How to Practice Improvising Without a Backing Track

Here's a quick lesson on guitar improvisation. If you're looking to get deeper into improv and jazz guitar, this is for you.

A great tip for improvising on your own without a backing track: be able to call up and work with stock chord progressions.

A stock progression is a very common chord progression that shows up in many kinds of music. It can serve as a launching point for free improvisation.

Here's a very common stock progression: a 1-6-2-5.

To improvise with this progression, play it a few times to get the sound going. Then start to play single note lines, implying the progression, hearing it in your head, even as you start to move away from it.