play.” – Charlie Parker

So far we’ve been building a support for your improvisation. You might have thought you had made it already in the last stage, but we’re not quite there yet…

Now that we have the building blocks in place, it’s time to now take the scaffolding away.

Step 7: Practice without Concepts

Music works best when it’s free of concept, and this especially true for improvisation. It’s time to call on that more powerful part of your mind, the subconscious, and let that do the leg work for you now. Remember what Joe Pass was saying about the subconscious mind? Now it’s time to put all of that into practice – Jedi style.

The process is simple.

Play on (many) rounds of the backing track but no longer consciously think of employing those licks and concepts we worked so hard on in the last stage.

Take note of whether or not the ideas are coming out, but don’t worry about that too much. Just jam on a backing track for even half an hour on one tune. Perhaps record yourself now and then so you can listen back later to see how your progress is going.

If you do this enough, your improvisation will start to sound less premeditated and much more natural.

If you find that none of the ideas are coming through yet, go back to the previous section and spend a bit more time consciously working with the licks and the concepts we covered.

Tip: With this form of practice, don’t just focus on the soloing.

Each time you play for an extended amount on the backing track, play the melody a few times, do several rounds of soloing, and a bit of comping as well – as if the tune’s been called on stage. In fact, the ultimate way to practice this stuff is to actually go do a gig!

It might feel like you’re not very good at this at first and you might feel a bit self-conscious with this form of practice.

However, keep at it. There’s a tipping point where things start to gel and you no longer need to consciously think so much about what you’re doing. And that’s when you’re really playing jazz.

Let Go, Luke…

Try not to get too wrapped up in the ideas and concepts. They are only a means to an end to reach a non conceptual state, where the magic starts to happen.

Interestingly, after working on your improvisation for a while using the steps in this article, you might spontaneously start to come up with something that is completely original.

Perhaps you are playing a gig and some ideas converge in a way that you’ve haven’t combined them before. Or entirely new ideas start to emerge.

That’s the whole irony of all this. By putting strict limits in your practice and learning jazz vocabulary one piece at a time, it serves as a basis for being much more spontaneous when it counts.

Moving Forward

Something that might become a problem with this approach to jazz guitar improvisation is that you get stuck too long on one tune.

It’s very important to build your repertoire of tunes so you can attend a gig or jam session.

After a while of studying and practicing a few licks and concepts from a recording of a tune, let go and move on to the next tune to repeat the process on something new.

Trust me – there is enough jazz vocabulary in a single Miles Davis solo for 6 months of study. But that’s not practical.

Don’t get stuck, and don’t try to get everything perfect on your first tune. Just move on to new recordings, keep exploring, and keep growing your vocabulary.

Every few tunes that you work on, make a recording and perhaps even show others for feedback.

If you want to share recordings of your progress with improvisation, get access to the FretDojo Academy here, my online jazz guitar learning platform. Academy members often contribute video or audio recordings and it’s great to see the constructive feedback and appreciation that they receive from others.