Sorry for the late heads up, but this course just started another run (last Monday). I have seen a lot of good reviews for this course but never caught it on previous passes. The first assignment is due this coming Thursday, so it can be fully completed for those interested. Course info can be found here: https://www.coursera.org/course/improvisation

I too can vouch for this course - I learned a lot when I took it about a year ago now (yikes, time is flying).
 
Gary Burton really does a good job running through things, and it really makes you think.
 
Bob Bone
 

Taking it now.  LOTS of good stuff on Coursera.

I registered but haven't dug in yet. Thanks for the info.

I was surprised at how much work some of those freebies pile on.  I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mr Burton, and was definitely a happy camper taking a class with him teaching me a bit about jazz improvisational soloing approach.
 
Now if I could only get my left hand to stop playing Billy Joel to go along with the Bill Evans my right hand is now soloing to, I would be in BUSINESS!  DOH!
 
Bob Bone
 

Indeed... he hits upon a few very nice points out of the chute about correlating music to language, which I felt was spot on. He also reinforced something which has always plagued me with piano, which is the instant recall of scales. Guitar has always "just clicked" with me, since all semitones are the same, but on a piano I often see it as a "mathematical puzzle" of sorts. I am not sure if I will ever overcome this TBH. When he made the comment on the 10 most commonly used scales and that you can start on 12 notes making 120 total I simply chuckled and thought "For guitarists it is only 10 and knowing the roots... nothing else 'visually' changes." Then again... I might just be lazy and finding excuses

Yeah guitar always seemed a lot easier to learn chords and scales on due to the simple shiftability of box patterns which don't care what key you're in. I can see tone patterns much more clearly on guitar. However, this comes with a trade off in that guitars have multiple instances of each note, whereas pianos have one instance of each note. Of course when you're an accomplished player this works to your advantage because there are many ways of fingering the same phrase and so you can play things with a lot less hand movement than you can on a piano, but the multiple possibilities can easily confuse or overwhelm a beginner.

"box" patterns are double edged sword and if you aren't careful you can end up sounding boxed in :) I think its a primary reason why unlike other instruments many guitarists tend to play with a more visual lick approach. I see the multiple notes thing as a major advantage since you have 5 different ways to play the same note on a guitar, each with a pretty different timbre. Sax players too routinely use alt fingerings and overblowing techniques to play the same note with a different timber. This gives you a lot of expressive possibilities with articulation and fingerings. I spent a lot of time transcribing other instruments like horns and piano, that helped me to break away from the evils of position playing<g>

Some of the greatest and most passionate musicians that we know of from the past 120 years could play the same note over and over manage to and not sound boxed in.
 
Warnings about box patterns rarely seem to acknowledge how much of the music we enjoy are indeed, simply patterns.
 
 
 

Oh I'm a huge fan of patterns. My point was about getting too dependent on the visual and physical aspects of the guitars geometry.