Samba Improv Bass Solo Help?

[Emilym80]

Hi, I'm in my advanced stage band at school and I have a feature piece for our end of year jazz night. It's a samba at about 130 bpm and it's not too hard, apart from the solo in the middle. It's 60 bars and I've really never had to improvise anything besides a walking bassline, which I can't do for this piece. I was wondering if I could have any tips for samba improv? I would try to learn the solo from the recording of the chart, but the solo's cut out of the recording because it's pretty long :P any advice, licks, riffs I can use, patterns, ANYTHING would be a big help. The song is in B flat. Thanks a lot!

[Ed Fuqua]

If you're not comfortable improvising, you're going to have to work on preparing some material ahead of time. First of all - is the solo section based on the form of the piece (or some section of the form) or is it unrelated to the form of the tune? If it's the former, how many bars is the basic chorus? What's the melody for one chorus? Learn that.
Second get the piano player or guitarist to play (with the metronome keeping time) the entire solo section so that you've got something to play along with.
The most common "idea" for jazz improvisors is that they are creating an alternate "melody" for the harmonic structure, so learn to play the actual melody. Then, as you practice, start embellishing the melody. Play little games with it, like use the melody NOTES but not the RHYTHMS of the melody, or the RHYTHMS but use different NOTES. If the melody has large value rhythms in a bar (half notes or whole notes) use smaller values and vice versa.