Soloing at jazz jams, 200+bpm

[project_c]

Finding myself struggling recently at jazz jams when taking solos, tunes above 200bpm kill me. For those of you that play at jams and take solos on fast tunes, do you have any technique suggestions or approaches? Especially if it’s tunes you don’t know well / haven’t practiced much.

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

You might get some responses in the jazz technique subforum on the double bass side of TB.

 

[JRA]

Finding myself struggling recently at jazz jams when taking solos, tunes above 200bpm kill me.

ha! no kidding! depending on the tune = could kill anyone!

- practice!
- practice!
- you don't have to play quarter notes for your bass solo!
- but you'll want to = practice!

i used to play some ferocious bebop at much faster tempos than 200 BPM = it takes regular, diligent practice to play convincingly. nothing has changed.

good luck!

 

[Ed Fuqua]

Do you mean quarter note=200 bpm or half note=200bpm? I’m hoping it’s the latter, cause the former just isn’t that fast…

 

[waver]

ha! no kidding! depending on the tune = could kill anyone!

- practice!
- practice!
- you don't have to play quarter notes for your bass solo!
- but you'll want to = practice!

i used to play some ferocious bebop at much faster tempos than 200 BPM = it takes regular, diligent practice to play convincingly. nothing has changed.

good luck!

Yes, or you could just practice!

 

[JRA]

I’m hoping it’s the latter, cause the former just isn’t that fast…

true enough, but doubled (half note) = a little too fast, don't you think?!

edit: i couldn't sustain that these days, and i doubt that i ever played 400bpm at a gig, but who knows --- had some crazy sessions from time to time.

 

[JonathanPDX]

What aspects of soloing are giving you trouble? Is it processing the changes and adapting your playing to match them in real time? Or just a matter of your fingers not physically producing notes as fast as you want them to?

 

[Ed Fuqua]

Q note=400 bpm IS fast, I top out at around 320 and melodic variety is sacrificed on the altar of tempo….

 

[project_c]

What aspects of soloing are giving you trouble? Is it processing the changes and adapting your playing to match them in real time? Or just a matter of your fingers not physically producing notes as fast as you want them to?

Yeah, processing the changes is definitely a big one, they fly by very fast and I don’t always have time or the foresight to spot II-V’s or key centers I can hover around before things move along.

The other big one is that licks / chops / ideas that I normally have on auto-pilot often just don’t work at that speed. They’re great between 120-160bpm, 8th note / triplet stuff.

Over the past few days I’ve realised that I actually need to practice a lot more at 200bpm and above just to get used to the feel and see what comes out, I know this should be obvious but there is endless talk about ‘practice slow!!!’ wherever you look, but nobody ever says ‘practice crazy fast too’.

I think I can handle it but it needs a different approach, I can’t just rely on the usual 135bpm vocabulary. I think I need a bunch of autopilot stuff that works specifically at up tempo.

 

[JonathanPDX]

Yeah, processing the changes is definitely a big one, they fly by very fast and I don’t always have time or the foresight to spot II-V’s or key centers I can hover around before things move along.

The other big one is that licks / chops / ideas that I normally have on auto-pilot often just don’t work at that speed. They’re great between 120-160bpm, 8th note / triplet stuff.

Over the past few days I’ve realised that I actually need to practice a lot more at 200bpm and above just to get used to the feel and see what comes out, I know this should be obvious but there is endless talk about ‘practice slow!!!’ wherever you look, but nobody ever says ‘practice crazy fast too’.

I think I can handle it but it needs a different approach, I can’t just rely on the usual 135bpm vocabulary. I think I need a bunch of autopilot stuff that works specifically at up tempo.

A few thoughts:

Victor Wooten teaches, among many other things, playing REALLY fast in practice. So fast you aren't even thinking about notes or even trying to control what comes out. You do your best to fret cleanly and otherwise it's just blazing up and down the fingerboard as fast as you possibly can.

Why? Because it gets you more comfortable playing stuff that is out or unexpected, rather than worried about making mistakes. It also conditions you to play faster and really move around quickly, if you can do it without thinking it's that much easier when you actually compose musical ideas at that tempo.

Vic and Steve Bailey have an exercise I did with them years ago, where the challenge is to solo without having any clue with the key or changes are. In fact, as soon as I found the key, they changed it! It made me think way more about concepts and phrasing than focusing my entire solo on finding the right notes.


For soloing in fast jazz settings there are a ton of different approaches. A lot of jazz cats think modally chord by chord but I often think of the song in a "home" mode and build off that when I'm moving at a fast pace. I'll pick one "home base" (pun intended) scale and when things change I'll just modify that scale. IE "I'm in A natural minor, but the IV chord has a F# and the V chord is dominant so raise the 7th to natural (harmonic minor)." I'm playing 3 different scales but in my mind it's just one scale with a couple of adjustments here and there.


Lastly, it's super easy to slow recordings down now, so maybe it would help you to transcribe some fast solos. Whether it's learning Charlie Parker licks out of a book or using Audacity to slow one of Vic's solos down enough to learn it bar by bar, that can help you get some new ideas under your fingers and unlock some of the ways other guys navigate the fretboard at faster tempos.

 

[project_c]

A few thoughts:

Victor Wooten teaches, among many other things, playing REALLY fast in practice. So fast you aren't even thinking about notes or even trying to control what comes out. You do your best to fret cleanly and otherwise it's just blazing up and down the fingerboard as fast as you possibly can.

Why? Because it gets you more comfortable playing stuff that is out or unexpected, rather than worried about making mistakes. It also conditions you to play faster and really move around quickly, if you can do it without thinking it's that much easier when you actually compose musical ideas at that tempo.

Vic and Steve Bailey have an exercise I did with them years ago, where the challenge is to solo without having any clue with the key or changes are. In fact, as soon as I found the key, they changed it! It made me think way more about concepts and phrasing than focusing my entire solo on finding the right notes.


For soloing in fast jazz settings there are a ton of different approaches. A lot of jazz cats think modally chord by chord but I often think of the song in a "home" mode and build off that when I'm moving at a fast pace. I'll pick one "home base" (pun intended) scale and when things change I'll just modify that scale. IE "I'm in A natural minor, but the IV chord has a F# and the V chord is dominant so raise the 7th to natural (harmonic minor)." I'm playing 3 different scales but in my mind it's just one scale with a couple of adjustments here and there.


Lastly, it's super easy to slow recordings down now, so maybe it would help you to transcribe some fast solos. Whether it's learning Charlie Parker licks out of a book or using Audacity to slow one of Vic's solos down enough to learn it bar by bar, that can help you get some new ideas under your fingers and unlock some of the ways other guys navigate the fretboard at faster tempos.

This is great, thank you.

I do practice playing random stuff fast sometimes but I find that it ends up being just stuff I know, and usually just around a key center. So I can play all sorts of things pretty fast around a static chord. So a modal tune like So What or Footprints is usually ok, but a tune with more complex changes, let’s say Yardbird Suite, can be a challenge. If I prepare in advance I can analyse the tune and divide it into key center chunks, but on the spot at a jam without any prep it’s tricky.

I really like the thinking behind the Wooten exercise you mentioned, there is a suggestion there that nailing the time and feel with conviction is much more important than perfectly following changes. I’m going to play around with this today.

In terms of slowing stuff down and transcribing- yep, I do this a lot already, and yeah it definitely does give me lots of options and ideas, but I find that at fast speeds, the technical aspects of the actual instrument come into play quite a lot. So something that can be played really fast on a saxophone might be almost impossible on bass. (I don’t have Jaco’s giant fingers unfortunately..). If I want to learn fast chops on electric bass, I find transcribing electric bass the most helpful, but part of the problem is that that there aren’t too many examples of jazz soloing over standards on electric bass in existence. I know about guys like Jeff Andrews, Dario Deidda etc but compared to the ‘usual’ jazz instruments, electric bass recordings of jazz standards are pretty rare. I get lots of good info from upright, Paul Chambers solos for example, but even those can be tricky to adapt to speedy tunes on electric sometimes.

I guess ultimately the answer is the same as ever - listen, transcribe, play and practice a lot..

 

[JonathanPDX]

This is great, thank you.

I do practice playing random stuff fast sometimes but I find that it ends up being just stuff I know, and usually just around a key center. So I can play all sorts of things pretty fast around a static chord. So a modal tune like So What or Footprints is usually ok, but a tune with more complex changes, let’s say Yardbird Suite, can be a challenge. If I prepare in advance I can analyse the tune and divide it into key center chunks, but on the spot at a jam without any prep it’s tricky.

I really like the thinking behind the Wooten exercise you mentioned, there is a suggestion there that nailing the time and feel with conviction is much more important than perfectly following changes. I’m going to play around with this today.

In terms of slowing stuff down and transcribing- yep, I do this a lot already, and yeah it definitely does give me lots of options and ideas, but I find that at fast speeds, the technical aspects of the actual instrument come into play quite a lot. So something that can be played really fast on a saxophone might be almost impossible on bass. (I don’t have Jaco’s giant fingers unfortunately..). If I want to learn fast chops on electric bass, I find transcribing electric bass the most helpful, but part of the problem is that that there aren’t too many examples of jazz soloing over standards on electric bass in existence. I know about guys like Jeff Andrews, Dario Deidda etc but compared to the ‘usual’ jazz instruments, electric bass recordings of jazz standards are pretty rare. I get lots of good info from upright, Paul Chambers solos for example, but even those can be tricky to adapt to speedy tunes on electric sometimes.

I guess ultimately the answer is the same as ever - listen, transcribe, play and practice a lot..

If you haven't done so yet, you might also look at your instrument setup and how hard you are playing. I find it much easier to play fast with light strings and a very light touch. Personally I use TI JR 344 jazz rounds, you really can't pluck them very hard because they have such light tension. I have small hands and arthritis, so I need every advantage I can get when it comes to playing fast!

Another note from Vic's exercise: I remember one idea he had was setting your metronome really high, like 300+, and just playing straight quarter notes all over the neck. No scales or melodic concepts, just random notes that are played evenly at the fast tempo.

As for the tunes that are giving you trouble on the spot, the easiest starting point is to get comfortable playing arpeggios or at least triads over each chord you read. Just changing from walking quarter notes to "walking" arpeggios will make it sound like you're playing something hip. Once you can do that over anything you are reading, change up the rhythm, add some fun phrasing, and pick some bars to lay out and let it breathe.

 

[J Wilson]

Practice.
Practice.
Practice.
Red Bull.
Red Bull.
Red Bull.

 

[Ed Fuqua]

Forgot this was in the BG section, playing uptempo on upright is a vastly different animal.

I would caution against the “tricks and licks” approach; “sounding” like you can play and actually playing with meaning and intent are two different things. And the whole fake it till you make it mentality can seriously get in the way of any path towards individual artistry…

 

[JonathanPDX]

Forgot this was in the BG section, playing uptempo on upright is a vastly different animal.

I would caution against the “tricks and licks” approach; “sounding” like you can play and actually playing with meaning and intent are two different things. And the whole fake it till you make it mentality can seriously get in the way of any path towards individual artistry…

Every great soloist has go-to licks. If you study any great soloist who plays over changes, from Bird to Chick Corea to Victor Wooten, you're bound to hear themes and "tricks."

If it sounds good to the audience that's all that matters. Sure, there's always a path to learn and grow, but music doesn't have to be hard. If some "trick" or "lick" makes it "sound" like you are good and the audience agrees then you did something right!

 

[Ed Fuqua]

We’ll have to agree to disagree. There’s a vast difference between using the vocabulary that you have the most nuanced control over (like Bird) and shoehorning in a bunch of vocabulary that you’ve worked out to sound like you can make rhythm changes. Just like us in this conversation; we are using words and phrases that convey the meaning of our thoughts and ideas, but we didn’t plan any of this out or fall back on something we worked out.

At least that’s what’s working for me and I’m gonna hang with that.

 

[Bob_Ross]

do you have any technique suggestions or approaches?

Learn to embrace long tones; whole notes are your friend.


I'm only half kidding.
Also, learn the melody at least as well as you know the changes.

A lot of jazz cats think modally chord by chord but I often think of the song in a "home" mode and build off that when I'm moving at a fast pace. I'll pick one "home base" (pun intended) scale and when things change I'll just modify that scale. IE "I'm in A natural minor, but the IV chord has a F# and the V chord is dominant so raise the 7th to natural (harmonic minor)." I'm playing 3 different scales but in my mind it's just one scale with a couple of adjustments here and there.

+1
If you can just catch the important color tones, those "privileged pitches" of each chord that most clearly identify that the chord has changed, you're batting better than .500.

That reminds me of a diagram that was towards the beginning of George Russell's book The Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization. iirc he's talking about the differences in soloing-over-changes approaches between between several well-known jazz musicians, and he illustrates those differences via analogy, drawing different transportation methods for getting across the country: At one extreme is Charlie Parker, who he illustrates as a car or bus driving from LA to NYC and stopping in a different city every few hours...because Parker plays practically a different scale per chord. At the other extreme is Ornette Coleman, who he illustrates as a rocket ship flying directly from LA to NYC with no stops and no deviations, just a straight shot (albeit in a long, over-arching curve)...because Coleman (arguably) finds the essence of a chord progression distilled down to a single scale or pitch-class collection and makes it "fit" [sic] By Any Means Necessary.

 

[project_c]

If you haven't done so yet, you might also look at your instrument setup and how hard you are playing. I find it much easier to play fast with light strings and a very light touch. Personally I use TI JR 344 jazz rounds, you really can't pluck them very hard because they have such light tension. I have small hands and arthritis, so I need every advantage I can get when it comes to playing fast!

Another note from Vic's exercise: I remember one idea he had was setting your metronome really high, like 300+, and just playing straight quarter notes all over the neck. No scales or melodic concepts, just random notes that are played evenly at the fast tempo.

As for the tunes that are giving you trouble on the spot, the easiest starting point is to get comfortable playing arpeggios or at least triads over each chord you read. Just changing from walking quarter notes to "walking" arpeggios will make it sound like you're playing something hip. Once you can do that over anything you are reading, change up the rhythm, add some fun phrasing, and pick some bars to lay out and let it breathe.

Instrument choice and setup is an interesting one. I’ve played jazz on P’s, J’s and PJ’s, with rounds and tapes. Currently I play a short scale with flats with pretty low action. In terms of tone it fits in perfectly. I’m undecided on the flats in terms of speed and dexterity. I also have a jazz style shortie (Atelier Z) with a narrower neck, rounds and 17mm spacing which plays faster and is easier to get around on, but right now, I seem to prefer the flats and the thumpy tone. I also really like the lack of sustain, it just fits in to a jazz setting better. The Atelier Z is basically a downsized active jazz, and the action can go super low on it, but the other bass (Wilcock) just sits exactly where it needs to without having to worry about tone too much. Both are really nice basses, it’s a dilemma..

 

[JonathanPDX]

Instrument choice and setup is an interesting one. I’ve played jazz on P’s, J’s and PJ’s, with rounds and tapes. Currently I play a short scale with flats with pretty low action. In terms of tone it fits in perfectly. I’m undecided on the flats in terms of speed and dexterity. I also have a jazz style shortie (Atelier Z) with a narrower neck, rounds and 17mm spacing which plays faster and is easier to get around on, but right now, I seem to prefer the flats and the thumpy tone. I also really like the lack of sustain, it just fits in to a jazz setting better. The Atelier Z is basically a downsized active jazz, and the action can go super low on it, but the other bass (Wilcock) just sits exactly where it needs to without having to worry about tone too much. Both are really nice basses, it’s a dilemma..

If you are transcribing or studying solos it can help to set up a bass similar to the players you are emulating. I find it MUCH easier to wrap my head around Vic's stuff when I use a tenor bass set up similar to his. Sure, I could transpose things onto the 4 string, but it feels more natural to match the tuning. You could transcribe Marcus Miller lines on a P bass with flats, but a jazz bass with nice fresh rounds and a lot of upper mids is going to connect more naturally to what you are hearing on the record.

It's understandable that shifting fast technical solos onto a thumpy short scale with flats and no sustain isn't going to translate well.

 

[project_c]

If you are transcribing or studying solos it can help to set up a bass similar to the players you are emulating. I find it MUCH easier to wrap my head around Vic's stuff when I use a tenor bass set up similar to his. Sure, I could transpose things onto the 4 string, but it feels more natural to match the tuning. You could transcribe Marcus Miller lines on a P bass with flats, but a jazz bass with nice fresh rounds and a lot of upper mids is going to connect more naturally to what you are hearing on the record.

It's understandable that shifting fast technical solos onto a thumpy short scale with flats and no sustain isn't going to translate well.

This leaves me wondering if there is a limit to what I can achieve with my instrument / setup of choice.. Most electric players I reference do use a
jazz, back pickup Jaco style. But then there’s footage of guys like Tom Warrington (playing with Buddy Rich in the 70s), playing a fretless P with flats and absolutely tearing it up, which makes me think fluid soloing is achievable with what I’m working with (not to mention the difficulty of getting around on any upright in comparison)..