Soloing and creating "grooves"?

[OldSchoolFlats]

I know this is a wide-open question, but I thought I would ask anyway: any basics for soloing and creating quick grooves?

I have an OK background in theory, arpeggios, scales etc. I actually started on melody instruments (clarinet/sax), but just played written parts.

Somewhere, I got the idea that solos/grooves just play over a scale/pattern, but I fear I am mistaken. More recently, I have been focusing more on:

• Melodic "hooks"
• Phrasing
• Articulation
• Question/answer
• Chord changes

What I have the most luck with is building on arpeggios in a given key. Chord-sequences basically. I'm less familiar with writing melodies though, and don't know (but assume) chord-changes are implicit in melodies.

Anyway, I realize I am all over the map here, but perhaps the more experienced could nudge me in the right direction?

 

[Snarf]

Phrasing is such a huge deal, and it's such a personal thing. Your own phrasing is going to be the result the combination of what you listen to, what you transcribe/learn note for note, and what you come up with through experimentation.

Note choice is part of that, of course. It's easy to get caught up in different scales, when there's really no reason to. If you're in a pop form, chances are you're staying in the same key much of the time, and the scale and associated pentatonics for that key are plenty to go off of.

For solos, a huge part of generating interesting lines is using chromatic approach notes. Play around with approaching chord tones this way, and then you can get crazy and try approaches to the 9th and 13th and 11th (only on minor chords though for that one).

Anyway, a lot has to do with the style of music you're focusing on. In my case, the only songs I ever solo on anymore are "Do I Do" and "Car Wash," lol. But I play a lot of guitar, including jazz guitar, and I'm always playing lots of approach notes, arpeggios starting on different scale degrees, and throwing in some altered mumbo jumbo with minor II-V's.

 

[OldSchoolFlats]

Phrasing is such a huge deal, and it's such a personal thing. Your own phrasing is going to be the result the combination of what you listen to, what you transcribe/learn note for note, and what you come up with through experimentation.

Note choice is part of that, of course. It's easy to get caught up in different scales, when there's really no reason to. If you're in a pop form, chances are you're staying in the same key much of the time, and the scale and associated pentatonics for that key are plenty to go off of.

For solos, a huge part of generating interesting lines is using chromatic approach notes. Play around with approaching chord tones this way, and then you can get crazy and try approaches to the 9th and 13th and 11th (only on minor chords though for that one).

Anyway, a lot has to do with the style of music you're focusing on. In my case, the only songs I ever solo on anymore are "Do I Do" and "Car Wash," lol. But I play a lot of guitar, including jazz guitar, and I'm always playing lots of approach notes, arpeggios starting on different scale degrees, and throwing in some altered mumbo jumbo with minor II-V's.

I wonder about creating melodies. I wonder if melody-writing and chord progression always go hand-in-hand - either formally or informally - or if it is common to create melodies from a single scale (with chromatic "tension"), then later harmonize, adding a chord progression, "after the fact".

While I realize rules are made to be broken, I wonder if melody or chord progression comes first, when song-writing. Algorithmically, I believe something like Band-in-a-box starts with chords, then generates a melody on top of the chords, but I wonder how the "bass (and guitar) giants" do it.

 

[Snarf]

Hmm, well when I wrote my album, melodies and chord progressions kind of informed each other. I think generally it's common to start out with a small idea, develop it, and then you come to forks in the road. Those forks could be as radical as a sudden key change and changing the melody to suit, or as simple as taking a static melody and substituting a different chord in the key from the last time we heard that melody. Or you could be like the Tik Tok generation and repeat the same 5-6 notes over the same 4 chords and call it a hit.

As far as bass lines, they are supportive of the song, in the vast majority of cases. I really stick to nailing the root at the correct time, and ornamenting rhythmically a little bit when called for, using notes in the key. It's something you have to balance with what the rest of the arrangement is doing.

Take a couple songs as an example. The new Adele song really stays in its lane. One key, common chord progression, no left turns. Still a good song, even though it recycles a melodic phrase from another one of her huge hits, which kind of takes me out of it. It's accomplishing what it wants to, and the chord progression is very organic. If you really wanted to throw in a cool ear-tugger into a song like that, you can use a b7 major chord before a 4 chord.

Take another song: Miracle by Kimbra. It's a dance song, but after the first four bars, it tonicizes a different key immediately, and pulls the ear with it. It eventually winds back to F#. It uses this all throughout the verses. It sounds to me like that was a device that was pre-meditated, and it really defines the song. Strategic key changes are one of the things that Kimbra is just awesome at.

Anyway, I haven't been much of a writer over my career thus far, so there's probably way better insights out there than mine. This is just my ramblings about a subject that's so deep and subjective that anything I say just doesn't actually matter in reality.

 

[WrapRough]

I've recently been trying to sing lines first and then apply that on the instrument. I am not limited by my (lack of) skill on the instrument that way. I find I am far more creative when I use my voice to create a line.

Give it a try

 

[dreamadream99]

All the answers you seek, are locked within all the hit singles of your favorite genre. There are two simple steps to unlocking those secrets:

1. Listen and play the greatest hits of your genre.
2. Do this for a few decades.

BONUS POINTS for doing this with other genres you like too.

Seriously, listening to the repertoire and divining the standards and practices for interpretation, are the only sure-fire way to come up with solos and grooves that are universally recognized as belonging to that genre.

 

[Malcolm35]

Dirt simple rule of thumb. Chords harmonize the melody. If the chord and the melody have some of the same notes good things happen. Right at first the chord's pentatonic is a safe place to draw melody notes from. Fake chord sheet music is a good source of what chords can to use, or pick your ole I-IV-V and use a 12 bar blues progression. Move the changes around so they fit with the lyrics.

Songs with lyrics tell a story, the chord progression moves the story along, from rest to climax to resolution then back to rest to start another verse.

Happy trails.

 

[mambo4]

• Melodic "hooks"

• Phrasing

• Articulation

• Question/answer

• Chord changes

Your list reminds me of Victor Wooten's 10 elements of groove

Based On what you posted I'd agree with @dreamadream99 : It's time to pick a style of interest and do a deep dive.

If you have an "okay background" in theory that's enough to analyze the note choices. What really sets grooves and melody's apart is rhythm (why "phrasing is such a huge deal").

For example, If you analyze Jamerson lines You may be surprised -as I was- at how vanilla much of his note choices were : a lot of Root 5th Octave, a dash of 3rds and a few table spoons of chromatics. But If I were asked to invent a groove using those ingredients I doubt I could approximate what Jamerson did - not without studying his lines, at least.

The other reason to build and analyze a stylistic repertoire is that grooves and melodies don't usually happen in isolation: there are other voices contributing to the feel of any style, worthy of our attention and respect. You gotta groove with something. Being "in the pocket" is tastefully respecting the space which other instruments create. The Figures played by other instruments are the guideposts for your own parts.

When learning how a style is created it is especially critical to know what the drums are doing. In fact bass+drums alone can define a lot of styles. Back in my Salsa days , my understanding of the "simple" bass tumbao didn't really gel until I had also learned the conga, timbales, and piano montuno rhythms. Until I did that, I was faking it, without a real understanding.

Tips for learning styles:
- if a specific rhythm has a name, learn it. (clave, shuffle, bembe, second line...)
- if there are sub styles learn what distinguishes them ( son vs cha cha cha, Delta vs Chicago...)
- for specific lines identify how the notes relate to the chord and to the key center
- notate it ( even if you are bad at notation)
- if the style also has a dance: learn that too!
- ask the oldest and best payers you can find which tunes & players they learned from
- and of course listen, listen, listen

So ask yourself : who do you wish you could play like?

 

[OldSchoolFlats]

...
So ask yourself : who do you wish you could play like?

That's easy: Marcus Miller. Except, I would throw-in some flat-wounds and pick-playing from time to time. I like his melodic approach, or, the scales he uses in his music. I also like his precision.

Victor Wooten and Stanley Clark sound "messy" to me: too many complex chords, and their rhythm seems less precise than Marcus Miller. There may be a jazz/swing element to their playing though: I never liked jazz.

For me, I think the "secret sauce" I was looking for was chord-changes when I solo/jam, rather than just fumbling-around with one scale or pentatonic.

My real challenge though is rhythm. Still need LOTS of work on syncopated 16th rhythms, and a variety of rhythms in general. I am pretty good at mimicking the drummer since that is how I learned in my teens (I now use GarageBand's drummer), but without that, my own rhythmic library is rather poor, owing to the simple rock (and church folk) I mostly played.

Once, years back, the folk-lead asked me to anticipate the "one" with a 16th. I gave him my best "deer in the headlights" look...