May 10 2008
Improvisation
Would you like to be able to improvise melodies at full speed over any song, over any set of chord changes?
If you’re a two-handed touchstyle player, now you can!
(And in fact, if you’re a guitarist or bassplayer, you can also adapt this surprisingly simple method.)
Werner Pohlert, German Jazz Guitarist
This book, Book Four of the Easy Touch-Style Method, presents a surprisingly easy method to improvise over the chords of any song.
This remarkable method was developed by the late Werner Pohlert, who learned to play jazz guitar fluently in post WWII Germany, in the heyday of live music, when jazz and jazz-like music was the norm, and heard around town in bars, restaurants, concerts, and more.
Modern times have seen a diminishing of the fluent improvisation that was simply done with a fluidity and exactness that is rarely heard today. But in a brilliant reworking of harmony, Pohlert has developed a method that allows anyone to quickly and easily learn to improvise fluidly and easily.
We have adapted Werner Pohlert’s ‘Basic Mediantic’ system to the two-handed touch-style method developed in Books One, Two, and Three. And in those books you have already been prepared with the scales that you will need to know.
Improvising? Easy?
Yes! You will find that improvisation is easier than you ever imagined.
A video tutorial illustrating the Easy Touch-Style Method is available for viewing on the Mobius Megatar site here –
Written Expressly for Specialty Instruments … but Adaptable
This method has been developed specifically for specialty touch-style instruments such as the Mobius Megatar, the ZenTapper, the Chapman Stick, the Warr guitar, the Bunker Touch-Guitar, the Box Guitar, or the Solene. (All trademarks listed here are the property of their respective owners.)
This method will work best on instruments with two “regions”, that is, two separate groups of strings such as one group of strings for bass and another group for melody. This method will also work on 8-stringed instruments whose strings are all in one “region”, such as Warr Guitar’s 8-string bass.
Adapt to Bass and Guitar?
Can the method be adapted to normal guitars and basses? Absolutely!
With a bit of application on the part of the student, the method can be adapted to other tunings and blank chord charts are supplied in the book to assist in your independent efforts. Adapting to instruments with lesser numbers of strings would, in our opinion, be a little more difficult, for playing with two hands by touch.
But the improvisation method will work on any instrument tuned in fourths, and you could adapt it to standard guitar tuning rather easily as well.
Of course, for the most magnificent music, we suggest playing with two handed touchstyle, and for that it would be far easier just to get a specialty touch-style instrument!