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Stop playing scales. Start playing music!
Improvise for Real will teach you to play your OWN music — not patterns, not memorized licks, but melodies and ideas that come from your own imagination. You’ll learn to see the entire world of harmony as a beautiful landscape that you can move around freely. And you’ll learn to improvise with complete melodic freedom in any musical situation.
HOW IT WORKS
Everything you need to master improvising on the guitar
In this course we start at the very beginning and develop a complete approach to improvising on the guitar. You will learn to understand the entire fretboard at once, allowing you to break out of memorized scale drawings and truly express yourself creatively.
You’ll learn to connect your ear with your instrument, expressing your own musical ideas anywhere on the fretboard. You’ll even learn to add chords to your solos, improvising your own chord voicings just as freely as you can improvise melody lines.
This program is for electric and acoustic guitarists of all styles. You do not need to know anything at all about music theory to begin, and you don’t need to be able to read sheet music.
If you have always dreamed of truly understanding music and being able to improvise with complete freedom on the guitar, this is the course for you!
LESSON SAMPLES
A holistic approach to the guitar
Through step-by-step video lessons, I’lll show you how to see the entire musical landscape on your fretboard and move around it freely. You’ll learn to improvise your own melodies and solos, and you’ll learn how to improvise your own chord voicings anywhere on the fretboard.
This holistic approach to the guitar combines melodic improvising, chord comping and chord melody playing right from the start. The result is that you’ll be able to add chords to your solos effortlessly, and you’ll even be able to play totally unaccompanied solo guitar, creating a complete musical world for your listeners.
Each lesson will take you to a whole new level in your musical thinking, giving you the tools to create your own music with each new concept. These concepts stack up fast, resulting in a way of playing at the end of the course that most students can’t even imagine at the beginning!
Course samples (melodic improvising)
Course samples (comping and chord melody)
JAM TRACKS FOR PRACTICING
Jam tracks — practice every concept over real music
Each lesson comes with a complete set of backing tracks (in multiple styles and all 12 keys). At every step of your learning, you’ll be exploring the sounds creatively and developing your own musical voice.
The IFR Jam Tracks break down the entire world of harmony into a clear, step-by-step path. You’ll study the essential chord progressions which are the building blocks of modern music. And our jam tracks player puts the entire library at your fingertips.
These professional backing tracks are also 100% integrated with our “Sing the Numbers” ear training program which is also included in your membership.
INTEGRATED EAR TRAINING
Sing the Numbers — ear training that's a joy to practice
Sing the Numbers is our ear training method designed just for improvisers. In IFR we believe that your sensitivity and your love of music are your greatest gifts as an improviser. And so your ear training program should also be artistic and beautiful.
Instead of drills and intervals, Sing the Numbers uses beautiful songs and melodies that were specifically designed to train your ear. All you have to do is play the audio tracks and sing along. There are no exams, testing or drills. The course takes you on a guided tour of our musical system, letting you experience each beautiful sound for yourself.
You’ll be learning with real music — not random intervals or test prompts. And it’s 100% integrated with your instrument lessons. Your jamming practice lets you explore the sounds creatively, and our Sing the Numbers tracks teach you to recognize the same sounds in the music all around you.
Click on a few samples to hear how it works!
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THE RESULTS
Benefits to your guitar playing
- Break free from memorized scale drawings. Learn to solo across the entire fretboard in any key.
- Move beyond licks and patterns. Understand how music really works and create your own music right from the first day.
- Learn how to play directly from your imagination, expressing your own melodic ideas exactly as you hear them in your mind.
- Discover the inner workings of modern harmony. Master improvising over chord progressions and learn to weave your own melodies effortlessly through the chords.
- Learn to add chords to your solos, improvising your own chord voicings anywhere on the fretboard.
- Learn to recognize chord changes by ear so that you can improvise over your favorite songs.
- Play totally unaccompanied solo guitar — melody, chords and bass together, with complete creative freedom.
- Develop your ear while you practice your guitar, with our integrated ear training program that goes hand in hand with the guitar lessons.
TESTIMONIALS
See what guitarists are saying about Improvise for Real
David's approach is the missing link I was looking for to guide me to where my instrument becomes an extension of my musical thoughts, and allows me to express those ideas freely and seamlessly.
This course was a breakthrough in my guitar practice! I saw other guitarists improvising freely with melody and chords and I had no idea how to get there. This course gave me the answer. I was able to build a practice, very simple at first, that made me connect more deeply with the sounds I was playing. It's such a fun and relaxed process, and my practice grew naturally to a level I couldn't even imagine at the beginning.
The IFR method has profoundly changed my life; even though I got a late start in learning music, it is empowering me to overcome that and dramatically improve, not just in playing the guitar but in truly experiencing and understanding music.
IFR has become my favorite method and the one I practice most. I recommend it enormously to all musicians who want to take their improvising farther.
Improvise for Real has helped my improvising more than anything else I've ever studied.
Before IFR, I'd spend so much time searching for quality instructional materials. Now I simply log-in, do exactly as you instruct and make progress. It's that easy. There's no more anxiety associated with practice - only curiosity, discovery and joy.
Thank you very much for this course. I have now a totally innovative way of looking at my fretboard. Now I can make my own arrangements of songs that I love. And now I grab my guitar almost every day and play just for the pleasure of it, sometimes for many hours. So thank you for this!
I’ve long played guitar and pretty much stayed at the same level until I discovered IFR, which somehow opened the door to a lot of musical knowledge that just wasn’t sinking in before.
I am a classically-trained musician with some experience improvising in rock bands. Mostly I felt inadequate in my solos. I am a huge fan of this approach. It is literally the only place I know where music is taught like other art forms not just as a craft.
I completed the first video course and the more I practiced with the jam tracks, the more moments of magic I had. I'm feeling great about the progress and momentum I have built, and I'm convinced that IFR is the way forward.
David has a way of taking you down one unexpected turn after another, each time revealing something that expands and deepens my understanding of music and of the fretboard.
This course was a "before and after" for me. I feel for the first time in my guitar practice that there is a systematic method to command the relationship between the music, the melody, the harmonic structures and the fretboard to improvise. Your way of teaching is a gift that fosters motivation and real pleasure.
Before discovering IFR, all aspects of music were a mystery to me, shrouded in inaccessible theory and futile practice regimes. No matter how much I tried to develop a clear and logical view of music I could not. Improvise for Real has replaced years of confusion with a clear and simple vision of the musical landscape that totally unlocked my musical creativity.
Discovering Improvise for Real has been so eye opening. I highly recommend it - for those curious, open-minded and thoughtful, who love music in their souls!
Thank you so much, David. Taking your courses has been a deprogramming of beliefs, and a trust of the knowledge and creativity inside me. I appreciate how you demystify music and make it more magical. My confidence has grown exponentially and I am really playing and exploring with awareness.
IFR has enabled me to embark upon a very rewarding ongoing music journey. My discoveries of harmony and melody and their interwoven interplay are enabling me to be much more of a creative, more of a composer, than I ever thought I could be. I cannot express in words how much that truly means to me.
I searched for a method to be able to express myself freely on the guitar. Then a few months ago I found Improvise for Real. I'm on the way now to getting a much deeper understanding of harmony by understanding the fretboard in a totally different way.
I am so grateful that I found IFR. It has been an invitation to a creative relationship with music that I didn't know I could have. The materials are crafted with such care and are the best value choice I could have made for my musical journey.
This course could change your whole way of thinking about harmony on guitar. It is an exploration of basic harmony through a functional exploration of the sounds, with improvisation at the core. The pace of the course is slow enough for beginners but if you are a more advanced player this course is open to your creativity. Thanks, David!
This course taught me how to be creative and play the guitar like an orchestra where all of the musicians can participate independently or together. As you gain experience with this method, you begin to see the guitar in a very clear way that allows you to quickly become very creative.
I came across IFR last summer and have spent the last six months dedicating my practice to its methods. I have seen growth in my ability to hear, imagine sounds and melodies, and produce them on my instrument. In short, I am a convert.
GET ACCESS
Your complete learning and practice environment in one subscription
Improvise for Real combines instrument mastery, ear training and creative self-expression into a beautiful daily practice that you’re going to love.
- Step-by-step video lessons for guitar
- Jam tracks to practice your soloing
- Beautiful ear training audio lessons
- Single integrated learning method with a clear path
- Special courses on the blues, jazz standards and more
- Your membership also includes our courses for piano, bass and melodic instruments.
- Access to our library of student Q&A + unlimited support by email
Monthly
$
$
29 / month
Start with flexible monthly access. Cancel anytime or upgrade to yearly when you're ready to commit.
POPULAR
Yearly
$
$
249 / yearly
Our most popular plan. Commit to a full year of musical growth and save 30% with annual billing. You’ll be amazed what a year with Improvise for Real can do.
Try Improvise for Real risk-free
We’re confident that IFR will transform the way you think about music and unlock your creative freedom on your instrument. But we also know that every musician’s journey is unique. That’s why we offer a simple 30-day money-back guarantee.
Join today, explore the video lessons, practice with the jam tracks, and experience our unique approach to ear training. If you don’t feel that IFR is the right fit for you within your first 30 days, just send us an email and we’ll refund your payment—no questions asked.
THE INSTRUCTOR
Learn from a professional musician and experienced teacher
David Reed is a professional guitarist based in New York City and the co-founder of Improvise for Real. A musician for more than 30 years, his unique perspective on music and creativity is drawn from his experiences playing and teaching music in New York, Los Angeles, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. David is the author of “Improvise for Real” and the creator of the IFR method for guitar. His video lessons combine soloing, comping and chord melody playing to give you a complete mastery of both harmony and the guitar.
