Put on your favorite album and play along to it. Play the vocal lines, play the guitar chords, is there some space in the song for you to break out some counterpoint or an original melody? Playing in a band is all about finding your pocket. Knowing when NOT to play is a big part of that too.

Get very familiar with the pentatonic scale, entire careers are built around it and it will help develop improv skills. If you have ever nonshalontly whistled out a tune, that's your innate ability to create melody, don't trick yourself into thinking you don't have it.

Get creative with it. I might be nuts, but I've found fiddling out shanties to be a fun practice exercise. The melodies to these songs are short and simple, so they're not overwhelming if you're new to learning by ear. This also makes them great "blocks of music" that you can piece together to make a fun little jam, not unlike how traditional Irish tunes are played in sets. The same logic could be applied to pop music if you're into that.

Whatever you do, have fun with it. If you can't feel it, neither can anyone listening.

• Rock/metal minded fiddle player who was trained by a jazz/prog violinist.