This an amazing article! Better late than never, but I wish somebody would have told me this 10 years ago!! :-).

I fell into the trap of feeling the need to learn more scales and techniques to make my solos less repetetive and boring. I have a pile of books to prove it :-). Watching some of Anders' lessons made me realize I was barking up the wrong tree. What drove it home was when he was demonstrating solos using nothing but the single pentatonic scale shape we all know and love and it sounded utterly awesome!!! It was a moment of enlightenment...and of depression; depression because I realized I pocessed the tools all along but just didn't know how to use them.

I asked Anders for help, and he suggested many of the things talked about here.

Now I have a new primary focus - phrasing. Anders has some great techniques and exercises to help you focus just on that. One of them was doing a one note solo. Sounds rediculous, but it works.

It's been about a month that I've been focusing on this and I've already noticed an improvement in my improvisation.

Thanks for this very useful article.