How To Improvise
A beginner's guide to real-time music creation.
$99 $49
Lifetime access
for composers and instrumentalists
Improvisation is a practical, creative skill that can unlock exciting new ways of playing and writing music. This course takes you from the very beginning, exploring how to improvise over a single chord, all the way up to creating complete musical solos.
With embedded audio loops throughout the course, you can practise your improvisation skills as you watch the tutorials, then hear how your tutors approached the same track.
Train your ear, jam along with live band recordings, and grow alongside a creative community built for learning.
course structure
Introduction
Getting Started
Get set up and ready to play. Tell us about your goals and struggles with our interactive video, test your ear's current ability to analyse music, and learn more about your course tutors.
module 1
Harmonic Foundations
Learn how harmony guides melodic ideas. Explore chord function, chord tones and simple scales, and learn how to play solos that are informed by the harmony.
module 2
Building Improvisational Fluency
Explore the relationship between chords and scales, practice improvising over the most common chord progressions, and learn how to use dissonance with purpose across different keys.
module 3
Developing Musicality
Go beyond melody and harmony to focus on how rhythm, dynamics and phrasing can take your improvisations from just 'notes' to memorable musical ideas. Learn the importance of building space in your music so you don't overshadow your best ideas with filler.
module 4
Improvisation Beyond Solos
Discover how other musicians improvise, and explore ways of practicing improvisation as part of your daily musical adventures with a guided practice plan.
meet your tutors
Lucy Hackett
Lucy is a musician and composer whose work has been performed and published worldwide (Netflix, Vogue, APM). She is a 2024 Sound and Music Seed Award winner, a 2025 Amazon MGM Studios × PRS Foundation Prelude recipient, and was selected for the 2026 RSNO Film Composers Lab. Lucy has gigged extensively and recorded at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios.
Bradley Jordan
Bradley is a film, TV and video games composer and instrumentalist who has worked alongside Guy on many major studio projects – including for DreamWorks, BBC, and Netflix. Hosting many of the tutorials in this course, he has an uncanny knack for asking the questions you want the answers to.
Featured Guests
Jo Quail
Jo Quail is an internationally acclaimed award-winning composer and virtuoso cellist from London, UK. As a soloist Jo has toured extensively through Europe and internationally, from Hellfest to the Royal Festival Hall.
Primarily a contemporary classical / avant-garde artist, Jo incorporates sound design and live looping in her performances, and has collaborated and toured with acts as diverse as Enslaved, Emma Ruth Rundle, Myrkur, God Is An Astronaut, MONO, Heilung, Amenra and Wardruna.
Blake Troise
Blake Troise (also known as PROTODOME) is an award-winning composer, audio programmer, and researcher. He's best known for his chiptune/jazz fusion music, but also composes for video games, and gained his PhD in 1-bit music composition.
His scores have featured in games for platforms from Xbox to Game Boy, including Slave Zero X, Crunchyroll's Hime's Quest, Melon Journey Pocket, and Obliteracers.
Tom Janes
Tom is a guitarist, composer, and course producer at ThinkSpace Education. As a gigging musician, Tom has performed at many venues, events, and festivals all around the country, and he has also done session recording and score arrangement for TV shows, documentaries, short films, podcasts, trailers, and video games.
The strongest improvisers are simply the best listeners. Practice your listening skills so you can hear themes, chord progressions, and rhythmic patterns on the fly, and replicate them in your own improvisations.
Want to test your interval recognition skills before you jump in? Try the interval quiz down below and see how far you get on each level.
Practical, hands-on learning
Loop and Improvise
Practice soloing with 14 play-along chord loops built into the course alongside your tutorials - or download the loops into your DAW to record your ideas and track your progress. Listen to our tutors' solos on the same tracks to learn new ways to shape phrases.
jam with the band
Improvising with other people is where it all comes together. Jam along with our live studio band - six jams, recorded live, with space for you to take a solo.
The Chord-Scale Approach: Introducing Modes
Chord-scale theory is a major topic in jazz improvisation, but our goal here isn't to master the whole system. At its most basic, the chord-scale approach means matching particular scales with particular chord types - and to explore it we need to introduce modes.
Check out the full course chapter with chord quizzes and practice jams below.
Join the community on Discord
Gain access to our ever-growing community of music makers on Discord. You can chat to other people taking the course, pick up fresh tips, share your music, and grow your network.
Don’t worry if you’ve never used Discord before, it’s simple to get set up, and totally free.
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Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any questions not answered here, please get in touch using the contact details below and we'll get back to you.
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