You may be aware that Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick is a fantastic jazz improviser (and bandleader – catch his jazz trio on tour sometime!), but to you, that also might just mean “he’s trained in something I don’t understand.”
A lot of musicians can be intimidated by improvising, particularly when there are fast chord or key changes – Frank Zappa notoriously only ever wrote one-chord improv sections for his solos, in an era where most rock guitarists only ever knew how to improvise over blues changes!
So this nice little video lesson and column from Alex for Guitar World is a great primer if you’re just starting out. Alex talks about a cool kind of chord change too, not just yer average 2-5-1.
