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There are more guitar players today with incredible technical chops then ever before. Yet, so many of their solos and improvisations sound a bit dry and lifeless. This is often because they’re too focused on developing technical skills and strictly following harmonic rules and rhythmic approaches rather than letting their ears and emotions guide their note choices and phrasing.

Allen Hind’s Melodic Improv will guide your improvisational musicality beyond just technical skills and by-the-book harmonic rules. ”Of course, it's important to learn harmony and theory, but you can't let that part of it override the musicality. It's easy to forget how much fun playing guitar can and should be. That's what we’ll focus on in this course. We'll start off examining some innovative new approaches to harmony and chords, then move on to rhythm and timing.”

Allen Hinds has performed and/or recorded with jazz and R&B luminaries including Randy Crawford, Gino Vannelli, Patti Austin, Roberta Flack, BeBe and CeCe Winans, The Crusaders, Bobby Caldwell, James Ingram, Marilyn Scott, Boney James, and many, many others. An active studio musician as well as live performer, Allen has written songs for Larry Carlton, Patti Austin, Jeff Kashiwa as well as many popular TV shows. He's also a passionate educator and has taught at Musicians Institute for 30+ years. We're thrilled to welcome Allen to the family with his first TrueFire course, Melodic Improv!

"We'll explore applications of major scales and modal concepts, then we'll dig deep into soloing and improvisational techniques such as building on motifs. We'll work on emphasizing chord tones when playing over changes, and we'll also look at interesting altered scale options for playing over dominant chords. Those are just a few of the improvisational approaches we'll work through, but we'll also spend some time developing your legato technique to add fluidity and motion to your lines.”

Allen will guide you through a curriculum including: Crafting Rhythm Guitar Parts Rhythm & Time, Visualizing Major Scales & Modes, Modal Analysis for Licks, Learning to Express Yourself, Confidence & Positivity, Connect the Fretboard with Motifs, Expand on Your Motifs, Boo’s Jam Study, Playing Changes & Chord Tones, Chord Tone Training, Falling Up Solo Study, Yonder Hills Solo Study, Five Chord Options, The Beauty of Legato, Simple Legato Exercises, More Involved Legato Exercises, Strength Building Exercises , and a series halted to Confianca.

You’ll complete the course by applying all of the previously mentioned key concepts and techniques over 3 soloing performance studies:

Confianca

- ”In this performance study, I'll perform a solo over my song, Confianca. Watch for several of the techniques and concepts we've talked about in this course, including the motivic development within the solo. We'll break down some of the highlights, specifically examining the middle section or pre-chorus.”

Falling Up

- ”One thing that's very flattering is that there are several versions of this song on YouTube. I’ll show you the right way to perform the song because it's a bit tricky. It kind of started off with a guy I heard playing at a guitar store I used to go to, who'd pick out one note in a chord and bend it, kind of like a pedal steel player would. I started playing around with it, and it lent itself to the melody.”

Just Get In

- ”This next performance study is a song called Just Get In, off the album of the same name from my band Wonderland Park. The band name comes from the street I live on in Laurel Canyon, and it's a trio jam band that's lots of fun to play in. I wrote this song the morning of the session as I was messing around with drop D tuning. Here, we're going to jam on the section over the open D section, which is a D7 chord. We can do almost anything with this - and it's a trio setting, so we have a lot of harmonic freedom and can go crazy.”

Allen will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for the key examples and performance studies. Plus, Allen includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own. In addition, you’ll be able to loop or slow down any of the performances so that you can work with the materials at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let's get melodic with Allen Hinds!