By now you’ve probably memorized the C scale shape. Now it’s time to put it to use! Believe me, this is going to be fun.

Once again, here is the C style scale pattern:

We’re going to improvise with this pattern in the key of D. Here’s what the pattern looks like this in the key of D using the tab:

We’re going to be improvising (making it up as we go) from this pattern over a 2 chord progression: D and G. Improvising with this scale pattern is not too hard. Simply play notes from the scale pattern over the chords.
Don’t just go up and down the scale, try to play melodies. Here is an example:

Many times when listening to a chord progression, you’ll hear little melodies in your head. What you are doing when you improvise is you are playing the melodies that you hear in your head for everyone else to hear. In other words: it’s artisic expression.

What you want to do is know the pattern well enough that you can find the notes your looking for. You’ll only get this from many hours of practicing it, but it will come.

Now It’s Your Turn

You can download the chord progression heard in the example above. It’s in MP3 format and is 1.5 MB. Practice improvising with the C style scale pattern in the key of D over the track (just like above). Keep practicing this, because it will work wonders. Right click here and choose “save target as…” to download the track to your computer.