fearing the solo...

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

No, that's not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is work on hearing the chords, hearing the melody, hearing the time and working on some specific improvisational exercises that I have outlined in other threads. This gets you to a point where you not only hear the chords, you hear a line that moves through the chords, you hear it as specific discrete pitches that are part of a whole. You hear it as specific notes with a specific rhythmic placement.
Just like listening to a Pres solo, except it's you and it's in your head.


It's not like looking up a bunch of different words and practicing how you can fit them into a conversation, it's not like listening to a bunch of other people talk so that you can try to understand why they had a certain conversation. It's about saying what YOU want to say in a conversation YOU are having with people who are talking with YOU.
And they way you get to deeper conversational levels is NOT by just learning bigger words, it's by understanding deeper concepts AND having the vocabulary to express with a growing specificity what you understand.

.

I understand the second paragraph - it's just the first, that is still a bit of mystery to me - I can understand the kind of things that Chris is talking about in this thread...maybe I should be happy with that!!??

[Ed Fuqua]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

I understand the second paragraph - it's just the first, that is still a bit of mystery to me - I can understand the kind of things that Chris is talking about in this thread...maybe I should be happy with that!!??

In what way may I make it clearer? To me the second paragraph is just an analogy of what I was saying in the first paragraph.

What are you doing for ear training,what kind of work are you currently doing on chords?

[twiz]

Thanks guys for this great thread ! Some incredibly useful information!

I don't suppose someone could link me to a quick primer on these different modal tones and their uses (like why the heck people say D Dorian vs Locrian vs whatever) and when one matters over another?

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by CHEESE TWIZ

Thanks guys for this great thread ! Some incredibly useful information!

I don't suppose someone could link me to a quick primer on these different modal tones and their uses (like why the heck people say D Dorian vs Locrian vs whatever) and when one matters over another?

Find any post by Jazzbo, then click on the link at the bottom. Ooh, wait a minute....you can also find NOSEBLOW'S excellent article Here. Have at it.

[Mike Crumpton]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

In what way may I make it clearer? To me the second paragraph is just an analogy of what I was saying in the first paragraph.

What are you doing for ear training,what kind of work are you currently doing on chords?

I was amazed at the rate of contribution to this excellent thread but things are getting repeated and it's obvious some of the message isn't getting accross. Aqua Bed loves solos that say something and this is what he is adamant we should all apsirte to. This we aspire to by having such a command of our material we can choose what to play. No arguments so far I hope.

Now when I started out on the jazz trail and did the round of classes I rapidly got a little peed off. Stick a flat 9 on bar 5 of But not for Me I was instructed and it will sound great - use this scale that scale etc, and I wondered where the music had gone. In fact, I thought the music had been robbed from me. Now all you helpful TBers have come up with a million and one options to give people a choices but not much on how to say something musical. So after thinking about it here's my 2 penn'oth

I have (not here) often met the arrogant assumption that you just practise all this and it will come eventually if you're any good. Just listen, transcribe, practise and - well get darn frustrated - what do you give priority to? The stock tB answer to most things is get a teacher. Great - but that hasn't stopped confussion here has it?

So I think there are elements that need to be comtemplated more - and they are time rythmn and space. Chris, but not too many others alluded to it by mentioning motives, (which over in UK are what get you sent down for). Time sets the pulse and dictates begining and end of the piece. Rythm can cause tension and release. Harmony gives colour but also tension and release (and can imply rythm depending on alternation of consonant and dissonant note but ho hum).

You're saying something, so you're telling a story. It has a begining (amazing how so many start with a fab lick and then waffle) it has a middle climaxes 2/3 through maybe and pulled together at the end. Time is linear, it has to be so, this cannot be a novel where you put the end first or hop backwards and forwards because if you do no-one will ever know.

So its linear, it starts, builds then falls to a finish that tells the audience to clap. We're not talking free jazz here so you don't have tension all the time. You give yourself space to build. I like to relate the improv to the tune but that's up to you. In my book, it has to be a whole - one idea connects to the rest perhaps because there is simmilarity to the rythm or choice of notes. Don't use too many ideas - not necesarily because it will confuse you - because most audiences can't hear them as part of the same improv. In the middle of the improv try not to make it sound like you've ended - an easy trap to play a root at the end of four bars.

Clever stuff is displacing rythms accross four bar blocks and bar lines. One good way to start this is try seeing how long you can leave a gap and then if you can leave a gap and come in anywhere you choose. This is not a chordal thing, it's knowing where you are, how long you want to go on and at what point between middle and end you are (got more ideas to develop or draw it ot a close).

Can this be practised - darn well can - but make this your aim and stop worrying about the chord scale theory whilst playing. I say this on the basis that 1/ if you're out there it's too late to practise further and 2/ the person thinking of a whole solo, rather than all the licks they've learn't usually sounds the best regardless of an odd dodgy note. And this is the priority if you do an improv for others to hear.

Unfortunately this does not apply to many jazz classes where the teacher and in the UK the classical examination body, the Associated Board, wants to see you can put this scale there and insert a quote or too regardless of what you're feeling.

This takes me back to feeling robbed at jazz classes when I started out. Admittedly, I didn't have the tools (but I darn tried) but I decided what I felt about something and was determined for my solo to be a part of me (and have a begining middle and end). But after much praise of solos I hated and getting quite good at the chord scale malarchy I got to the stage where I felt like giving up.

So - be true to yourself - be in the groove and just luxuriate in the oportunities as you (and me of course) progresses - but don't wait to try to find your own voice - do it now. That means work on time - feel the pulse, know where you are - never loose the pulse in an improv. - but hey, we're bass players - this is a catch up area for all those foghorns out there.

But importantly - how do you feel - agitated (well I have gone on a bit long), happy, melocholy? Right, so thats what I'm building to - lets start somewhere simple and build to it - to harsh large intervals say, to a joyous rythm, to a plaintive minor sound and then end on a reprise thats darn cheesy - it tells everyone that you knew what you were doing (even if you winged it) because you came home to something recognisable. Cue applause and blue-note contract (in my dreams!).

[Johnny L]

Awesome. Thanks Chris, it helps quite a bit. Is it the melodic minor
that goes up one way and goes down the other? There's a Mozart #40
audition excerpt that uses one of the minor scales like this to show a
committee how well one does a spicatto, and it sounds really cool.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Johnny L

Awesome. Thanks Chris, it helps quite a bit. Is it the melodic minor
that goes up one way and goes down the other? There's a Mozart #40
audition excerpt that uses one of the minor scales like this to show a
committee how well one does a spicatto, and it sounds really cool.

You're quite welcome.

The "Melodic Minor" I quoted is only the ascending form of the scale. Classically trained musicians practice the scale that way on the way up and play Natural minor on the way down. HASBRO'S article covers that, too.


P.S. - Sorry, accidentally hit "edit" instead of "Reply" the first time I responded. DOH!

[Michael Case]

There are alot of posts happening in this thread, alot of methodologies being expressed, and many things not being said that should be said. All the things being talked about are practice tools, study aids, things you leave behind on the gig. I just see too many people (Ed, Chris, and a couple of others excluded) getting the impression that the music being discussed is ALL ABOUT SCALES this makes me sad.
I just hope that everybody looking for answers in this thread understand that if you do the work in the practice room it will come out on the gig not as a melodic minor, dorian, or lydian scale but MUSIC, YOUR MUSIC.
I just wanted to say this.
Mike

[Ed Fuqua]

Originally Posted by mike da mook

There are alot of posts happening in this thread, alot of methodologies being expressed, and many things not being said that should be said. All the things being talked about are practice tools, study aids, things you leave behind on the gig. I just see too many people (Ed, Chris, and a couple of others excluded) getting the impression that the music being discussed is ALL ABOUT SCALES this makes me sad.
I just hope that everybody looking for answers in this thread understand that if you do the work in the practice room it will come out on the gig not as a melodic minor, dorian, or lydian scale but MUSIC, YOUR MUSIC.
I just wanted to say this.
Mike

Jeez, I thought I was the one that was saying it wasn't about scales.
Not to make you sad like unto a wee forlorn puppy, but yes, there is work to be done, as you say. And if somebody's questions seem to point to the "how can I improve my game" part, then we gotta talk about the "standing in the corner making left handed jump shots for 2 hours a day" part. And no, roundball in the heat of the moment is not about standing in the corner making left handed jump shots. It's about taking all of the little parts and working til they are no impediment so that all you have to think about in the game is not thinking, just playing.

the reason we present all of these methodologies is because this is the experience that each of us has had that has gotten us to the point that we are currently. ANd that sounds like where twiz wants to get to. Where he's not looking at an Aminor7flat5 and going "What works?" but hearing sounds unfold and entering into that musical conversation with his own things to say.

Don't cry for me, MOOKINTINA.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by mike da mook

I just see too many people (Ed, Chris, and a couple of others excluded) getting the impression that the music being discussed is ALL ABOUT SCALES this makes me sad.

Well - I don't think this is necessarily the case - it was just the question that was asked!! So some of us feel we should answer a question - others feel obliged to provide the answer to the question that the person should have asked!!

Not that I'm putting myself in the first category - I find myslf on here doing the latter quite a lot - but it was Ed who first taught me to do this and I have often followed his esteemed example in other discussions on TB!!

[Mike Crumpton]

Bruce, Twiz ended the start-of-the-thread post with: "can anyone please give me some guidance on developing fine jazz soloing for the 1-chord-per-measure standards? thanks!" which tells me that is the important bit, the conclusion, the main question - which is what people have been answering. Mike da Mook pointed out what he thought was important, as has you Ed, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. And so they should. You might not wander off-topic after all!

[Bruce Lindfield]

But I was responding to the part where he said :

"a lot of bassists will stress that you should forget about scales and focus on playing the chords and chordal substitutes, so in autumn leaves, focus on playing the notes forming the Am7 chord, D7 chord, G7 chord, etc etc."

The clue was in the fact that I quoted it!!

[Michael Case]

Originally posted by Ed Fuqua:
Jeez, I thought I was the one that was saying it wasn't about scales.

Yeah I pointed that out and don't worry I'm not crying. I have to say I'm really glad to see that your back Ed, your posts always inspire me.