Expert Soloing
kind of a long post, but thanks in advance for your responses.
experts,
you are high energy grooving, and feeling the swing on your favorite tune... lh stabbing rich chords rythmically, rh accenting the melody with personal flare, time has come to insert your improvisation and you decide its going to be vertical....
question1:
at that time, are thinking have of 251, 36251, etc. or do you know the tune enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake? basically how much thought goes into your solos of tunes you know well? will patterns/riffs over common changes help the novice out on the intuition side? any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?
question2:
you decide on modal solos... since the notes are in a i chord, do you emphasize the 7th, 3rd and 1st on the current mode (dorian, phrygian etc.), to distinguish one mode from the other? any accidentals/tension notes added to help set transitions from mode to mode?
final question:
as far as emulating the giants of the past, who and what albums would you advice a novice practise progressively with? playing style arranged from the elegant/simple to the more modern/complex?
a few notable that come to mind:
bud powell, red garland, j johnson, nat king cole, earl hines, bill evans, mccoy tyner, art tatum ,etc
which albums, maybe two albums of the above mentioned, arranged progressively would you recommend? please feel free to add artists not mentioned.
thanks, yaw
experts,
you are high energy grooving, and feeling the swing on your favorite tune... lh stabbing rich chords rythmically, rh accenting the melody with personal flare, time has come to insert your improvisation and you decide its going to be vertical....
question1:
at that time, are thinking have of 251, 36251, etc. or do you know the tune enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake? basically how much thought goes into your solos of tunes you know well? will patterns/riffs over common changes help the novice out on the intuition side? any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?
question2:
you decide on modal solos... since the notes are in a i chord, do you emphasize the 7th, 3rd and 1st on the current mode (dorian, phrygian etc.), to distinguish one mode from the other? any accidentals/tension notes added to help set transitions from mode to mode?
final question:
as far as emulating the giants of the past, who and what albums would you advice a novice practise progressively with? playing style arranged from the elegant/simple to the more modern/complex?
a few notable that come to mind:
bud powell, red garland, j johnson, nat king cole, earl hines, bill evans, mccoy tyner, art tatum ,etc
which albums, maybe two albums of the above mentioned, arranged progressively would you recommend? please feel free to add artists not mentioned.
thanks, yaw
There are 11 comments, leave a comment.
"any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?"
one i like alot is 100 ultimate jazz riffs for keyboards. piano by andrew gordon.
try it you'll love it!
jv'
one i like alot is 100 ultimate jazz riffs for keyboards. piano by andrew gordon.
try it you'll love it!
jv'
thanks jv for your recommendation. i'll check the book out.
come on 7, let us in on some of the finer intangible of your improve secrets... thanx for your compliment though.
you guy's contributions has helped me immensely.
cheers
yaw
come on 7, let us in on some of the finer intangible of your improve secrets... thanx for your compliment though.
you guy's contributions has helped me immensely.
cheers
yaw
learn to solo in the bebop idiom. complete with midi audio examples.
https://www.jeff-brent.com/lessons/bop101/bop101.html
not that i'm an expert, but i have been playing "professionally" for close to 20 years. my fingers may not flurry, but they do somehow stumble to the right places effecting solos in their chaos.
soloing for me is like speaking english. when i'm in a conversation i don't think "okay this next sentence should be a compound, with two modifiers in the subject, a dependent clause after a passive verb, and stop dangling your damn participles..." it just comes out naturally. of course i may stutter, use bad grammar and say "uh..." too much.
when i solo at the piano, especially on a tune i know well, i'm not sure where everything i play comes from, but i know it's a result of a lifetime of listening to music, like all the words and sentence patterns i've heard all my life in english. sometimes i'll play cliches that i've played a thousand times before. i often think about textures and space. other times i'll try to emulate other players. should i make this a jolly erroll garner mood, or an introspective but swinging bill evans mood, or a wild percussive mccoy tyner. and if i'm lucky i may even be able to pull it off.
but it's rare that i consciously think about actual number sequences like 2-5-1 except maybe on new tunes i'm not very familiar with.
i'm not saying you shouldn't be thinking consciously of technical details at first. i'm learning japanese now and in order to make a sentence, i have to work out the correct pattern in my head first. it takes quite a mental effort but i hope someday i'll be able to speak it more naturally without thinking about the formula.
soloing for me is like speaking english. when i'm in a conversation i don't think "okay this next sentence should be a compound, with two modifiers in the subject, a dependent clause after a passive verb, and stop dangling your damn participles..." it just comes out naturally. of course i may stutter, use bad grammar and say "uh..." too much.
when i solo at the piano, especially on a tune i know well, i'm not sure where everything i play comes from, but i know it's a result of a lifetime of listening to music, like all the words and sentence patterns i've heard all my life in english. sometimes i'll play cliches that i've played a thousand times before. i often think about textures and space. other times i'll try to emulate other players. should i make this a jolly erroll garner mood, or an introspective but swinging bill evans mood, or a wild percussive mccoy tyner. and if i'm lucky i may even be able to pull it off.
but it's rare that i consciously think about actual number sequences like 2-5-1 except maybe on new tunes i'm not very familiar with.
i'm not saying you shouldn't be thinking consciously of technical details at first. i'm learning japanese now and in order to make a sentence, i have to work out the correct pattern in my head first. it takes quite a mental effort but i hope someday i'll be able to speak it more naturally without thinking about the formula.
domo arigato to all. (7 i know you understand!!)
gokouun o inorimasu to you jhmurray, my wife has been learning japanese from friends and anime.. linguistic ear i suppose! i dabbled a little in french at college & now considering chinese. languages do open up whole new worlds/cultures to you kinda like jazz.
so if you were to pick a couples albums from the artist list above, which impacted your soloing the most?
gokouun o inorimasu to you jhmurray, my wife has been learning japanese from friends and anime.. linguistic ear i suppose! i dabbled a little in french at college & now considering chinese. languages do open up whole new worlds/cultures to you kinda like jazz.
so if you were to pick a couples albums from the artist list above, which impacted your soloing the most?
learning chinese is fun for those with an ear for music.
as far as the artists you mentioned above, i personally feel influenced most by the last three (evans, tyner and tatum). but what matters most is who excites you the most, because they will be your natural motivation for learning. buy cds by whichever player you really get into. doesn't matter who.
as far as the artists you mentioned above, i personally feel influenced most by the last three (evans, tyner and tatum). but what matters most is who excites you the most, because they will be your natural motivation for learning. buy cds by whichever player you really get into. doesn't matter who.
"as far as emulating the giants of the past, who and what albums would you advice a novice practise progressively with?"
i seemed to progress through jazz piano as it had developed. i learnt joplin and other rags while studying classical as a teenager.
then onto fats waller and a whole new world.
for a novice, i'd suggest some easy fats waller to start. loads of transcriptions now available if you want, parts of which are some of the easiest jazz and most are fun.
a small amount of geroge shearing is quite easy (transcriptions of blue moon, shadow of your smile, come to mind) and all his stuff is arranged in an elegant style.
jhmurray hit the nail on the head, saying motivation is everything.
andy
i seemed to progress through jazz piano as it had developed. i learnt joplin and other rags while studying classical as a teenager.
then onto fats waller and a whole new world.
for a novice, i'd suggest some easy fats waller to start. loads of transcriptions now available if you want, parts of which are some of the easiest jazz and most are fun.
a small amount of geroge shearing is quite easy (transcriptions of blue moon, shadow of your smile, come to mind) and all his stuff is arranged in an elegant style.
jhmurray hit the nail on the head, saying motivation is everything.
andy
the best sources i know of ideas for solo lines are the heads of bebop tunes based (usually for copyright reasons) on standard changes, and structured not like conventional melodies but like single improvised choruses. take the first phrase of donna lee for example - a bedrock of modern jazz vocabulary, usable in so many different contexts. and already written down for you (if that's what you want) in one or other of the real books. another example: the first phrase of ornithology - the bebop equivalent of one of the ten commandments, first heard on one of bird's very earliest recorded solos, with jay mcshann. it's just 12 notes, doesn't stray from the tonic scale and is as fresh today as it was in 1940. just a little work on a few bebop heads, together with a bit of listening to recordings or original performances, can give you a rich jazz vocabulary very quickly.
well that's my experience anyway.
sid
well that's my experience anyway.
sid
yaw, when you are sitting down with your friends and having a conversation, and you thinking about, "ok, time to put in some verbs, make sure i conjugate this word right, for color i'll add some adjetives, and perhaps some quizzicle inflections for effect right here."
of course not!
when playing a solo, you don't think about anything but the conversation you are creating. since conversation is based on a language, it's important to know the language you are speaking in, and in this case, our language is based off swing.
so how do you learn a new language? sure, study some words (licks), study some phrasing (more licks), read literature (practice arrangements), and writing (composing). in music we even have a better tool for learning the language- transcription.
so when you are practicing, you think about things like playing the flat 9 and the 3rd and 7th. be consistent and learn whatever you are practicing in 12 keys. go through the books. david baker's "bebop" series, mark levine's jazz piano book, john mehegan, etc etc etc.
then when you are on stage forget about all that stuff and just play loose and fun.
learning the language of jazz is a process that takes a while unless you grew up with it playing in your house every day. i wasn't so lucky... my mom thought gregorian chants would be good for me :)
the most direct route to learning the language of jazz is transcription. if you do one transcription every two weeks, by the end of six months you will have improved so much that you will be a totally different player.
of course not!
when playing a solo, you don't think about anything but the conversation you are creating. since conversation is based on a language, it's important to know the language you are speaking in, and in this case, our language is based off swing.
so how do you learn a new language? sure, study some words (licks), study some phrasing (more licks), read literature (practice arrangements), and writing (composing). in music we even have a better tool for learning the language- transcription.
so when you are practicing, you think about things like playing the flat 9 and the 3rd and 7th. be consistent and learn whatever you are practicing in 12 keys. go through the books. david baker's "bebop" series, mark levine's jazz piano book, john mehegan, etc etc etc.
then when you are on stage forget about all that stuff and just play loose and fun.
learning the language of jazz is a process that takes a while unless you grew up with it playing in your house every day. i wasn't so lucky... my mom thought gregorian chants would be good for me :)
the most direct route to learning the language of jazz is transcription. if you do one transcription every two weeks, by the end of six months you will have improved so much that you will be a totally different player.
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Use the contact link at the top of the page.
by Scot Ranney on 02/20/2006, 12:08
"you are high energy grooving, and feeling the swing on your favorite tune... lh stabbing rich chords rythmically, rh accenting the melody with personal flare, time has come to insert your improvisation and you decide its going to be vertical..."
what does it mean "you decide its going to be vertical..."
question1:
"at that time, are thinking have of 251, 36251, etc. or do you know the tune enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake? basically how much thought goes into your solos of tunes you know well? will patterns/riffs over common changes help the novice out on the intuition side? any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?"
yes, i and my fingers know the tune enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake. or if i don't know the tune, i know chords well enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake.
"basically how much thought goes into your solos of tunes you know well?"
depends what you meen by thought. when i am really improvising well it seems almost mindless, i am in the "zone". i practice with theoretical type thinkng and i also practice playing in the "zone" (without theoretical thinking)
"will patterns/riffs over common changes help the novice out on the intuition side? any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?"
i think that will help, but i think you need very few of those. i think a good bil evans type arpeggio, like in that other thread:
(cmaj7 play 3579,7135, same notes for relative a-7) and good scale runs using forward motion phrasing are most helpful.
what does it mean "you decide its going to be vertical..."
question1:
"at that time, are thinking have of 251, 36251, etc. or do you know the tune enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake? basically how much thought goes into your solos of tunes you know well? will patterns/riffs over common changes help the novice out on the intuition side? any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?"
yes, i and my fingers know the tune enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake. or if i don't know the tune, i know chords well enough that by intuition your fingers flurry to the right places creating solos in their wake.
"basically how much thought goes into your solos of tunes you know well?"
depends what you meen by thought. when i am really improvising well it seems almost mindless, i am in the "zone". i practice with theoretical type thinkng and i also practice playing in the "zone" (without theoretical thinking)
"will patterns/riffs over common changes help the novice out on the intuition side? any available adviceable pattern/riffs collection out there?"
i think that will help, but i think you need very few of those. i think a good bil evans type arpeggio, like in that other thread:
(cmaj7 play 3579,7135, same notes for relative a-7) and good scale runs using forward motion phrasing are most helpful.
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