What does the audience pay attention to when you play a jazz solo?

[kris]

I know how jazz musicians listen to jazz, but what about other people...?

[Peter C]

They notice that you believe in what you're playing and will even "tolerate" outside stuff if you play it with due conviction, energy and sass.

[DawgBone]

They notice that you believe in what you're playing and will even "tolerate" outside stuff if you play it with due conviction, energy and sass.

Agree with this.

Energy, enthusiasm, and hopefully with a drummer/rhythm section that drives the soloist with intensity. Dynamics are also very attention grabbing. When a band can go from very soft to very loud it gets attention.

[Stringswinger]

If your solo is melodic and musical, the gals will pay attention.

If your solo is a chops display, the men will pay attention.

[pamosmusic]

If your solo is a chops display, the men will pay attention.

doubtful

[DawgBone]

If your solo is melodic and musical, the gals will pay attention.

If your solo is a chops display, the men will pay attention.

If the solo is good, people will pay attention unless they are dead inside or you're at a venue where the "big game" is on the tv.

[RLetson]

If your solo is melodic and musical, the gals will pay attention.

If your solo is a chops display, the men will pay attention.

Guess that makes me a girlie-man. Oh well. Hey--what if it's melodic and musical and real fast? That's gotta count for something.

[pauln]

If your solo is melodic and musical, the gals will pay attention.

If your solo is a chops display, the men will pay attention.

If your solo is good they will put money in the tip hat.

[kris]

If your solo is good they will put money in the tip hat.

Is solo good or bad...? This is highly debatable and may be a matter of taste.

[Hep To The Jive]

If your solo is melodic and musical, the gals will pay attention.

If your solo is a chops display, the men will pay attention.

I tried both, either case the gals paid attention to the bass player.

[Stringswinger]

I tried both, either case the gals paid attention to the bass player.

One doesn't become a jazz guitarist for the gals. Or the money. It is, however, the perfect vocation for people that hate crowds.

[rpjazzguitar]

I think people respond to groove, even if they're paying attention to a conversation.

If people are paying attention to the music, it's everything that makes the music feel good.

[Hep To The Jive]

One doesn't become a jazz guitarist for the gals. Or the money. It is, however, the perfect vocation for people that hate crowds.

I don't know why I became a jazz guitarist, or if I am even a jazz guitarist, maybe some would take an offense to that claim.
I just want to be a functional guitarist member of society. I love gals, money, crowds, and free drinks. The music got me there.

[kris]

I played at a big jazz festival and I was very delighted with the reaction of the audience.
The audience of a few thousand was excellent and all my musicians from the band had a good motivation to play.
I felt like I was playing in front of a lot of brilliant jazz music experts.
Something incredible.

[DawgBone]

I don't know why I became a jazz guitarist, or if I am even a jazz guitarist, maybe some would take an offense to that claim.

It's a calling, and only those who are called see it through to the end for better or worse. Like being a priest or monk, it's not for most people.

[itsmyname]

if your solo "sings" I will enjoy listening to you.

[ragman1]

Some tunes are just naturally better than others even when played badly.

[ragman1]

How to test if there are jazz musicians in the audience👀🤔 - YouTube

[garybaldy]

The enthusiasm in your face and the jokes you make in between the numbers. They love a bass player who slaps. The rest is over the top of their heads - unless they are players of course.

[James W]

Branford Marsalis:

"95% of the audience doesn't play an instrument, and when you really understand that, it changes your perception about what it is that you're doing.

So then when we start talking in the band, it's like, 'Man, what are these songs about?'

Songs have to be about something other than some chord changes. It has to be about the human condition. Songs have to be about happiness. Romantic songs have to be really romantic. Sad songs have to be really, really sad... I was about 37 years old when somebody said, 'You played that ballad tonight, and it made me cry.'

Darius Milhaud, the French composer, said, 'Any good student of music can develop a brilliant technique. They all do it, but it just doesn't mean anything.'

He says, 'The most important thing that a composer can do in our time is write a song that has a melody that so strikes a listener that it's almost like they feel they have to put it in their pocket and they walk around whistling it all day.'

That's the power of what we do."

In another interview:

"And here's the thing: There are musicians who think that all songs are vehicles, instead of the thing that Shakespeare said, 'The play is the thing.'

The song's the thing!

Or as Art Blakey said when he cursed me out when I was re-harmonising a Gershwin song. He said, 'Let me help you understand something. George Gershwin does not need your sorry ass to make him hip! George Gershwin is already hip! He does not need you. The only thing that's clear here is that you can't play the song the way it's written, so you're trying to make it more comfortable for you. But guess what? Play the shit as written,' and he walks away.

And at 21 I thought he was the biggest jerk in the world, and by the time I was 28, I was like, 'Boy, I'm so glad he said that.' Because no one says that anymore. Everybody says, 'Yeah man, really love those re-harms you did!'

Songs have a purpose. They have an emotional purpose. They're written for a purpose. So when you listen to a song, like Stella By Starlight, which was a live song, and you hear it played 200 clicks faster than it was written, you can tell that the musicians who were playing it don't really hear the song. But they know chord structures and they are going to use the chord structures as a vehicle to show how fast they can play."

Branford's being a bit silly. Using the chord structures of songs and increasing the speed of tunes was and is a big part of bebop. I suppose he disapproves of Bird's 'Quasimodo' which is a sped-up contrafact of 'Embraceable You' but I love it. Many of us are in the business of creating new melodies on old chord structures, whether they're improvised or pre-composed...

[Tom Karol]

if your solo "sings" I will enjoy listening to you.

I'm not sure I know the answer to the OP's question, but I think it might be this,

I will say that I once had a weekly gig with a trio. Like perhaps many of us, the less inspired I was on a given night the more notes I tended to play - I guess to make up for my lack of interesting ideas that night. After one such night, a regular came up to me and said, "You were great tonight!" I was astonished to realize that his criteria for 'great' seemed to be note density. I just said, "Thank you."

[kris]

I used to play in a jazz café. I felt that I played poorly and something didn't go right.
A listener came up to me and said, you played a great solo.
I didn't try to prove him wrong.I was speechless.
Maybe I was wearing a beautiful evening suit.

[ESCC]

Most non musicians listen to jazz after three or four stiff drinks.

[ewall]

In a word, melody. If the listener can no longer recognize the tune and can hear where you are going to get back to it, you've lost.

[RLetson]

My wife is not a musician, but she has a pretty decent ear--she can spot Monk or Louis or Ry Cooder or Frank or Tony or Ella within a couple bars (she is word-oriented and tends toward singers). What she doesn't much care for is the kind of instrumental soloing she calls "noodling," and I find myself sympathizing, though my threshold of impatience is much higher than hers. Nevertheless, there's a vast middle stretch of jazz performance that I find either uninteresting or impatience-provoking--just uptempo blowing that doesn't tell me anything interesting about the tune. A similar kind of over-busy, over-extended, directionless, and often bombastic playing is one of the reasons I lost interest in a lot of rock back in the 70s.

There is a phenomenon, though, that I long ago noticed in the folk world: crowd-pleasing stunt playing. There are folk-world guitar techniques that are not really technically very challenging but that often get applause when a player applies them. I can enjoy them as part of the performance mix, but I'm pretty sure that the non-players around me are responding to something that is exciting and sounds hard to pull off. But there's much less overt reaction to a beautifully executed legato passage, especially a slow one. And there are players whose entire schtick is built on showy, technically-advanced playing such as the tapping/percussive style that makes technique the point of the performance. An entire set of that material is pretty tiring, even if you're a guitar nerd. (Michael Hedges made it work, but his technique served the compositions, not the other way 'round.)