Mandolin Technique: Improve your Improv

The Improve your Improv post is the introduction to a bigger hour long workshop that I’ll be hosting at a few festivals coming up. The next festival I’ll be hosting this at is the South State 48 festival in Carlsbad CA 11/6 – 11/9/2025. Update: I’m doing a LIVE webinar on this topic on Sunday 11/23 at 10am PT / 1pm ET. To register for that, please complete this form on this page.

Here’s a chart that can help with this workshop. Note that at the workshop, I’m going to make you learn things by ear. I don’t want to hear “I can’t” type comments. You 100% can – you may just need more practice and/or confidence.

Introduction to the Improve Your Improv Workshop

As anyone that’s played bluegrass for a while knows, taking a solo (or break) is a standard for bluegrass jams. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to play a break really – provided you’re in the right key, almost anything will work. That said, often the best breaks are melodic breaks where players will embellish the melody of a song. These breaks can be scripted or improv depending on the player and the song/tune.

One of the most frequent question I get as a teacher is some form of “how do I play a solo break?” or “how can I improve my improv abilities?” I’m going to attempt to answer that question in this workshop by showcasing some steps to help you turn a basic melody into a fun melodic solo break.

To do this, we’re going to start with very simple melodies – specifically, children’s songs. The idea is simple. Children’s song melodies are usually fairly simple, are often well known, and are similar in a lot of ways to bluegrass melodies.

Prerequisites

First things first, in order to get the most from the improve your improv workshop, you’ll need some basic skills. You can of course participate in my workshop regardless of your skill level – but I will not be reviewing the prerequisite topics in depth during the workshop. At most, I’ll touch on them by playing through an example. As a courtesy to others in the workshop, please review this material PRIOR to the workshop. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me via my contact page or via the comments section below.

• Basic understanding and ability to play a major diatonic scale (aka “the major scale”) and major pentatonic scales on your instrument.
• Basic understanding and ability to play simple chord progressions (1 4 5 chords) on your instrument.
• Ability to play melodies from songs and tunes.
• Willingness fail (often spectacularly) in front of people you may or may not know.
• A childhood that involved at least 1 nursery rhyme.

If you don’t have all the pre-requisite stuff down, that’s okay – but some of this may be harder to get right now.

Note in the workshop, we’ll be doing a lot by ear. However, it’s a bit hard to do that with a text post – so I’ll have notation here.

Bluegrass & Children’s Songs Melodies

Almost all children’s songs I can think of and a lot of bluegrass songs / tunes (though not all) are based entirely or in part on major diatonic or major pentatonic scales. A diatonic scale is the natural 7 tone major scale (i.e. C diatonic major is C D E F G A B or G diatonic major is G A B C D E F^# etc) whereas the major pentatonic scale is just the major diatonic without the 4 and 7 notes – so C D E G A for C major pentatonic or G A B D E for G major pentatonic). That means the melody notes for both genres are generally made up of notes that are found in the respective scales.

For example:

Below is Mary Had a Little Lamb in G. The notes in this song (in order of lowest to highest pitched) are G A B D.

below is the A part for Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms. The melody notes are entirely main up of the G Major Diatonic scale. The notes in this song are G A B C E.

While not every song is 100% based in it’s major diatonic or pentatonic scale, there’s enough of them to make it an easy place to start. As such, knowing these scales is really important. If you’re not familiar with these scales, fear not! I have a slew of free lessons on how to play and practice these scales.

I can already hear some folks say “but I can’t play by ear and I don’t know the melody!” There’s two parts of that.

1. First, just because you can’t do it today, doesn’t mean you can’t do it. “Natural talent” is a myth that some folks tell themselves to forgive a lack of practice. I’m here to tell you, no matter how much natural talent you have – it means nothing without practice. You will be bad at this at first. It will be hard. That doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t get it. Just take it a step at a time.
2. Second and more important, no matter how good you get, the odds are someone will call a song or a tune in a jam that you’ve either never played or never even heard before. If you give up on learning by ear, you’ll be limited to playing only songs you know – which is going to make jamming (especially with new folks) much harder.

Remember – everyone sucks when the start. No one cares if you miss a note as long as you stay in time. And most importantly – it’s just bluegrass. Just have fun with your friends.

With that in mind, let’s get to the Workshop!

How to Improve your Improv

I’m going to walk you through the steps of how you can improve your improv skills by taking a basic melody and making a more fun and interesting solo break. Some of this is going to be hard to do on paper alone – so if something doesn’t make sense when you read it, attending the workshop will likely help.

I’m going to use Mary Had a Little Lamb for my examples on how to improve your improv but you can use any song or tune you want. The method is the same.

Here’s the outline of what we’ll be doing

• Learning the melody from memory
• Understanding what basic chords make up the progression
• Playing the most basic simple version of the melody
• Tweaking the melody slightly
• Practicing by alternating between a straight melody, chords, and embellishing the melody

Step by Step – How to Improve Your Improv

Learn the Melody

In order to improve your improv, first you’ll need to have a base of the melody that you’re playing. If you already know the melody, great! If you don’t, well that’s where you’re going to start. In most cases, you won’t have sheet music or tabs available – you may not even get a chance to play through the melody. That’s okay. In this case, even getting close to the melody is a good enough start.

Ear training is a key part of becoming a better musician. So we’re going to incorporate a bit of that into this lesson. It’s best to practice this at first with relatively simple melodies that you can hum/sing like children’s songs.

In the workshop, I’ll pick a song and give you the starting note just so we’re all in the same key – but at home, try it in whatever key you like. The goal of this exercise is to improve your ability to learn by memory and by ear which will come in handy!!

• Start off by humming or singing the melody. Don’t stress about being on key – just shoot for “relative pitch”. Essentially be in the ballpark of how the melody is moving enough so someone could tell what you are humming / singing.
• Next, pick a starting note to try the melody on. A lot of melodies start on the 3rd of the key, the 5th or the root (usually in the order of frequency). That’s not a rule, but a good guideline. So if you want to play in the key of G, try starting with the 3rd (B) first. If that doesn’t sound right, then try the 5th (D) or the Root (G). Odds are one of those will sound good.
• Once you have the first note, you need to play the next. As noted, a lot of bluegrass melodies use only diatonic or pentatonic scale tones – so start with those notes. Assuming your first note is the 3rd (B):
  • If the melody goes up, try the 4th (C – which is the next note in the Diatonic scale) or the 5th (D – which is the next note in the pentatonic scale)
  • If the melody goes down, try the 2nd (A – which is the next note in both Diatonic and Pentatonic).
  • If the melody doesn’t move, then play that note again!
• Repeat this process for the next notes until you get the whole melody.

This sounds a lot harder when broken up like this – but if you do it enough, it gets easier.

Learn the Chords

Chords work in a given song or tune because they harmonize with the melody. That’s the essentially the point of a chord. As such, the notes in the chord (i.e. 1 3 5 for major chords) are often part of the melody and almost always a safe bet for solos. What I mean is if the progression has a D chord being played and you play the D F# or A notes, the odds are that it will song good.

A lot of bluegrass and children’s songs use the 1 and 5 chords only or the 1 4 and 5 chords only. So the odds are if the song is in G, the chords will be either G and D only or G C and D only. Most songs / tunes will also start with the root chord – so if the song / tune is in G, the odds are the first chord is probably G. Of course that’s not always the case – plenty of songs start on the 4 (White Freight Liner for example) or 5 chord or include 2 or 6 chords (like most Jimmy Martin songs for example) – but to avoid complications, for now we’ll pretend those songs don’t exist.

Now, let’s learn the progression. Try to keep the melody in your head while doing this – if you’re home practicing, hum along. If you’re in a jam setting, you’ll have to do this in your head.

• Play the Root chord first. If that sounds good, keep playing it in rhythm until you hear the change. Then play the 4 or 5 chord depending.
  • Here’s an ear training exercise – play a 1 5 progression (i.e A to E) and say the chord names (either “A” and “E” or “1” and “5”), do that with a 1 4 progression (i.e. A to D) and a 4 5 progression (i.e. D to E). Then repeat that with a straight 1 4 5 progression (i.e. A to D to E) and again say the chord names. Really listen to the differences between the intervals.

Continue this process until you have the basic progression down. In a live jam setting, you can totally cheat a bit by “reading” other instruments. I encourage most students to learn the basic chord shapes for a few instruments. Guitar is usually the easiest to read but knowing the chord shapes for banjo and mandolin as well is important. For example, what if there’s one guitar in a jam and they are soloing?

Play Chords & Melody (Optional)

Now we have the basic melody and chord progression for our song. I like to start off by playing the chord for the first beat of a measure or phrase, then the melody for the rest of the measure of phrase. This isn’t necessary for our workshop, but it is a good way to really hammer in the progression and the melody in my opinion. Remember, the chords are harmonizing with the melody – so this should sound good in all cases.

Embellish the Melody

A simple way to start to improve your improv is by simply embellishing the melody. Embellishing a melody is essentially playing the melody with some changes to it. Adding or subtracting notes, changing notes, changing timing etc. There’s no “right” way to do this, but we can use a few guidelines to help starting off.

Adding Tension Notes

Tension notes are generally (though not exclusively) those that are not in the key of the song. So in the key of G, the “tension notes” are going to be G^#/A^b, B^b, C^#/D^b, D^#/E^b, F.

The first two notes to really pay attention to are the b3rd (i.e. B^b in the key of G) and b7th notes (i.e. F in the key of G). These are really colorful and tension producing notes. These notes (in a major key at least) are unstable and will pull towards other notes which produces tension which ultimately is what we’re looking for most often.

• Try play the b3rd (B^b) before the natural 3rd (B)would appear in the melody. Essentially play the b3rd and slide in to or hammer on to the natural 3rd.
• Try replacing the 3rd in the melody with a b3rd in parts
• Try playing the b7th when the root is supposed to be played

Aside from the 3b and b7, the b5 (D^b in our example) and #5 (D^#/E^b) can be really great tension notes to play around with. Generally those will want to pull towards the natural 5 (or D in our example).

We can take this a step further and play some chromatic notes. Try playing the notes from the 3rd to the 5th chromatically – so B, C, C^#/D^b, D. Side note, if you do this while playing the root, you get a classic bluegrass intro.

Syncopation

Another way to create interesting embellished melodies is to syncopate some melody notes. For example, instead of playing a note on the beat where it normally lands, try playing it either an 8th not before. So if you’re syncopating the first note of a measure, try playing it on the & beat of either “4 &” or “1 &“. You can do this anywhere in a measure – though it’s most common to syncopate the 1st or 3rd beat of a measure.

Improve Your Improv through Practice

Once you get the idea, it’s important to practice this at home. My suggestions are to start with attainable, but difficult, goals like nursery rhymes or songs that you can easily sing / hum the melody too. The more you follow this path, the easier it’ll be

Notes on the Improve Your Improv workshop

While the idea may be simple, getting this down in practice will take some time if you’re not familiar with this already. Some important notes:

You Will Fail, It will Sound Bad

Like everything worth doing, you’re going to fail at this – probably a lot. Your first attempts probably will sound bad – especially to you (we’re our own worst critics after all). This normal and fine. If you never fail or sound bad, you’re probably not trying hard enough to get out of your comfort zone. In art, failure is good – not trying is bad.

As you get better, not only will you “fail” less and sound good more. Even cooler you’ll starting seeing there’s no such thing as failing – it’s just that some notes need better context. A lot of great music was written by mistake where a “fail” becomes “the melody”. Lean into your “mistakes” and turn them in to “what you meant to do”. One of my favorite ideas is “you are responsible for the notes you play” (which is a heavily paraphrase Miles Davis quote). I’ve always taken this to mean if you play a “bad” note, it’s your responsibility to make it a “good” note by providing context.

Be Open To Feedback…

I try to live by the mantra “Be the worst in the room.” If you’re the best, you likely won’t learn anything new but if you’re the worst, you’ll probably have a lot more to learn! Great musicians are always looking to help others get better. A rising tide lifts all boats and whatnot. So, if someone gives you advice (especially if they are better than you), be humble and accept that there may be a better way. I always try to look at feedback as coming from a positive place – even if I don’t agree with it at the time.

…But don’t listen to the haters

Some folks will cut you down just to watch you fall. Growing up, I was consistently told how bad I was at playing music and how I should quit. Hell my first teaching job I was introduced with the line “we scraped the bottom of the barrel to find this guy.” That still happens to me today honestly. Say it with me now “Screw those people.”

Take constructive feedback where it comes but don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t do. Remember, everyone has sucked at some point. The best players have been humbled more than you think. If (or more likely when) someone says something negative about your playing, take the constructive parts and work on what you can – but do not let that define what you can or can’t do. Only you can do that. I believe a good mantra is “if you’re not learning, you’re doing it wrong.”

Do Unto Others

On the flip side, if someone else is doing something “wrong”, be nice and approach it with care. Negative feedback can stay with someone for a while and prevent them from moving on. Personally, I was told how bad my voice was so many times that I believed I would never be a good singer – so I wasn’t for a long time. I’ve learned since to not care about other people’s opinions and just to do my best and have fun. I would love to say I’m over it, but I’m not. – but I still hear those comments in my head today.

If you feel you’re in a position to provide constructive feedback, do so in the same manner you would want someone to tell you. Essentially, just remember what you learned in elementary school “If you don’t have something nice to say, best not to say anything at all.”

Get Uncomfortable

Being comfortable in an artistic setting is bad. You want to be on the edge of your abilities pushing yourself as much as possible. That doesn’t mean you should never play things your comfortable playing already (i.e. “don’t practice on stage”), but if all you do is play what you know you can, you’ll never get better. Be bold enough to screw up and laugh it off. Just try to stay on time and keep the rhythm going 😉

Being uncomfortable means different things to different people at different stages. It could be just playing a simple rhythm for a song, or playing a basic melody, or taking an improv break, singing in front of people, playing faster (or slower) than you think you can etc. Whatever it is that makes you uncomfortable while playing, do that more often. Worst case, you’ll get better.

See you at the fest!

I hope this basic primer has prepped you for the Improve Your Improv workshop and I hope to see you at the workshop! If you’re not going or if you just have questions, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me. I’ll have some time for a few in person lessons at the festival as well if you want to have a one-on-one session. If you aren’t going to the festivals but would like to book a workshop for your association, club, or just you and your friends – let me know. I love private events too!

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