Do you teach very young beginners? As a teacher I use my “New Dimensions in Classical Guitar for Children published by Mel Bay.
Ae you familiar with it?

I hope you’ll include more articles on teaching the young. After all these students will be the core audience for future classical guitar concerts.

Thanks,

Sonia Michelson

I would say you shouldn’t avoid repetition. That sort of thing gives coherence, just like in a composition. Take an idea you have and try to develop it. Do it on different strings, with different rhythms, anything you can think of. Improvising is just like a composition, so think of it that way: statement, departure, return.

One that that really helped me with improvising was learning to play major scale forms in thirds, triads, and seventh chords. It helps break you out of that “go up the scale then back down” stepwise improvising.

@Robert

It sounds like you need to develop a warm up routine that you do each day. I find that my routine in the morning (more on that later) sets me up for the whole day, but you may have to find a way to do a warm up in 15 minutes or so before the concert.

I think the exercises in this article are a good base. In fact, I do a variation on them every day at the start of my practice. That combined with arpeggio formulas and some short scale fragments sets me up for the rest of the practice day.

If your problem is more psychological — ie. it takes you while to settle into a “performance state” where you feel loose and really on — you might look into The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. Chapter 17 deals with building a “trigger” to settle into a performance state.

That’s fine for situations where I play for hours on end and my crowd shows up later rather than earlier, but now that I’m doing more 30- and 45- minute shows I need to be relaxed and limber when I hit the stage.

Didn’t have this problem 20 years ago, but at age 45 I’m starting to worry about long term sustainability. I’m self-taught, so my technique is probably crap.