Soloing Lyrically at a High Tempo

[maxtons]

Hello. I've been practicing better phrasing and less scalar lines by singing and playing what I sing - I find that I create much prettier and perhaps less predictable/trite lines if I sing them - but at high tempos, say around the 250 BPM mark, I find myself falling back into scales and basic arpeggios in an unappealing manner and the tempo is too fast for me to sing or hear a melody in my head in time to play it - this is especially the case whenever I play lots of eighth notes and triplets. I have no problem with playing scales and arpeggios but I feel like my soloing becomes very dull if they're all that I end up playing.

Could anyone offer advice on how I could practice fast lyrical soloing?

[ragman1]

To be honest, I'm not sure that lyrical and tempos of 250-ish aren't a bit contradictory. Lyrical implies some kind of feeling, generally poetic, possibly wistful, and so on. Whether that corresponds with zooming along at high speed is doubtful.

Otoh, it's certainly possible to make lines that sound musical at that speed. It's usually a matter of how changes are connected and how the lines move through the changes.

There's this, for example. Joe Pass' lines are highly musical but whether they're lyrical or not is a different matter!

Do you have any examples of speed playing that you yourself would call lyrical?

[bako]

When I think of "lyrical" in the traditional sense of the word, I imagine melodies built around
not so many notes but played with great expression. When tempos are slow and medium,
we subdivide playing 8th's, triplets, 16th's, etc. So when tempos are fast we mostly tend to
continue this approach, using a smaller subset of whatever subdivision we can technically pull off.
We often forget that rhythm ratios flow in both directions. To play slow melodies when chords are
changing rapidly, we need to be hyper-aware of common tones and points of intersection
between the adjacent harmonies. After playing slow melodies against fast moving harmonies begins
feeling natural, think of ornamenting the slower melodic ideas as opposed to playing fast melodies.

I haven't done this that much but these are my thoughts on how I might approach doing so.
Thanks for the inspiration for something cool to play around with tomorrow after the sun rises.

[christianm77]

This is a good post... This is what I've discovered in trying to make my uptempo playing less 'and here come the barrage of 8th notes!'

Paying simple is really difficult in that - there is nowhere to hide. The advice 'play fewer notes' is teeth-grindingly ****ing useless if you don't know where to put those fewer notes. 8th notes are much easier in fact, if you have the chops.

Timing is really important as always. You are creating the impression of floating, but you are not in fact floating over the top of a passive background. You still have to create a pocket.

You have to nail the up-beat accurately. This can be pretty straight compared to lower tempos.

Accurately placing quarter note triplets and half note triplets is a good way of getting a more 'open' 'floating' effect

Articulations of rhythms at high tempos can be pretty tricky - just because you are not playing endless streams of 8th notes doesn't mean your articulation can be lazy - you will play little bursts of 8th notes and if you don't nail them, it will sound crap.

Amalgamating the beat into 2/2 or 1/1 is can be helpful for relaxing. Try tapping your foot on 1 and 3 or just 1 to feel this.

At around 320 it becomes very hard to do anything but play on the beat.

Pre-hearing and singing phrases can help a lot with all of this. I often find my ability to execute ideas at tempo lagging behind my ability to hear them, which is good I suppose.

[oldane]

Lester Young managed to do it, especially in his younger days. Listen to for example "Lester Leaps In" and "Clap Hands, here comes Charlie" (both from the 1930s). About the latter, Lester himself said that it showed "a glimpse of my heart".

[Runepune]

You may try singing a lyrical line at half tempo, even quarter tempo, and fill in with passing notes in between. Circling around/leading to the "lyrical" framework. And there's no need to play constant 8'ths. There's lots of lyric in the pauses :-)

Sequencing. Take small patterns and move them up or down the scale(s). Moving horizontally on the neck is a good way to do this as the picking pattern will be the same.

Playing scales straight up or down isn't very lyrical, so practice scales in lyrical ways (e.g. 1-3-2-1_2-4-3-2 etc).

The rhythmic content is very important. You may swing like hell on a one or two note pattern, so it's not like one has to cover as many notes as possible!

[marcwhy]

Great ideas here!


Maxton, you kinda answered your own question, too: "Don't play 8th notes and triplets!"

Seriously, slow down the note values to quarter, half, whole, quarter note triplets, etc., and you'll likely find your melodies again.

And welcome to the Forum!

Marc

[maxtons]

When I think of "lyrical" in the traditional sense of the word, I imagine melodies built around
not so many notes but played with great expression. When tempos are slow and medium,
we subdivide playing 8th's, triplets, 16th's, etc. So when tempos are fast we mostly tend to
continue this approach, using a smaller subset of whatever subdivision we can technically pull off.
We often forget that rhythm ratios flow in both directions. To play slow melodies when chords are
changing rapidly, we need to be hyper-aware of common tones and points of intersection
between the adjacent harmonies. After playing slow melodies against fast moving harmonies begins
feeling natural, think of ornamenting the slower melodic ideas as opposed to playing fast melodies.

I haven't done this that much but these are my thoughts on how I might approach doing so.
Thanks for the inspiration for something cool to play around with tomorrow after the sun rises.

Great ideas here, and thanks to everyone else who contributed. I definitely have a lot to work on...time to hit the shed

[pcsanwald]

One thing I've noticed Peter Bernstein does a lot is play quarter note lines interspersed with faster flourishes. I realized this when I was listening to him play on "From This Moment On" from the album "Consenting Adults".

I haven't done a lot of practicing this way myself, but it seems like a great way to get a comfortable groove happening at a fast tempo, as opposed to playing eighth note lines and trying to maintain the same flow that you would at a slower tempo.

Another thing to do is practice playing variants of the melody of a fast tune, which is another thing Peter recommends and does a lot of.

[christianm77]

One thing I've noticed Peter Bernstein does a lot is play quarter note lines interspersed with faster flourishes. I realized this when I was listening to him play on "From This Moment On" from the album "Consenting Adults".

I haven't done a lot of practicing this way myself, but it seems like a great way to get a comfortable groove happening at a fast tempo, as opposed to playing eighth note lines and trying to maintain the same flow that you would at a slower tempo.

Another thing to do is practice playing variants of the melody of a fast tune, which is another thing Peter recommends and does a lot of.

I was thinking of Peter when I wrote my post

[Richard Luther]

Speaking of Bernstein's high tempo quarter note improv...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[christianm77]

Here's a thing I was playing around with today using Drum Genius.

I've mentioned elsewhere that I feel a lot of Parker's lines (perhaps all of them) work really well against a clave, and what's more most of them seem to fit a 2 3 clave.

Now with drum genius it's easy to set the Metrogenius to a 2 3 clave and set it to have full swing (you can specify less if you prefer) and play whatever song I am working on over the top - could be a melody, a bop head or full on soloing, or for that matter comping.

I find by doing this I start to play more interesting and compelling rhythms. It has a New Orleansy sort of feel. I am feeling the rhythm in half time.

Then I transfer this to a metronome or a playalong in 4/4 swing time and try and keep feeling that sort of 2/4 New Orleansy swung clave in my bones while I play. It feels a bit different to normal, but when I listen back, it sounds like 4/4 swing against the backing.

Another rhythm I find useful for practicing to is Soca and Calypso is nice too. Both these feels have a bit of a swing to them.

These ideas have their genesis in Hal Galper's teaching. It's a lot of fun, but you have to be very comfortable with the harmonic structure of the song to play with rhythmic freedom. I am best on things like Blues and Rhythm tunes.

[AlsoRan]

To be honest, I'm not sure that lyrical and tempos of 250-ish aren't a bit contradictory. Lyrical implies some kind of feeling, generally poetic, possibly wistful, and so on. Whether that corresponds with zooming along at high speed is doubtful.

Otoh, it's certainly possible to make lines that sound musical at that speed. It's usually a matter of how changes are connected and how the lines move through the changes.

There's this, for example. Joe Pass' lines are highly musical but whether they're lyrical or not is a different matter!

Do you have any examples of speed playing that you yourself would call lyrical?

Thanks for that great post, Ragman. Oh, how I loved that.

I took away a couple of observations: 1) Joe really kept that left leg bouncing throughout the song. I would have had a "charley horse," 2) Joe played up and down the neck, even in the higher registers, and his sound was rather bright and as present in the mix as Oscar's piano, and 3) I really liked the way he articulated those notes, they were jumping off the fretboard - I heard a lot of wood and very few flubbed notes, if any. What a player!!

[ragman1]

Thanks for that great post, Ragman. Oh, how I loved that.

I took away a couple of observations: 1) Joe really kept that left leg bouncing throughout the song. I would have had a "charley horse," 2) Joe played up and down the neck, even in the higher registers, and his sound was rather bright and as present in the mix as Oscar's piano, and 3) I really liked the way he articulated those notes, they were jumping off the fretboard - I heard a lot of wood and very few flubbed notes, if any. What a player!!

And he did most of it with his eyes closed :-)

[christianm77]

yeah that's a brilliant clip... Passed me by for some reason

One thing I would say is Joe's 8th note runs are bit more 'on the beat' to my ears compared to Oscars' incredibly fleet and creative phrasing. Nature of the instrument?

Big thing is 8th triplets. Pianist do them more than guitarists.

[Robertkoa]

And he did most of it with his eyes closed :-)

Wow.I did not know Pass had chops like that. And very Melodic for a driving Solo.

But not pretty and Lyrical - that would be
someone like Metheny and he seems to be able to be Lyrical, Melodic at any tempo or Rhythmic Density.


How does he do it ?

[Robertkoa]

Trane does some of this later in the Tune- he has some dissonant Notes ( intentional ) and ends some phrases a bit more abruptly than you would want but it's there.



To play lyrically you need pretty notes and Phrases and effortless chops- you probably can't be at the edge of your Ability and a super light(non) attack is Key...it can be Minor if it's light and 'floats'.

Flutists and Alto Players do it all the time.

Lots of speed with no effort or anger or frustration- one of the hardest things to do on the Guitar...lol.

Depending on how you pick some of the Modern Pick Materials like Gator Grip- after they break in- and the 1.5mm and 2.0mm will ' roll off' the strings if you pick at very shallow depth rarely even going below the Plane of the strings for example.

The reason most Jazz Guitarists can't do it is: you need a firm, crisp pick attack to swing consistently and precisely- so it's counter-intuitive for them to pick really really lightly .



Metheny doesn't quite have the speed to do it but he is a very lyrical Player- Metheny uses Electronics to do it .

If you are super good with the pick you can do it even on Acoustic Guitar-

But Players like Metheny, Rosenwinkel ,Eric Johnson ( does some lyrical rock almost) use compression and delay and this takes some of the front end attack off the beginning of the note and also causes overlap from one note to the next...

There are also other compression guitar gadgets that can take the attack off the front of your Notes- if you don't want to spend a lot of time on picking dynamics
which makes sense...

Use double time or quadruple time phrases
or triplets septuplets etc. -not silly fast tempos.
Lyrical Playing floats and breathes...

Another Benson Video doing it with sheer skill .
Playing with Vibrato , sliding into notes- and almost sheets of sound lines at times
and still has attack but it's all pretty...

[Alter]

One thing that i 've found useful when playing fast tempos, is to stop tapping the foot on 2 and 4 (or on all beats), and just tap on 1. You can see many of the greats doing it, it relaxes the body, gives you a solid reference and makes handling the speed easier.

Also, practice long notes, whole of half notes, take pauses, leave spaces and get comfortable with stepping in and out when playing over the tune. Start with few and well chosen notes, move up to quarter notes connecting the changes, and then some 8th note flurries. Start to think of small sections of the tune as being one thing, set target points for resolving your phrases.

[vsaumarez]

This is an interesting question. Some players say you should always be lyrical whatever the tempo and sax players often manage this. As someone mentioned, Joe Pass wouldn't compromise either, but you can hear his fingers lifting before they've dug in properly so the sound can be a little clipped. My take is that you can get away with it by creating the effect of being lyrical since listeners are not taking in every note at high tempos. That means expand the range of notes (highs to lows) and intersperse with rhythmical devises. Find the path of least resistance by keeping intervals smaller, and notes more clustered. But they still have to be melodic lines and not scales. Find stuff you can play comfortably and then crank up the speed to see if you it rolls off the fingers at high tempos.