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So I am one of the BIGGEST proponents of having a bunch of licks, learning a bunch of licks, stealing licks from records, etc...
But I've been messing with something lately. I want to freshen up my playing. My chops are down, after playing a lot of rhythm guitar and relearning solo guitar arrangements. I need to get back to improvising.
I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to go about this yet, but I'm thinking of working with reduced melodies and singing everything I play. Or singing lines over chords/chord movements and trying to translate them on the fly to guitar. Trying to free myself up. No patterns, no licks, unless of course I sing one (they're not going to go away) Because why not?
Anybody interested in talking about this?
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11-15-2024 12:28 PM
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Can you tell whether your lines are licks or not licks when you're playing a solo? At some point ideas are internalized to a point where the lines are blurred, no?
An interesting question is whether one can spot licks in other's lines. For example the transcription below is from Ed Bickert's solo on Have You Met Miss Jones?
I'd say the bars 72-73 (b9-#9 trill down to the 3rd) and 76 (the classic chromatic idea) look like licks, everything else seems like melodic playing. Does that make any sense?
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Great questions.
Originally Posted by Tal_175
Can you tell whether your lines are licks or not licks when you're playing a solo? At some point ideas are internalized to a point where the lines are blurred, no?
An interesting question is whether one can spot licks in other's lines. For example the transcription below is from Ed Bickert's solo on Have You Met Miss Jones?
I'd say the bars 72-73 (b9-#9 trill down to the 3rd) and 76 (the classic chromatic idea) look like licks, everything else seems like melodic playing. Does that make any sense?
I think I'm at the point with licks that they can seep in unconsciously in my playing. Which is fine. Autopilot stuff can be cool.
I just want to try something a little more intentional. I think I'm going to specifically try it with tunes that eschew functional harmony.
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I dunno man, compare any video of my playing against the stuff Digger is posting in the Del's Tiny Steps thread. He's said he mostly puts licks together for solos, I transcribe stuff, but my improv isn't lick based. Point being, he sounds way better than I do.
That's a strong case to learn licks at the start. "At the start" meaning, first 5 years or more....
Anyway, that's where my head has been.
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“ I feel my bar lines up with rhythms and throw notes at them” Dizzy
My thing is to scat some rhythms that work with the tune and the notes, dyads and chords will follow-because I’ve already internalized these hopefully
This is as close to extemporaneous playing as I can think of without thinking
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I think Jeff is talking about the next stage after you got reasonably good at playing with licks. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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At last :-) Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Play the chords, it's that simple. Arpeggiate them, minorize them, alter them (sensibly), connect them. Make it pretty. I've seen you do it a hundred times.
You absolutely, definitely, were not playing pre-set licks because it was far too fluent for that. Thank god.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
I agree, but I can't offer any insight to that. I'm not reasonably good.
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When I have this impulse, I play either on one or two strings, or play super slow. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I think it helps?
Guitar is nice because physical limitations are easy to impose, so I usually jump to make my licks physically difficult to play … e.g. playing on one or two strings.
And the slow thing is just that for a lot of people there’s a range of tempos down in the basement where muscle memory kind of turns off. It’s a good way to test if you have, for example, a bebop head memorized too. Plus it at 40bpm or something.
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I happened upon this Barney Kessel lesson only this week. I think he's talking about something similar to Jeff. I tried what Barney suggests and failed miserably. Firstly, having let the chord seep into my mind, nothing jumped out melodically for me to play on top of it. I kept trying and kept getting nothing - other than vague echoes of those few licks I already know. In a way I was relieved. Had I come up with something, I know that I'd have failed even more miserably at the second stage (singing / humming / whistling it) as my voice has this annoying habit of always going to chord tones, and then only very approximately. Stage three would also have been a terrible fail - taking what I was singing and only then playing it on my guitar. I know I'm not capable of that yet, either. All of which, as Allan alluded to above is why I'm a licks player and probably will be for many years, if not forever!
I'd be interested if anyone can do this, though. For me, it's "proper" improvising.
Derek
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Well, we've had this conversation before...there's definitely licks in there, they just are malleable...they can come out different in the moment. Originally Posted by ragman1
As for playing the chords, arpeggios, yeah, that's where I'm at now. I know enough about those things that once I know a tune, it can become a little like connect the dots.
I'm talking about going for a much more direct connection between ear and hands. It's obviously a pie in the sky goal that will take a long time. But I think it's a road I want to go down.
The reduced melody thing I think is going to be big...
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Some patterns, yes, because they work and they're part of you. Me, too. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
But, like I said, that's what you already do and you're really good at it. You just need to get back into it. I may be wrong but do you think what you actually need is to get inspired by a new tune? Then I find working on it is pretty effortless and doesn't feel repetitive even though technically it might be in some respects. That's why I like to do the Practical Standards thread every month.As for playing the chords, arpeggios, yeah, that's where I'm at now. I know enough about those things that once I know a tune, it can become a little like connect the dots.
Possibly. But does that mean simplifying the head or limiting the soloing?The reduced melody thing I think is going to be big...
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Nah, I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just a new way of looking at things. I like getting better at stuff. Originally Posted by ragman1
Reduced melody is simplifying the head, then using that simplified melody to improvise off of. It's a fun idea.
Peter, for the two string thing, I think there's going to be a lot of that. I like to think I have my intervals down on guitar, that I can sing and then play something, but am I really playing something and then singing it because I've played it so many times? That kind of thing.
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What you've described is mostly what I do these days. I may still transcribe a phrase someone played that appeals to me but mostly I just transcribe the music playing in my head. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
There are a few ways to approach this:
(1) Record yourself improvising over a metronome or backing track (e.g., your own comping), and develop ideas you hear that you like. Eventually you won't need to record yourself to spot standout ideas, you'll be able to do it in real time, "Woah, what was that I just played? Sounded good!" Then you can stop and dissect it, see where you can take it.
(2) Compose solos and play them. I did this when I was first learning to play jazz but it tends to produce more formulaic results because improvisation is not really an intellectual process (maybe afterwards but not while you're doing it).
(3) Practice thematic development, which is where you take a musical idea or motif and play with it: build on it, refine it, etc. I shared a Keith Jarrett exercise re: this method here -- Playing the changes vs. playing over the key center
P.S. - I think this Jarrett technique is like the "reduced melody" idea you mentioned.
Last edited by Mick-7; 11-15-2024 at 07:52 PM.
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What you're talking about reminds me of Miles' playing. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Jeff, you already know what I’d say.
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Shouldn't you have called this thread What are you lickin'?
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Great idea.
There's a dialectical process that people learning jazz go through. At first, they think all players completely improvise everything. Then they realize that's not true. So it must be that solos consist mostly or even entirely out of licks or pre-arranged material.
But it really depends on the player. It's a spectrum -- some really do use almost all licks, some hardly use any. And other factors play a role. It's easier to be spontaneous on easy or familiar chord changes, at comfortable tempos. But if you want to play "Giant Steps" at tempo with all 8th notes, yeah, you're going to use a lot of prepared material.
Sonny Rollins is pretty much the ideal improvisor for me. He throws in the occasional bebop lick for faster stuff, but for the most part he's just going for it. "Night at the Village Vanguard" was a formative record for me. "The Eternal Triangle" is a classic example of a more licks oriented player (Sonny Stitt) vs spontaneous improvisation (Rollins).
The Tristano school was another group dedicated to not using licks. Warne Marsh is now part of the official list of greats you have to know (thanks, Mark Turner!)
My advice:
- force yourself to only play what you can sing. This will take time if you've never done it before, but I promise it'll pay dividends. Tristano made his students learn a bunch of famous solos, but crucially, they had to be able to sing it before they even touched their instrument.
- motivic development. Rollins' specialty
- knowing intervals really well is a huge help. Intervallic ideas really straddle the line. Is it a lick if it's only two notes?
- you have to really know the tune well. Being able to "flatten" harmony helps (thinking of Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7 - Amin as all being Major). But that can get tiring, so if you want to sound like you're playing the changes, you really need to know and HEAR how to voice lead the song's harmony. Tough to do without licks, takes more work
Part of this will also be accepting you will fall on your face. You'll try stuff and it won't work. Rollins had more bad nights than Stitt. It happens. That's part of the risk.
Good luck!
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I had the idea of creating "melody"-like solos, avoiding giving the fingers the autopilot privilege. Just trying to make it all make sense.
It kinda works but there's the catch. It can't be too fast or too complex. Gotta restart often. Got to be accepting that the solo is stupid simple.
Like kid's songs.. or pop tunes. Dunno if this would ever work out the way I'd like but is interesting, nevertheless.
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Perhaps what the thread is alluding to is the difference between composition in the moment and improvisation. I'd say improvisation is more the process of re-assembling existing vocabulary. Composition in the moment is a more inventive and intimate process.
What I see in the transcriptions of masters is at fast tempos they "shamelessly" throw around the same licks. In ballad playing when they are not falling back on the 16th notes (ie habits/internalized phrases/licks), they get more compositional. We can discuss this concretely with transcription examples, but I think it's pretty obvious that tempo has something to do with it. The faster the tempo gets, the more likely we'll rely on our habits. This seems to be true for even the best of us.
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