Solo Guitar Tune #3 - Tenderly

[PaulW10]

I don't think these are mutually exclusive, and improvising certainly isn't just playing "on the fly." I think that taking time to create, if not full arrangements, certainly reasonably thought-out settings of a tune is important because you can explore new ideas without putting a live performance at risk. The goal, though, for me, is not to create a memorized arrangement I can recite (though I've done that), but to internalize a vocabulary of chord-melody improvisation just like line playing involves internalizing a vocabulary. You learn how to weave a melody over a ii-V-I, then how to weave that melody over standard substitutions, then maybe how to work it over a chromatically descending bass line, or a pedal tone, for with walking bass, or switch the octave, melody low, chord accents on top; or with 2-note intervals, parallel intervals, then more divergent moving intervals. All this stuff can be worked out doing arrangements, but the goal is to learn them as playing vocabulary.

then when we "play" a song, all that is in our heads and ears, and we can play through the song drawing creatively on all this internalized vocabulary. Of course, we develop our preferred devices with particular songs, but it's still fun to break a tune down into vocabulary segments and try to see how many different ways you could play it.

Improvisation isn't dead-spontaneous playing; it's the spontaneous matching of our internalized vocabulary acquired through work and practice with the musical inspiration of the moment.

I guess I was thinking of improvisation in different terms, more of an on the fly single line solo over the basic chords or structure of the song. I know that's where a lot of the interest in jazz guitar playing is centered. It sounds like you (and Grahambop possibly) are talking more about having improvised variations of the song that you've given some thought to beforehand.

It seems that if you're improvising, if you've played the song many times and have it internalized I would think a lot of the same ideas come out every time you play it. So at a certain point it would seem to become at least a quasi-arrangement.

[PaulW10]

I hope Chris Whiteman won't mind me linking this here, but I personally really love the "blend" of the original song and improv he does here. Beautiful stuff!! I think this type of improv is of a different variety than say straight single line soloing in that it's his personal variation or interpretation of the tune played in chord melody style. I love this!

[lawson-stone]

I guess I was thinking of improvisation in different terms, more of an on the fly single line solo over the basic chords or structure of the song. I know that's where a lot of the interest in jazz guitar playing is centered. It sounds like you (and Grahambop possibly) are talking more about having improvised variations of the song that you've given some thought to beforehand.

It seems that if you're improvising, if you've played the song many times and have it internalized I would think a lot of the same ideas come out every time you play it. So at a certain point it would seem to become at least a quasi-arrangement.

All improvisation is about "assembly." People have internalized blocks of vocabulary, whether single-note lines or chordal lines. When I play a tune for solo guitar, or the way I'd play the head if I had no keyboard, I start off playing the melody on top with pretty standard grips for the chords underneath. But then there are stacks of variations, as I noted above: tritone subs, 2 note intervals, parallel or contrary motion, walking bass, chromatic bass, pedal bass, the whole min6 cluster of ideas, recasting the tune as a minor, or as a blues, up tempo or ballad, fills and runs, single-note fill lines, chordal fills, variations on melody phrasing--if you play through them all not as putting together an arrangement but simply playing the song to have fun with it, to explore all the ideas in it--you internalize blocks, maybe 4 and 8 measure blocks, of ways to play that tune. In an AABA tune you might have hit on 5 or 6 different ways to play the A section. So you aren't playing "arrangements" but deciding as you go, based on the ensemble feel, based on audience response, maybe your own internal "ear" and what you'd like to hear played, and you are putting that together. The learning involved is not spontaneous, but the putting it together in the moment very much can be spontaneous. This description is one I've gotten from listening to and watching Joe Pass now for some 25 years, as well as hearing him talk about improvisation. You "war game" all kinds of ways to play a tune, then in the moment, you make more spontaneous decisions. The key is being able to transition between your blocks of ideas so that it flows. I remember once I was going to play "Summertime" and had this rubato type of introduction, and somehow I slipped into 5/4 time and I ended up playing in in 5/4 for about 4 choruses! Never planned on it, but I had tried it sometime before and it had slipped out of my recollection--but evidently my fingers remembered.

Another thing that happens is you start realizing that there are about 10-12 of these "blocks" of ideas that show up in most jazz standards. Maybe it's a I-VI-II-V A section, or a bridge in ascending 4ths, or whatever. But you discover the ideas you developed for one standard actually fit others with a little adaptation. A freaky fun thing is when you discover interchangeable sections of whole tunes, and then you can quote a phrase from one tune playing another--still in a solo guitar/chord melody kind of framework.

I remember the first tune I tried this whole thing on was "Amazing Grace." Very basic melody and harmony. It is in 3/4, so I switched it up to 4/4. Tried it as a shuffle time with a blues feel, which everybody does. Then I tried it as a swing, started switching out substitutions, etc. and that tune is still one I have a lot of fun playing. I will confess, I make tons of mistakes, have train wrecks, drop a beat or two or six from the tempo... I'm still not that good... but I find these harmonic ideas fun.

For me, improvising is the meeting between things I've learned and the impulse of the moment.

[PaulW10]

All improvisation is about "assembly." People have internalized blocks of vocabulary, whether single-note lines or chordal lines. When I play a tune for solo guitar, or the way I'd play the head if I had no keyboard, I start off playing the melody on top with pretty standard grips for the chords underneath. But then there are stacks of variations, as I noted above: tritone subs, 2 note intervals, parallel or contrary motion, walking bass, chromatic bass, pedal bass, the whole min6 cluster of ideas, recasting the tune as a minor, or as a blues, up tempo or ballad, fills and runs, single-note fill lines, chordal fills, variations on melody phrasing--if you play through them all not as putting together an arrangement but simply playing the song to have fun with it, to explore all the ideas in it--you internalize blocks, maybe 4 and 8 measure blocks, of ways to play that tune. In an AABA tune you might have hit on 5 or 6 different ways to play the A section. So you aren't playing "arrangements" but deciding as you go, based on the ensemble feel, based on audience response, maybe your own internal "ear" and what you'd like to hear played, and you are putting that together. The learning involved is not spontaneous, but the putting it together in the moment very much can be spontaneous. This description is one I've gotten from listening to and watching Joe Pass now for some 25 years, as well as hearing him talk about improvisation. You "war game" all kinds of ways to play a tune, then in the moment, you make more spontaneous decisions. The key is being able to transition between your blocks of ideas so that it flows. I remember once I was going to play "Summertime" and had this rubato type of introduction, and somehow I slipped into 5/4 time and I ended up playing in in 5/4 for about 4 choruses! Never planned on it, but I had tried it sometime before and it had slipped out of my recollection--but evidently my fingers remembered.

Another thing that happens is you start realizing that there are about 10-12 of these "blocks" of ideas that show up in most jazz standards. Maybe it's a I-VI-II-V A section, or a bridge in ascending 4ths, or whatever. But you discover the ideas you developed for one standard actually fit others with a little adaptation. A freaky fun thing is when you discover interchangeable sections of whole tunes, and then you can quote a phrase from one tune playing another--still in a solo guitar/chord melody kind of framework.

I remember the first tune I tried this whole thing on was "Amazing Grace." Very basic melody and harmony. It is in 3/4, so I switched it up to 4/4. Tried it as a shuffle time with a blues feel, which everybody does. Then I tried it as a swing, started switching out substitutions, etc. and that tune is still one I have a lot of fun playing. I will confess, I make tons of mistakes, have train wrecks, drop a beat or two or six from the tempo... I'm still not that good... but I find these harmonic ideas fun.

For me, improvising is the meeting between things I've learned and the impulse of the moment.

This makes total sense to me Lawson. It's more or less a culmination of everything you've learned up to that point in time, combined with what you are feeling in the moment, and the external variables to your playing (audience, setting etc). It means going out on a limb some times and hoping you can walk back in when you need to, like putting Summertime in 5/4. I think I see what you're saying here.

[John A.]

A bunch of posts on this thread have got me thinking about the interesting line between a note by note arrangement and a total on the fly interpretation.

So, let's say the common goal is to improvise playing that comes out equal to what we would play if we had all the time in the world to arrange it.

Is a better way to (A) improvise all the time and increase slowly what you are able to do with that limitation of playing in the moment, or (B) make arrangements that sound how you would like to be able to improvise and slowly get faster and faster at making them until you are creating them in time

The obvious answer is both. can we skip that? What do you do more of? I lean toward B for sure, but of course do both

My goal is not necessarily to improvise in such a way that it sounds arranged. I mean it is sometimes, but more of the time I just want to be able to blow over a form while providing some harmonic support for what I'm doing on the top line, both because it's fun to have that kind of freedom and because aesthetically it's good to have a contrast between more tightly and more loosely arranged choruses. I guess that means I lean more toward A. than B? IOW, I want to be Joe Pass or Wes when I grow up, I dunno, not George Van Eps, or maybe Johnny Smith or Lenny Breau.

I'm still learning to crawl with solo playing. Thus far my method has been to come up with a head arrangement that is mainly pretty set, includes some sort of harmonic surprise, and has maybe a couple of bars here and there where I leave gaps to improvise or where I have more than one possibility worked out and pick one in the moment. Then on the "improv" chorus, I tend to an idea for the arc of the solo and a couple of pre-arranged milestones that I bushwhack my way to more or less spontaneously. In my group playing, I mix single lines with harmonized lines and block chords (and practice that along with harmonizing heads to some degree). In my solo stuff, my improv choruses are pretty much what I do in groups, but with few single line 1/8 notes and more long tones and chords. Barney Kessel, I ain't. On Tenderly, I didn't really like how that approach was working, so I just saved the improv for the ending and stuck in a couple of single line runs and fills in the middle of the head.

John

[PaulW10]

My goal is not necessarily to improvise in such a way that it sounds arranged. I mean it is sometimes, but more of the time I just want to be able to blow over a form while providing some harmonic support for what I'm doing on the top line, both because it's fun to have that kind of freedom and because aesthetically it's good to have a contrast between more tightly and more loosely arranged choruses. I guess that means I lean more toward A. than B? IOW, I want to be Joe Pass or Wes when I grow up, I dunno, not George Van Eps, or maybe Johnny Smith or Lenny Breau.

I'm still learning to crawl with solo playing. Thus far my method has been to come up with a head arrangement that is mainly pretty set, includes some sort of harmonic surprise, and has maybe a couple of bars here and there where I leave gaps to improvise or where I have more than one possibility worked out and pick one in the moment. Then on the "improv" chorus, I tend to an idea for the arc of the solo and a couple of pre-arranged milestones that I bushwhack my way to more or less spontaneously. In my group playing, I mix single lines with harmonized lines and block chords (and practice that along with harmonizing heads to some degree). In my solo stuff, my improv choruses are pretty much what I do in groups, but with few single line 1/8 notes and more long tones and chords. Barney Kessel, I ain't. On Tenderly, I didn't really like how that approach was working, so I just saved the improv for the ending and stuck in a couple of single line runs and fills in the middle of the head.

John

Hi John,

So I get confused by some of the terminology. I believe Grahambop mentioned "improvised chorus" and you mentioned you like more contrast in choruses so you lean more to A than B in the song? So what is the general approach when soloing by yourself? I was assuming the improv solo typically comes over the verse (i.e. A section, right?) rather than the chorus, but I must be wrong about that?

[grahambop]

Hi John,

So I get confused by some of the terminology. I believe Grahambop mentioned "improvised chorus" and you mentioned you like more contrast in choruses so you lean more to A than B in the song? So what is the general approach when soloing by yourself? I was assuming the improv solo typically comes over the verse (i.e. A section, right?) rather than the chorus, but I must be wrong about that?

If it helps I can clarify what I meant. In my version of Tenderly, first I played the whole 32 bars melody section largely arranged. Then I played the same form i.e. repeated the 32 bars again but fairly improvised i.e. more like chords with solo lines integrated (I did kind of know in advance what chord grips I was aiming for along the way, that’s my ‘road map’). Then to finish I just repeated the last 16 bars of the melody arrangement, just to take it out without too much repetition of the tune. Then a few more arranged bars to end it.

When I say ‘chorus’ in this context I mean the whole 32 bar form.

Some ‘show’-type standard tunes have a sort of introductory section, often sung rubato, which is often omitted by instrumentalists, this is what I understand is technically called the ‘verse’. The main part of the tune (such as 32 bars AABA) is the ‘chorus’. I don’t think Tenderly has a verse, or if it does, I’ve never heard it.

It’s very confusing.

[John A.]

Hi John,

So I get confused by some of the terminology. I believe Grahambop mentioned "improvised chorus" and you mentioned you like more contrast in choruses so you lean more to A than B in the song? So what is the general approach when soloing by yourself? I was assuming the improv solo typically comes over the verse (i.e. A section, right?) rather than the chorus, but I must be wrong about that?

Very roughly, verse=stanza with words that don't recur. Chorus= stanza with words that recur. For many standards (especially ones from Broadway shows), what we think of as the entire form is actully just the chorus (often consisting of multiple sections) of a longer form. These tunes have whole other verses (sometimes just one at the beginning, often in an almost spoken style) that are typically not played in jazz instrumentals. They used to be though, when jazz typically had vocals, and solos would be played over the chorus. As verses got dropped from jazz versions, and the choruses became the entire tunes, we still called it blowing over a chorus. Coming from a blues/rock background, I was confused by this for a long time.

John

PS: if you take a typical 32 bar AABA ballad, and play it at 80 BPM once through the entire form that's already a little over a minute and a half. Once through the head plus a complete solo chorus, plus a full head plus an ending is getting close to 5 minutes, which I think is a lot of one musician on one song to listen to.

I try to keep my solo stuff under 3 minutes, which usually means twice through the whole form, part of that being improv. I experiment with different proportions and combinations until i get something that feels right. Most of the time, it winds up being a full AABA head, AA improv, than back to BA to finish, but even that can be a lot. I'll also sometimes do just 1 chorus, with AA improv, keeping 'em guessing about what tune it is, then bring the melody in at the B section and end with the last A.
John

[lawson-stone]

The idea that it seems a lot of people have trouble grasping is that just as you can "blow" over changes like a horn player, improvising a purely melodic line, you can also take the changes and improvise chordally, like a pianist. The top line melody might not be as complex, but the improvisation is working with chord-melody ideas. Wes Montgomery often did this in the second phase of his solos, after a wicked single-note chorus or two, and before the octave choruses, he'd often do a chorus improvised around block-chord ideas like a pianist would.

Then there is Joe Pass' approach, which interweaves the horn-like solo lines, chord accents, walking bass, but I always believed Joe Pass was possessed by the departed souls of other guitarists or something that gave him that (to me) truly frightening ability to do it all at the same time.

If we're going to play solo, and if we're going to play more than one time through a tune, of necessity, we must have strong variation. The second time through the tune needs to be fresh, spicy, more embellished, improvisational. The "out" chorus will have the original melody present, but will still need to bring the whole performance to a climactic resolution.

Listen to Joe Pass on "Summertime" and you get the big concept all in one performance!

[grahambop]

Tim Lerch has a good video on this subject:

[joe2758]

Tim Lerch has a good video on this subject:

He’s too cool man.

[grahambop]

He’s too cool man.

yeah Tim's video has given me a lot of inspiration how to tackle the whole solo guitar improv thing.

[PaulW10]

Thanks Grahambop and John for your explanations on song structures, choruses, etc. Those were very informative to me. I thought I understood the concept and now realize I actually didn't all that well!

[lawson-stone]

Tim Lerch has a good video on this subject:

What a delightful and helpful 15 minutes! His whole attitude and demeanor are so appealing, you just want to play better. Super ideas and concepts here.

[lawson-stone]

Very roughly, verse=stanza with words that don't recur. Chorus= stanza with words that recur. For many standards (especially ones from Broadway shows), what we think of as the entire form is actully just the chorus (often consisting of multiple sections) of a longer form. These tunes have whole other verses (sometimes just one at the beginning, often in an almost spoken style) that are typically not played in jazz instrumentals. They used to be though, when jazz typically had vocals, and solos would be played over the chorus. As verses got dropped from jazz versions, and the choruses became the entire tunes, we still called it blowing over a chorus. Coming from a blues/rock background, I was confused by this for a long time.

John

PS: if you take a typical 32 bar AABA ballad, and play it at 80 BPM once through the entire form that's already a little over a minute and a half. Once through the head plus a complete solo chorus, plus a full head plus an ending is getting close to 5 minutes, which I think is a lot of one musician on one song to listen to.

I try to keep my solo stuff under 3 minutes, which usually means twice through the whole form, part of that being improv. I experiment with different proportions and combinations until i get something that feels right. Most of the time, it winds up being a full AABA head, AA improv, than back to BA to finish, but even that can be a lot. I'll also sometimes do just 1 chorus, with AA improv, keeping 'em guessing about what tune it is, then bring the melody in at the B section and end with the last A.
John

There is also the old time-honored tradition of on the second chorus, improvise for 16 measures (AA) and swing back to the melody, maybe played a little differently, for the BA 16 bars. Less pressure there on the improvisation, and by the time the listener has thought to wonder what in the world is happening, you're back to the familiarity of the bridge and last A section!

[PaulW10]

Tim Lerch has a good video on this subject:

That is an awesome video. It's very inspirational. Tim makes it look so easy! But just watching it makes it make total sense.

[TLerch]

Hi Guys,
Thanks for your kind mentions of this video. I made it in hopes that it would be useful for players like those who populate this thread. I'm happy that some of you have found it helpful or at least encouraging to find your own solutions to the issue.

all the best
Tim

[lawson-stone]

Hi Guys,
Thanks for your kind mentions of this video. I made it in hopes that it would be useful for players like those who populate this thread. I'm happy that some of you have found it helpful or at least encouraging to find your own solutions to the issue.

all the best
Tim

Thanks so much for sitting in with us, posting your clip, and interacting with us. It's an "added value" to the thread.

[PaulW10]

Hi Guys,
Thanks for your kind mentions of this video. I made it in hopes that it would be useful for players like those who populate this thread. I'm happy that some of you have found it helpful or at least encouraging to find your own solutions to the issue.

all the best
Tim

Thanks very much for taking the time to participate here Tim. It is sincerely appreciated. Your videos and contributions have been very informative and inspirational!

[KirkP]

Here’s my pretty ragged take, in the key of C. I need lots of work on fingering mechanics.

[cosmic gumbo]

Here’s my pretty ragged take, in the key of C. I need lots of work on fingering mechanics.

I like your take in 3/4, seems more coherent in that time signature than most of the 4/4 versions in the thread.

[ragman1]

I didn't know about the 3 version but when I was doing it (in 4) I kept wanting to miss the last beat... Interesting.

[joe2758]

I felt that pull at times too Rags. But my favorite version is in 3 (Bill Evans). Doing it with a solid 3 feel through whol thing was more of a challenge than I wanted to take on, but the guys on here that did it rocked it.

[John A.]

I like your take in 3/4, seems more coherent in that time signature than most of the 4/4 versions in the thread.

The song was originally written in 3, but has gotten "standardized" in 4.

John

[jazzdan]

Howard Heitmeyer did an arrangement for me of Tenderly up the neck but it was too hard so I transposed part of it down to the first position and added a couple little things from the chart. I havn't added this to one of my 5 sets yet because I still get nervous thinking about those chord changes. I like the song and plan to use it this summer. We'll see if I'm brave enough when the time comes. When I played in the restaurant in Vail for six years I would practice and practice a new tune and once in a while struggle during the performance. I still remember struggling with the Way We Were and the couple sitting right in front of me saying.....he's having trouble with that one