I started on an improvement exercise yesterday – use chord tones to improvise over the tune When the Saints Go Marching In and use the same rhythm as the tune. I did it thrice yesterday. Grand. I did it today for three times again. Improvising using chord tones felt more enjoyable today.
I tried another exercise. Using lower and higher neighbouring notes, improvise over the same tune above. It was okay.
My takeaway point from the above is that improvising is a skill which requires practice, just like note reading. One doesn’t become good at improvising overnight. If it takes years to be proficient in reading notes and sight reading, why aren’t we investing the same number of years into improvisation?