UpTempo Soloing

[Kevin Hsieh]

There seems to be a point when soloing on the bass that it's just too fast too physically express your ideas and thus you are also mentally blocked.

Mine is around 230 bpm and i just get clogged up. I've been shedding on tunes at that speed (metronome clicking 2 and 4 at 116 bpm) for some time now and have still not been able to break out of that rut.

I've been trying to keep it simple with quarter notes and some short eighth note runs but it's hard to keep it interesting AND keep it coherent.

Any tips?

[damonsmith]

Slow arco over fast tempos is a nice sound, there is a beautiful trio with Terje Rypdal, Miroslav and Dejonette with some great examples of that:
http://ecmrecords.com/Catalogue/ECM/...=8&lvredir=712

[Mark Perna]

Originally Posted by Kevin Hsieh

There seems to be a point when soloing on the bass that it's just too fast too physically express your ideas and thus you are also mentally blocked.

Mine is around 230 bpm and i just get clogged up. I've been shedding on tunes at that speed (metronome clicking 2 and 4 at 116 bpm) for some time now and have still not been able to break out of that rut.

I've been trying to keep it simple with quarter notes and some short eighth note runs but it's hard to keep it interesting AND keep it coherent.

Any tips?

Train yourself to relax as much as possible. At those tempos, any tightness really works against you. That's the physical part. The mental part is your brain is screaming "this is hard!" which really gets in the way. You've just got to practice until it doesn't seem as hard anymore. There aren't any real secrets. It all really comes down to practicing a lot. If you keep at it, eventually, it will feel natural.

mark

[flyingmarcel]

When I'm running into this problem on something particularly up, I try and practice it by 'trading' 4's with my metronome.

When first making attempts, this gives you a chance to mentally and physically reset between ideas and it becomes less of an issue with falling behind or not being able to get your ideas out. Plus, your ideas will ALWAYS sound hipper than the 'guy' you're trading with!!!

Then I move up to 'trading' 8's, 16's, whatever until I'm playing full choruses comfortably and (hopefully) with some interesting things in there.

Don't know if that's helpful to you, but it works pretty well for me

fm

[David Kaczorowski]

Transcribe. I like horn solos, start with some Miles Davis.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Isn't there also a sense in which bass solos are a nice "contrast" for the sound of the band...?

So - as a listener - you get chorus after chorus at high tempo of intense horn solos with the drums and bass driving it on ...

Then the bass solo can be an oasis of calm - where you have this quieter instrument with rich tone playing something melodic ...

Just an option of course - but often when I hear the "greats" - the bass solos have a lot of space and air around them. Of course you can also get breakneck speeds, but it can be nice for the audience/listener to have a less intense moment?

[Jason Hollar]

Yeah -- I stink at uptempo bop solos too.

So I follow the sagely advice Miles gave to bassist Michael Henderson during the Jack Johnson era:

When we play slow, you play fast. When we play fast, you play slow.

[David Kaczorowski]

Originally Posted by Kevin Hsieh

There seems to be a point when soloing on the bass that it's just too fast too physically express your ideas and thus you are also mentally blocked.

It sounds like you're describing two different problems. "Too fast to physically express," would indicate limitations with your technique. Are you able to play 8th note scales at that tempo?

If you're, "also mentally blocked," but your technique is up to it, then you're simply not thinking fast enough. Transcribe.

The solos I like playing the best are when I'm playing with a really good drummer and over all the choruses preceding my solo we're setting stuff up and building on it. Then I approach my solo as an extension of the line I was playing as accompaniment for the other solos. I like the continuity, thinking in a continuous arc, and there's all that pocket all around me. I find the ideas flow more readily for me than if I were to approach my solo as something separate from everything that came before it.

[Jeremy Allen]

Just remember that you don't have to play anything, whether it be eighth-note runs or long lines or blazing gestures. Long, slow, arrhythmic phrases can often be a nice change of scenery on a fast tune, especially if you can get the drummer to butt out.

Practicing with the metronome on 2 and 4 is fine and all, but I think people do that way too much. Put it on 1 and 3 and see how different your time feels--you might be surprised. Put it just on beat one and think of the bar not as four beats but as one long beat (like you do when you play a fast 3/4 and think of it in "one") and see how that frees up your rhythmic abilities. (Or, put it on the "and" of one or two or three or four for the Charlie Banacos workout--that's a trip). Find the fastest subdivision you're comfortable with (say, quarter-note triplets) and base your solo's rhythmic content on that (the Scott LaFaro effect). Practice filling up a space from point A to point B (whether that's one bar or a five or 12) with a long rhythmic shape unattached to any one note value.

Larry Grenadier plays a beautiful quarter-note solo on a very up-tempo verison of "It's Alright With Me" from one of the early live Brad Mehldau trio recordings--you can play melodies in quarter notes, too. And as your eighth-note lines become more accurate and solid in slower tempos, you'll find that you can hear them in faster tempos as well.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Allen

Just remember that you don't have to play anything, whether it be eighth-note runs or long lines or blazing gestures. Long, slow, arrhythmic phrases can often be a nice change of scenery on a fast tune, especially if you can get the drummer to butt out.

Practicing with the metronome on 2 and 4 is fine and all, but I think people do that way too much. Put it on 1 and 3 and see how different your time feels--you might be surprised. Put it just on beat one and think of the bar not as four beats but as one long beat (like you do when you play a fast 3/4 and think of it in "one") and see how that frees up your rhythmic abilities. (Or, put it on the "and" of one or two or three or four for the Charlie Banacos workout--that's a trip). Find the fastest subdivision you're comfortable with (say, quarter-note triplets) and base your solo's rhythmic content on that (the Scott LaFaro effect). Practice filling up a space from point A to point B (whether that's one bar or a five or 12) with a long rhythmic shape unattached to any one note value.

Larry Grenadier plays a beautiful quarter-note solo on a very up-tempo verison of "It's Alright With Me" from one of the early live Brad Mehldau trio recordings--you can play melodies in quarter notes, too. And as your eighth-note lines become more accurate and solid in slower tempos, you'll find that you can hear them in faster tempos as well.

This post should be framed.

Well said.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

Isn't there also a sense in which bass solos are a nice "contrast" for the sound of the band...?

So - as a listener - you get chorus after chorus at high tempo of intense horn solos with the drums and bass driving it on ...

Then the bass solo can be an oasis of calm - where you have this quieter instrument with rich tone playing something melodic ...

Just an option of course - but often when I hear the "greats" - the bass solos have a lot of space and air around them. Of course you can also get breakneck speeds, but it can be nice for the audience/listener to have a less intense moment?

Originally Posted by Jeremy Allen

Just remember that you don't have to play anything, whether it be eighth-note runs or long lines or blazing gestures. Long, slow, arrhythmic phrases can often be a nice change of scenery on a fast tune, especially if you can get the drummer to butt out.


Larry Grenadier plays a beautiful quarter-note solo on a very up-tempo verison of "It's Alright With Me" from one of the early live Brad Mehldau trio recordings--you can play melodies in quarter notes, too. And as your eighth-note lines become more accurate and solid in slower tempos, you'll find that you can hear them in faster tempos as well.

Yes - that's what I was trying to say in my post - although more from an audience/listener's perpective!

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

Isn't there also a sense in which bass solos are a nice "contrast" for the sound of the band...?

So - as a listener - you get chorus after chorus at high tempo of intense horn solos with the drums and bass driving it on ...

Then the bass solo can be an oasis of calm - where you have this quieter instrument with rich tone playing something melodic ...

Spot on. I do this often when playing with "ultra chops" players, or when following "burning" solos. Just as there are "gears" that you can go (upshift) through to make the time more active on a ballad while keeping the basic harmonic rhythm the same, there are also gears that you can go (downshift) through to make an uptempo number feel more relaxed. If I can't play lines comfortably at the upper tempo feel, I usualy try to adjust into the feel that I do feel comfortable with.

[fingers]

Right on Jeremy!!!

Larry Grenadier is one of my favorite bass players for the very reason that Jeremy stated. You can SING every single one of his solos. His solos are not flashy but they have a nice combination of melodic and rhythmic elements.

I am certainly not an authority on this but one of the things I struggle with is not getting in the testosterone-driven shred-fest after the horns and piano or guitar have soloed. A trick that my teacher reminded me of is doing something as simple as restating the melody as a jumping off point for a solo. There is a great Dave Holland bass solo (at about 6:20) on the tune Solar where he does just this. As listeners it really brings us back too.

[flatback]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Allen

Just remember that you don't have to play anything, whether it be eighth-note runs or long lines or blazing gestures. Long, slow, arrhythmic phrases can often be a nice change of scenery on a fast tune, especially if you can get the drummer to butt out.

Practicing with the metronome on 2 and 4 is fine and all, but I think people do that way too much. Put it on 1 and 3 and see how different your time feels--you might be surprised. Put it just on beat one and think of the bar not as four beats but as one long beat (like you do when you play a fast 3/4 and think of it in "one") and see how that frees up your rhythmic abilities. (Or, put it on the "and" of one or two or three or four for the Charlie Banacos workout--that's a trip). Find the fastest subdivision you're comfortable with (say, quarter-note triplets) and base your solo's rhythmic content on that (the Scott LaFaro effect). Practice filling up a space from point A to point B (whether that's one bar or a five or 12) with a long rhythmic shape unattached to any one note value.

Larry Grenadier plays a beautiful quarter-note solo on a very up-tempo verison of "It's Alright With Me" from one of the early live Brad Mehldau trio recordings--you can play melodies in quarter notes, too. And as your eighth-note lines become more accurate and solid in slower tempos, you'll find that you can hear them in faster tempos as well.

A friend of mine who studied with Brad Mehldau said that they feel the fast tempo stuff on "3" Its kind of a mind set like above. Larry is brilliant. He plays what is musical in the context of the music not just the context of the bass solo. He so beautifully shows that you don't need to play a lot of notes to create rhythmic tension and release, they just have to be in the right places. A lot of that is playing over larger phrase ideas not just jumpy chord to chord ideas but ideas that arch over 8 bars or a chorus, which means that you don't so much outline the chords as arrive at a destination thru them. Larry has really delved into this and when you hear him play you always hear these clear, sophisticated, architecturally solid, beautifully arched solos, that compliment rather then compete with the other soloists.
Check out Ben Street too.
Jeremy can you explain the Charlie B. thing in more detail? I've known people who've studied with him and he's got such great ideas...

[Jeremy Allen]

Originally Posted by Chris Fitzgerald

This post should be framed.
Well said.

Thanks, Chris. I hope that a lifetime of staggering through terrible bass solos on up-tempo tunes has taught me something!

Originally Posted by flatback

Jeremy can you explain the Charlie B. thing in more detail? I've known people who've studied with him and he's got such great ideas...

It's just an extension of practicing with the metronome on only one beat per bar. If you're practicing in 4/4 at 160bpm, you set the metronome at 40bpm; you can then think of the click as being any one beat in the bar, and practice around that. If you want it to be the first beat, you practice with:
[CLICK off off off] [CLICK off off off] meaning [ONE two three four] [ONE two three four]
And if you think of the click as beat four, it's:
[off off off CLICK] [off off off CLICK] meaning [one two three FOUR] [one two three FOUR].
Now think of the click as the "and" of any beat (the second eighth-note):
[off-and off-and off-CLICK off-and] [off-and off-and off-CLICK off-and] meaning [one-and two-and three-AND four-and] [one-and two-and three-AND four-and].
You can do this with any subdivision of the bar--the click can be on the third triplet of a beat, or the second sixteenth note of a beat--and you never have to change the metronome because in every case you're talking about one click in each bear. If you're thinking in swing, you can still think of the click as an upbeat of any beat, because where the downbeat comes is up to your ear.

I don't know that this is specifically a Charlie Banacos thing, but I was hanging out with a friend two weeks ago who has been studying with Charlie for about three years now and he mentioned that he does all of his scale, pattern, and lick practicing with the metronome clicking on the "and" of three per Charlie's orders. I've been trying it out since then, and I find it to be pretty dang hard. Charlie accepts students by mail, and if I can get into his schedule I'm going to try to study with him next year--he is an amazing and unique guy.

[Sam Sherry]

All great; who could disagree?

On the other hand, you can just practice playing fast.

Everybody can play fast. We just can't play fast for long. So start by playing just two or three notes fast. And then leave space. What does that do to your ideas?

[Phil Rowan]

Not to derail this thread but...

Space is such a huge thing, whatever tempo you're playing. You can say just as much with the spaces you leave (rests) as with the spaces you fill up with notes. I remember something Tony Malaby told me a while ago, which was that while improvising, play one idea and don't play anything else until after you've listened back to yourself (in your head) what you just played. This is a great way to open things up, and when you listen back to yourself, it simultaneously turns into you listening more and more to the other players. It's amazing how much more the music breathes, and how much you feel like you're really dancing with the other musicians.

On a song as fast as Kevin described, at least in terms of walking, it helps for me to tap my foot on the 1 every other bar, or just the 1 of every bar. I do this because it helps shift the usual thought of "oh snap, I'm playing so many quarter notes, I feel like my hand might fall off!!!" (panic!) to, "oh yeah, this reminds me of that 16th note exercise I've been working on" (deep breath, relax).

[seragos]

What one man can do another one can do)))))

[dkziemann]

Listen to Ray Brown on some uptempo tunes. His chops are hardly fast compared to so many other people today, so he's forced to play something creative with a slower feel.

[fingers]

Man I remember seeing Ray in a trio with Russell Malone and Benny Green. On a real fast version of Cottontail, after the other two played these blazing solos, Ray played the swinginest, most melodic solo and brought the house to their feet!!!