Hi Randy,

I think a mix of both is very helpful. Learning written pieces helps the eye guide the hand, and will definitely show you where the weaknesses in your technique are.

Improvising (and I mean true improvising, not just rote regurgitation of licks) helps the ear guide the hand. If you can rely on hand motion more when you play, then fingerings in improvisation become second nature.

Reading and improvising are both really useful skills to have.

The very first music I read for The Stick was simple organ arrangements I had learned when I was a kid. Perhaps it was too familiar to be a challenge, but it definitely helped me get a sense of the two-dimensional universe of notes on a fretboard as opposed to the one-dimensional universe of notes on a keyboard.

There are several charts in the Stick Book and The Songbook that will train the hand in interval movements, using a variety of fingering strategies, with lots of emphasis on position-shifting as a strategy for fretboard navigation.

Fingerings are only "awkward" until you have them in your muscle memory, then they become an effective and quickly wielded tool.

Before anything else, I search for basic principals to guide my actions, in this case, to make my musical improvisations more "of the moment". One "basic" I can offer here doesn't necessarily improve fingering, fluency or speed, but does jell conceptually with everything else you've got going in your RH lead melody.

I like to start a "twisted" phrase with my most natural fingering, then add on whatever false fingering is needed to get the melodic idea across. In Greg's twisted example, I'd play the first four notes with fingers 1, 2, 3 and 1 again on the next higher string, then I'd repeat these notes with a different fingering - 2, 3, 4 and 1 on the next higher string, and so on, repeating the phrase, rolling my hand to play with fingers 2, 3, 4 and 1.

What am I doing, you ask? Conceptually it's a 3-finger melodic technique, but I've got two sets of three fingers on my right hand! There are fingers 1, 2 and 3, but also fingers 2, 3 and 4 - an extra resource to add richness and variation. Pretending that your first finger is disabled (don't get too morbid about this), try playing some familiar RH lines with just the remaining fingers,. I think you'll find that it's quite possible to remain a Stick player that way, and to play your song arrangements, although your lines will be slower and clumsier.

Here's another example of starting with your known fingering, then adding on some exotic fingering. Play an ascending chromatic scale within a rectangular section of your fretboard using fingers 1, 2, 3, 2, and 3 per string. Then come back down a different way, with fingers 3, 2, 1, 2 and 1. What am I doing? I'm playing my most natural fingering first, then adding on the "twist". It may not be the fastest or even the most fluent sub-technique, but it integrates nicely with what has already been learned in the RH, allowing seamless transitions - good for improv (IMO).

All the Best, Emmett.

As an exercise I like to take a line like this and cycle between two fingerings.

1-2-3-[shift]-1
2-3-[shift]-1-2
1-2-3-[shift]-1
etc.

Might not be the most efficient or speedy or even what I might actually play in a piece but it helps get the hand used to shifting between different fingerings and changing directions.

Dave