Improv and soloing?

Hey guys! I'm somewhat of an experienced bass guitarist, but I'm self-taught so I know very little about music theory and the like. I recently joined a band, and everyone there is very talented and skilled, but the one problem there is they are all either school-taught or get private lessons, so they have a more broad knowledge of music and its workings. They all know how to improvise and make up solos on the spot. They all seem perfectly okay with me being unable to do these things, but I think this is more out of necessity than preference, as bass guitarists are not the most common folk out there (Not that that's a bad thing! ) Now, I hate being on a lower level than my band-mates and would love to learn topics such as improvisation and soloing. I've looked around on sources like google and the resources out there for teaching it I've found are quite scarce. My band-mates tell me it's all in the pentatonic scales, which I know, but my improvization and soloing still sounds like utter crap. So, what is it to soloing and improv, and what resources can I go to to learn? Thanks for reading!

Well, the main thing you need with improvisation and soloing is practice. Tons of it.

It starts with the pentatonic scale, and just dicking around with that. Don't just play it up and down, play around with it! Playing scales is good for practice and getting your hand to learn the positions, but ultimately actually doing fun stuff is going to win out.

ThreeLetterSyndrom wrote:Well, the main thing you need with improvisation and soloing is practice. Tons of it.

It starts with the pentatonic scale, and just dicking around with that. Don't just play it up and down, play around with it! Playing scales is good for practice and getting your hand to learn the positions, but ultimately actually doing fun stuff is going to win out.

Thanks for the insight! I'll be sure to screw around with it for a while until I get it down.