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I've tried to improvise in some of the SOTMs with more jazz-focused songs... but they're not very good. Mostly running my fingers around a certain scale hoping to sound good. I do understand the "call and response" format though, and try to fit my finger runnings around that idea.
I've also played around with making up short lines for intros, endings, and the bridge/instrumental for pop songs, again just mainly running my fingers around a scale (usually pentatonic). Sometimes sounds like it could work, sometimes not so right.
As far as pop songs vs jazz goes, though, I feel like pop is so much easier. Just go up or down, occasionally change direction, and as long as I stick to the main scale of the song, start and end on the root or 5th, and it'll somehow work out. But, that mainly works for improvising new lines for intro/bridge/ending... not sure how to work that into modifying an actual melody.
After practicing a song once or twice, I can start to throw in simple embellishments though. Usually simple turns because that's so intuitive, just quickly go up one note and then back down (or the other direction, whichever I feel sounds better). Grace notes I can sometimes do on the fly, sometimes I need to think ahead and prepare. Filling in notes in between intervals, kind of like a slow gliss, is something I'm also working on. Another technique I've been working on, is adding a bit of fill at the end of a phrase, usually like 3-4 notes that continue and descend after a phrase. But overall, all those changes still only work within the melody of the song, not really "straying away" from it, if you get my meaning.
That actually makes kind of sense. I already know how Lionel Richie sings Hello, so maybe my mind is kind of fixed to how it should go and limits how I try to interpret the melody.
I found a link to 4download -- but that looks kind of fishy, considering that the plugin normally isn't free.
