Originally Posted by: maggior

Christopher has come to many of our rescues :).

You are right that it all does sound rather complicated. What I think happens is that as you do all of the learning and practice that Christopher talks about, the sounds get in your ears (your head) and you develop a sense of what you are doing on the fretbaord to attain those sounds. In the rock genre, if you listen to a lot of solos by a particular player, often you'll hear repeated phrases and licks. They make up the player's style in part. They've figured out how to manipulate that library of licks and phrases and play them in different ways to make them interesting and not sound the same.

I'm working on some David Gilmour stuff and it amazes me how he resuses stuff, yet it sounds so different and fresh each time.

When somebody is improvising, they are not thinking of every note they are going to play. Things are happening too quickly for that. They may identify some signposts along the way...chord changes and stuff, overall key...but it's all high level.

Once upon a time, I thought of this stuff as coming from nowhere. Experienced players I know describe it to me this way too...it was like it was magic! Perhaps they were having one over on me LOL! Sure you will have moments of spontaneous inspiration, but it's all in there somewhere!

You're absolutely right, and thank you so much for the tips.

I kind of knew that it would become as this, more of naturally, but I needed to get the basics, strong building blocks would help. And you're absolutely correct, mostly when I try to improvise, I find myself reusing some licks by different artists and try to some how change a bit. Very challenging I admit, but with more solid training and understating, I'll be ready for it.

Gilmour is one of my favourite, I once read a quote about him that he (Gilmour) gets out of one note more than a whole careers for other musicians. LOL! When he starts to play it's like the guitar suddenly had a soul!