Practicing Solo Arrangements

[bkdavidson]

I'm trying to work on my solo playing, and I'm having quite a bit of trouble when it comes to taking solos. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on chord-melody for arranging the head of the tune, but when I try to solo, it seems to run out of steam. Anyway, what I'm wondering is would it be a good idea to practice w/ Abersold or similar recordings to keep things moving for me, or will this keep me relying too much on bass? Should I just keep hacking away at trying to play chord solos or should I transcribe a bunch of Joe Pass and the likes?

[JohnW400]

A lot of people have trouble with this and it takes a lot of practice.

Soloing with chords is really a misnomer. It's really soloing with chords, double stops, single note lines and throwing in some walking bass/comp. When you look closely at what Joe Pass is doing, you see he uses all these things. You will also see a lot of patterns or "standard JP riff's" that he uses all the time

Start off your solo with a walking bass/comp and then look for places to stick chord riffs or what have you. Gradually start to put in more solo than comp. Keep doing this until you are able to do a whole chorus of the tune in chords/single notes.

What you should also work on is building a vocabulary. The way I was taught to do this was to take 4 bars, back cycling, any key ( C7, F7, Bb7, Eb7 for ex.) Then write out a melody and harmonize it using whatever scale system I was working on at the time. You can also do ii-V's. One other point with this one is to also think about how your bass is moving as well.

As far as people to listen too, there are others like Tuck of Patti and Tuck fame that can play this style well. Another was Harry Leahey. He appears on a CD with Al Cohn, Live from East Stroudsberg College. He starts his solo's with single notes and then uses chords. This CD used to be available at Amazon but you may be able to find it as a free download somewhere


Lastly don't pressure yourself thinking things like " I'm not playing enough notes here" or "I'm not playing enough chords there"

This kind of stuff will definately mess up your solo.

[derek]

Of course, John is spot on. I also struggle with this. I do not suggest working with backing tracks to work on this. The tension is keeping the form while playing improvised ideas. I was in a master class with Pat Metheny at the end of July, and he talked about all the good chops he sees in players, but so few reference the melody or the changes, so that the listener quickly loses the form during their solo.

He then took Autumn Leaves and for 10 minutes solid with nothing but a metronome, soloed thru the tune. He mixed chord punches, double stops, single lines, and never repeated an idea from what I heard. However, for the entire 10 minutes, I knew exactly where he was in the form.

This is an extreme example of what you are talking about. The things I do is the bassline/comping thing John describes, mixing chord punches, and lines. If you do any of these too long you either lose the form or risk it sounding stale, but a steady mixture of these things really makes for an interesting performance, and can really stretch a tune out for several minutes.

Joe Pass, Jimmy Bruno (Solo), Tuck, Lenny Breau all are/were masters at this. Though we may not have their level of virtuosity, we can still use the same devices they did/do. i would suggest listening to these guys and tracking each chorus and note what they do each time. You will see a pattern. Good luck

[vsaumarez]

Definitely transcribe solos of people like Joe Pass. Use a metronome rather than Aebersold, but actually it doesn't harm to put down a backing track, just to help keep your place etc. This is the hardest and least explored form of jazz guitar, so it's uphill. Good luck!

[franco6719]

You should definitely try the da solo metronome approach for this, I agree. A great deal of it is about keeping the time and the form all by yourself. Aebersold would actually be harmful for that sort of thing.

Here's Pat playing "All the Things You Are" with just the metronome. He doesn't play any chords at all in this video, but I think he was trying to illustrate the same point that Derek mentioned and the other mentioned.

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[franco6719]

Oops, sorry, this forum doesn't allow that kind of embedding.

YouTube - Pat Metheny Jazz Guitar Class - 03 - All The Things You Are