Improv Target Practice

One of the biggest challenges every guitarist faces while developing their improvisation skills is learning how to play over chord changes. Its one thing to work your pentatonic box all day long over a blues or 2-chord vamp, its quite another to solo over a series of chord changes, tonalities and keys. For intermediate players in particular, soloing over chord changes seems to be where the brakes get slammed on. At the same time, this skill is precisely where the rubber really hits the road on the path to musicianship.

The biggest misconception about learning how to play over changes is that you have to learn volumes about theory and harmony, or enroll full-time in a music college. While both of those options are certainly desirable, life gets in the way and few of us have the time to invest in either of those avenues. There are other options — and good ones at that!

Jon Finn’s Target Practice is one such option. Jon has been teaching guitar for over 26 years privately and at Berklee. Jon is a extraordinarily experienced, highly skilled and very well respected educator known for his inventive teaching methodologies that have proven themselves across thousands of students.

"Target Practice takes you to places you would not have thought to explore apart from the masterful instruction of Jon Finn. Your musicianship and fretboard skills will significantly improve if you follow him in this course designed for intermediate to late intermediate guitarists. You will find yourself targeting sounds far beyond the standard chord tones and arpeggios while you add spice and adventure to your playing. I have been buying TrueFire courses for many years and I have seen them introduce many innovations or improvements to their products, but this is the first course I have seen wherein they take advantage of the third split screen section to focus on the targeted notes during the playalong lessons. The use of the split screen in this manner is another of the many elements of genius found within this excellent, cutting-edge course. - Ron H., TrueFire Student

“I’ve had a lot of opportunity to teach improvisation concepts, in particular how to play over chord changes. I’ve developed a system that has worked very effectively for all of my students. It’s by no means a fad-oriented shortcut, but rather a no-nonsense proven method that works. I call it Improv Target Practice.”

“Learning your arpeggios and scales is certainly important, but just playing arpeggios and scales doesn’t sound very musical and you’ve probably discovered that already. Arpeggios and scales gives you the necessary information -- specifically, the correct target notes to play, but you also need an effective way to practice targeting those notes during your improvisation if you want to sound more musical -- and thats what Improv Target Practice is all about.”

In this edition of Improv Target Practice, Jon prepared 13 practice rhythm tracks, each featuring a chord progression with elevating levels of difficulty. For each chord within the progression, Jon gives you target notes to play and then challenges you to improvise using those target notes to connect your phrases as the chords change. You’ll start simply and then build your way up to more complex progressions with more target notes to work with.

The rhythm tracks that you’ll be playing over represent a variety of styles, levels of difficulty, tempos and keys. You’ll work on a funky track in the key of D Minor as well as a Pink Floyd-inspired E Minor rock jam. You’ll get bluesy in the key of G and the big and orchestral in the key of C# Minor. You’ll ‘target practice’ over a progressive track in Eb Minor and then get funky and jazzy with a track in A Minor. Those are just six of the thirteen tracks Jon includes in the course.

For each of the Improv Target Practice sessions, Jon will first show you the chords, target notes and scales. You’ll also get charts and diagrams to work with, as well as standard notation and tab of all of Jon’s improvised demonstration solos. And of course, you’ll get all of the Target Practice rhythm tracks to work with, both with and without the target notes.

Ready to release that emergency brake and finally start learning how to play over the changes?! Grab your guitar, click it and stick it!