There is a fundamental difference between connecting pre-learned licks over chord changes and actually improvising — and it shows. This masterclass with guitarist John Wheatcroft is about making that shift: moving away from a finite library of phrases towards a set of underlying concepts that generate endless musical material in the moment.
What you’ll get out of this lesson
Ten clear strategies for thinking about and playing over chord changes, drawn from John’s career spanning gypsy jazz, straight-ahead, fusion, and more — along with the PDF download of his full strategy document to refer back to as you practise.
Here’s the download for John’s 10 strategies for playing over changes:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/40im8ml2pdvk19u/Masterclass%20April%202022.pdf?dl=0
Concepts over licks
John’s central argument is that improvising from a library of pre-learned licks has a ceiling: you have a finite number of them, they can become repetitive, and they may not fit the musical moment you are actually in. The alternative is to work from concepts — underlying reasons for why you would play certain notes — so that any given idea can be expressed in an infinite number of ways. Licks are still useful, John notes — like learning phrases in a new language to get started — but they have shortcomings the moment the musical conversation takes an unexpected turn.
It’s less about the what you play and more about why. For every musical idea that you might hear a particular player play in the moment, there’s very often some overarching concept at work as to why they chose those notes. And those notes are just one of maybe an infinite number of possibilities.
Travelling light
The phrase John uses for this conceptual approach is “travelling light.” Rather than carrying a heavy bag of pre-packaged licks, you carry a small set of flexible ideas that can generate material on the fly. This is, John argues, what is actually happening with the best improvisers at the highest level — not a conscious lick-to-lick calculation, but a set of deeply internalised concepts running as a kind of musical subconscious. The goal of study and practise is to get those concepts so thoroughly under your fingers that in performance you can let go of the thinking and just play.
The distinction between study and performance
The analytical, detail-heavy work belongs in the practice room, not on the bandstand. When studying, you dig into the grammar — you figure out exactly why a particular note works over a particular chord. When performing, you let that analysis fade into the background and trust what you have internalised. The parallel to language is exact: when we speak, we are not consciously parsing grammar. We just speak. The goal of musical practise is to get to the same place with harmony and melody.
Style, range, and adaptability
John brings a broad range of experience to this masterclass — from gypsy jazz and straight-ahead to electric fusion, acoustic jazz, and Latin. His point is that the 10 strategies work across all of these styles because they are about musical thinking, not genre-specific vocabulary. A concept that works over a I–VI–ii–V in a Gershwin standard is the same concept that can work over a jazz-blues or a fusion vamp. The notes will be different; the underlying logic is the same.
Taking it further
Download the PDF and work through each of John’s 10 strategies one at a time. Pick one per week and spend your practice sessions exploring only that concept over a backing track, in as many different ways as you can. Resist the temptation to switch to another strategy or fall back on familiar licks. The point is to get each concept deep enough that it becomes available automatically in context.
Your homework
Take the first strategy from John’s PDF and apply it over a simple ii–V–I in C major. Set a timer for ten minutes and improvise using only that concept — no other ideas allowed. Record yourself. The constraint is deliberate: it forces you to explore the concept more deeply than you would if you could reach for your usual vocabulary the moment things get uncomfortable.