best ways to improvise?

Pete528 · #1 01-29-2008, 08:15 PM

i'm having a lot of trouble just improvising and doing solos and stuff...

basically what i do now is just mess around with notes in scales and that's really starting to get old, not to mention i can't really move around the neck like that.

i'm looking at stuff like the circle of fifths and it all comes back to scales... basically i want to play fills and solos and write riffs and EVERYTHING, but i dunno, i just feel trapped in scales.

so what would be the best way of improvising besides just playing notes in scales?

thank you so much to everyone who helps!

bigthemat · #2 01-30-2008, 01:34 AM

rhythms would be the next place to go, imo. you have color tones, and you have color rhythms. 3 over 4 stuff sounds hip. off beat stuff can be used tastefully. really, the best way is to listen and imitate. what styles do you mainly play?

ibanezshredder · #3 01-30-2008, 02:55 PM

best way imo is to just feel it

J.D.B. · #4 01-30-2008, 03:50 PM

OOH! the dark and murky world of "improvisation". Popcorn anyone?
Josh

Deluge Of Sound · #5 01-30-2008, 03:52 PM

The best way to improvise is the way you think sounds best.

You feel trapped in scales, remember, scales aren't rules, they're suggestions. It's your fingers on the bass, your settings on the amp, and your feet on the pedals(optional). Therefore they're your notes on your fretboard, and if you like the way they sound, everyone else can piss off.

unclekebm · #6 01-30-2008, 06:35 PM

feel the groove, or a groove...
then play a note...

bottomend! · #7 01-30-2008, 09:19 PM

There are some truly dreadful suggestions posted above. Sorry to be soooo blunt but guys... saying "just feel it", " play3 over 4", ect is just crazy. Soloing, as you posed the question has nothing to do with fingers, amp settings or pedals as one guy suggested.

Try this;

Instead of approaching soloing from a scale like standpoint, break down the scale into it's more primal elements. That first and foremost means chords. Scales come from chords... not the other way around.

Chords on bass are arrpegiated not strummed, so you should (need to) be able to play arrpegiated chords accurately. Once that is accomplished, then you can start filling in the notes AROUND the chord, either with scales notes, or notes from "outside" the chord ( chromatic notes). Keep posting here and I'll walk you through some exercises to get you going in the right direction.

Sorry to bust on the other posters but I had to jump in here and point out the fallacy that was beginning to fall from the sky. Flame on.. whatever.

kerryg · #8 01-30-2008, 09:34 PM

over on another thread here.

jsingles · #9 01-30-2008, 09:37 PM

ive got the funk.. its right here in this box.. ill give it to you if you marry me....

Deluge Of Sound · #10 01-30-2008, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bottomend!

There are some truly dreadful suggestions posted above. Sorry to be soooo blunt but guys... saying "just feel it", " play3 over 4", ect is just crazy. Soloing, as you posed the question has nothing to do with fingers, amp settings or pedals as one guy suggested.

Try this;

Instead of approaching soloing from a scale like standpoint, break down the scale into it's more primal elements. That first and foremost means chords. Scales come from chords... not the other way around.

Chords on bass are arrpegiated not strummed, so you should (need to) be able to play arrpegiated chords accurately. Once that is accomplished, then you can start filling in the notes AROUND the chord, either with scales notes, or notes from "outside" the chord ( chromatic notes). Keep posting here and I'll walk you through some exercises to get you going in the right direction.

Sorry to bust on the other posters but I had to jump in here and point out the fallacy that was beginning to fall from the sky. Flame on.. whatever.

Wait a minute, ladies and gentlemen we have right here the inventor of music himself, and he's here to tell us exactly how to solo, all the time!

Settle down, settle down, save the applause for the end of the set.

Welcome to Talkbass, don't be a douchebag until you've posted at least five times.

jsingles · #11 01-30-2008, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deluge Of Sound

Wait a minute, ladies and gentlemen we have right here the inventor of music himself, and he's here to tell us exactly how to solo, all the time!

Settle down, settle down, save the applause for the end of the set.

Welcome to Talkbass, don't be a douchebag until you've posted at least five times.

rofl

+ 47343256

bottomend! · #12 01-31-2008, 12:25 AM

I'm not being a douchebag bud... on the other hand you're doing a great job.

Look at the suggestions given to the guy who started this thread and tell me that (except for a couple of decent points) anything said here would be even remotely considered as competant instruction. Go ahead... defend it. Defend "just feel it'. defend fingers, amp settings and pedals. defend playing polyrhythms when the guy doesn't even know the first thing about chords and how they relate to scales. Go ahead smart guy.. I'll wait for YOU to teach everyone here how to solo.

My contribution to this thread had to start by FIRST calling people on their BS "thoughts" about teaching someone something. I dont wanna spend three pages having to convince someone that it's their fingers that need strenghtening or they have the wrong amp. So I got it out of the way right off the bat. I'm not gonna come here and just be an a-hole because it feels good. Do YOU have something to ADD to the discussion? If not... butt out and shut up. You're doing no one ANY favors and you're simply cluttering up what could be a good chance for this guy to get the info he needs.

As for the "5 post" comment. Is that they dark age reasoning under which this forum operates? If thats the case then off with my head for telling it like it is and not being afraid to put people in their place.

I mean give me a friggen break here! If the people who posted on a forum titled "General INSTRUCTION" cant even reflect long enough to see if their post actually offers any sort of instructive weight or not before they push the reply button, then we're all in a world of hurt. I got the distinct feeling that the people who posted their 'thoughts' dont really understand what the word INSTRUCTION actually means. Maybe their lonely and needed a place to feel validated... heck , I dunno. Everyones a teacher these days and I see sooo much misinformation being strewn about as fact... it's sickening. On the other hand he world has opened up because of forums like this one and we can ALL gain from others insight. Get my point here Mr. "I need to feel big because I'm not, so I'll pick on this guy because he called people on their BS"?

Anyone else wanna get a kick in? Please do it while I wait for the thread author to reply to the subject matter that I commented on. Go on, get it out of your systems... I dont wanna be bothered with you're little piddly mind games. This kind of crap really ticks me off.

HaVIC5 · #13 01-31-2008, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bottomend!

There are some truly dreadful suggestions posted above. Sorry to be soooo blunt but guys... saying "just feel it", " play3 over 4", ect is just crazy. Soloing, as you posed the question has nothing to do with fingers, amp settings or pedals as one guy suggested.

Try this;

Instead of approaching soloing from a scale like standpoint, break down the scale into it's more primal elements. That first and foremost means chords. Scales come from chords... not the other way around.

Chords on bass are arrpegiated not strummed, so you should (need to) be able to play arrpegiated chords accurately. Once that is accomplished, then you can start filling in the notes AROUND the chord, either with scales notes, or notes from "outside" the chord ( chromatic notes). Keep posting here and I'll walk you through some exercises to get you going in the right direction.

Sorry to bust on the other posters but I had to jump in here and point out the fallacy that was beginning to fall from the sky. Flame on.. whatever.

Totally, OT, but its a really common misconception that chords came first, then scales, and it causes a sort of elitism in jazz circles for cats who focus their playing on chord structures rather than scale structures. It simply isn't true - music didn't evolve that way. The concept of vertical construction (chords) in western music came WAY after the development of monophony by way of the greek (church) modes - several MILLENIA afterwards, actually, and a good deal after the advent of polyphony. Chords came about when renaissance composers began writing more and more complex polyphonic music and needed a way to systematize their separate lines of music into cadence structures based upon the way the tones in the particular scale moved. The concept of chord PROGRESSION and root PROGRESSION wasn't really formalized until the 17th and 18th centuries.

That's why it irks me when bebop old schoolers and people from that train of thought are so adament against learning scale theory - scales are the basis of melody, and chords are the basis of harmony. Just because Charlie Parker thought in chords and extensions thereof doesn't mean that is the "correct" way to solo, and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that all music and melody is based upon chords and their extensions. You can only truly understand what music is and has been by looking at where it came from.

Anyway, sorry for this tangent, continue. I recommend "the Improviser's Bass Method" by Chuck Sher. It's best to go through it with a teacher, but it still is a really good place to start off for the n00b. Mark Levine's Jazz Theory Book is a pretty good one too, although there are a bunch of things I disagree with on a theoretical level with it.

bottomend! · #14 01-31-2008, 12:44 AM

Very good point haVic. The school of thought that I came out of is exactly the one of which you speak. Obviously back in the day, the Greeks were simply playing scales ect.

Im my mind, one of the best ways to break out of the up and down "scale as solo" thing that the guy is asking about is to just get away from the scale and focus on the underlying structure for a while. Get to know the 1-3-5-7 and by doing that, the player will start to see all the little gaps in between that he can then fill in with "color" tones. It's kinda like thinning out the forest a little bit to find the good trees ( of which we'll probably cut down to make basses from of course)

HaVIC5 · #15 01-31-2008, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bottomend!

Very good point haVic. The school of thought that I came out of is exactly the one of which you speak. Obviously back in the day, the Greeks were simply playing scales ect.

Im my mind, one of the best ways to break out of the up and down "scale as solo" thing that the guy is asking about is to just get away from the scale and focus on the underlying structure for a while. Get to know the 1-3-5-7 and by doing that, the player will start to see all the little gaps in between that he can then fill in with "color" tones. It's kinda like thinning out the forest a little bit to find the good trees ( of which we'll probably cut down to make basses from of course)

Fair enough, but arpeggios and derivations thereof aren't the be-all-end-all. You'd create a hip bebop solo blowing through Confirmation or whatever if you nailed all sorts of arpeggios to the 9th and passing tones between the 6th and 5th, and emphasize the b5 on the dominant 7 and all that stuff. But that's a style of soloing for a particular style - straight ahead and bebop. What do you do if you have a four measure passage of A-7 followed by 4 measures of C-7? (Recordame)? Do you just run minor 7 arpeggios? Of course not, you create patterns and stresses based upon a particular scale (in that case, Dorian, because of the natural 6 in the melody). The chord tones on the A-7 are rather inconsequential, if it's for any extended length of harmonic rhythm, the arpeggio structure begins the break down, because the chord tones no longer have any cadential relationship to the chord in front of it, like in a ii-V, therefore, outlining the chord is irrelevant to the soloist's purpose.

That said, arpeggios are a good building block, but some music is definitely requires scale use. Vamps, or static harmony definitely are are good place for scale pattern, modal jazz, etc. The point is to understand the relationship of every tone you play in a particular scale to the chord that accompanies it (chord/scale relationships), and if you do that, a more holistic understanding of improvisation will occur.

bottomend! · #16 01-31-2008, 01:18 AM

Cool. I'm just suggesting stuff to get this guy to a place where he can look at the neck as not simply a static series of acsending or decending notes (where there are not many 'hole's' left for him to impart his ideas) but to be able to see a more open structure that he'll still hear as being part of the scales he already recognizes. For me, learning has always been best accomplished when I can latch onto something I already know and then add new information to it.

Since he already seems to know about scales ( to what degree, I dont know) so I suggested to, in effect, break those scales up a little bit. For someone who has never gone through chord studies and approach note exercises on bass... it's a mind blower for sure! All of a sudden a person can begin to see larger portions of the neck simply by looking at smaller chunks of the scales (chords). (It's a little bit of self trickery)

You bring up some good points about static chords and cadences. I've actually been working on that exact thing lately myself!

Deluge Of Sound · #17 01-31-2008, 02:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bottomend!

I'm not being a douchebag bud... on the other hand you're doing a great job.

Let's not go all out with the Ad Hominem attacks, please.

Look at the suggestions given to the guy who started this thread and tell me that (except for a couple of decent points) anything said here would be even remotely considered as competant instruction. Go ahead... defend it. Defend "just feel it'. defend fingers, amp settings and pedals. defend playing polyrhythms when the guy doesn't even know the first thing about chords and how they relate to scales. Go ahead smart guy.. I'll wait for YOU to teach everyone here how to solo.

I'm not here to teach everyone to solo, this is a public message board, and he asked for the best way to improvise. There is no best way to improvise. Just like there is not best genre of music, or best bass, or best amp, so on and so forth.

My contribution to this thread had to start by FIRST calling people on their BS "thoughts" about teaching someone something. I dont wanna spend three pages having to convince someone that it's their fingers that need strenghtening or they have the wrong amp. So I got it out of the way right off the bat.

No one's telling him to get a new amp, or to strengthen his fingers. You missed my point, and you called me out on some crazy idea you had about my post.

I'm not gonna come here and just be an a-hole because it feels good. Do YOU have something to ADD to the discussion? If not... butt out and shut up. You're doing no one ANY favors and you're simply cluttering up what could be a good chance for this guy to get the info he needs.

Condescending, much? We're all bass players here, and neither of us are Yngwie4String, so hopefully all of our posts are weighed equally. There's an Ask A Pro Section for a reason, so you can ask a pro. If it's not in there, it's open to answers from all of us.

As for the "5 post" comment. Is that they dark age reasoning under which this forum operates? If thats the case then off with my head for telling it like it is and not being afraid to put people in their place.
You're coming in here and telling me that my advice is worthless, don't expect to receive the red carpet treatment

I mean give me a friggen break here! If the people who posted on a forum titled "General INSTRUCTION" cant even reflect long enough to see if their post actually offers any sort of instructive weight or not before they push the reply button, then we're all in a world of hurt. I got the distinct feeling that the people who posted their 'thoughts' dont really understand what the word INSTRUCTION actually means. Maybe their lonely and needed a place to feel validated... heck , I dunno. Everyones a teacher these days and I see sooo much misinformation being strewn about as fact... it's sickening. On the other hand he world has opened up because of forums like this one and we can ALL gain from others insight. Get my point here Mr. "I need to feel big because I'm not, so I'll pick on this guy because he called people on their BS"?
Actually, I am an English teacher, and I could teach you a thing or two about grammar, spelling, and punctuation, just as I'm sure you could teach me about bass playing. We're all teachers here, and we're all students, too. I'm not trying to feel validated, I'm trying to offer this dude my opinion on improvisation. Sure, it may not hold much water compared to a lot of other players on here, but I've still got just as much right to post on here as you do. I'm not picking on you because you called me on my B.S., I'm irritated that you would dismiss my approach to the instrument so dismissively.

Anyone else wanna get a kick in? Please do it while I wait for the thread author to reply to the subject matter that I commented on. Go on, get it out of your systems... I dont wanna be bothered with you're little piddly mind games. This kind of crap really ticks me off.
What kind of crap? The kind of crap where some anonymous person comes in and tells you you're wrong?

Replied in red.

jsingles · #18 01-31-2008, 07:58 AM

bottomend, you came in here and made a perfectly good thread a flame war.. grow up

there is nothing wrong with offering people advice. you dont need to be qualified to do so, and theres no need to bash other people for offering their opinion.

Bruce Lindfield · #19 01-31-2008, 08:12 AM

I agree with bottom end - he gave some good advice about a different approach and got a load of crap - this is where the flame war started and is just a personal insult for no reason :

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deluge Of Sound

Wait a minute, ladies and gentlemen we have right here the inventor of music himself, and he's here to tell us exactly how to solo, all the time!

Settle down, settle down, save the applause for the end of the set.

Welcome to Talkbass, don't be a douchebag until you've posted at least five times.

Lobster11 · #20 01-31-2008, 08:24 AM

If anyone is interested in getting back to the point....

One of the ideas posted early on in the thread WAS a specific and useful one, namely using rhythmic variation as another dimension for mixing things up. Playing 3's over 4's is a very cool but simple twist that can make an ordinary scale sound like a whole new thing.