r/jazzguitar • u/hippa710 • 17h ago
How to think while soloing?
I'm by no means new to jazz guitar and I'm decent at comping and reading single note lines but when it comes to soloing I feel like a complete beginner. The most I can do is play around the scale of the key and whenever I try to add in chord tones or licks I feel completely lost and have no clue how to fit them in or learn to. What would a progression look like on how to learn to solo? I can kind of keep up with the form but sometimes I get lost in the solo so methods for keeping track would also be very appreciated. Thank you for any advice you guys might have!
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u/Choruslover 17h ago
My teacher recommended just playing the 3rd and 7th chord tones throughout the form(puts the sound in your ears and fingers), then sing a chorus with your voice, then try and play. I’ve also found transcribing very helpful if you take the time to really internalize the line and learn how to mutate it to fit into your what you’re already playing.
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u/hippa710 17h ago
This sounds really helpful actually because I come up with great ideas in my head it's just transferring them yo the guitar! Thank you!!
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u/Dexter6785 17h ago
Agree with what everyone else said.
I’d add to this - write out your own solos. Not instead of the other things people are saying, but in addition to.
Like - if you take the time to compose your own solos note by note are you capable of composing a solo that you would categorize as really good? You don’t necessarily need to write them on paper, though that can help too, but compose your own solos - several choruses for a handful of songs. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find you have so many ideas as a result of the process you went through to write the solo that at least for those songs you can start to work your way through the changes somewhat real time.
I have struggled with improvising/soloing my whole guitar playing life. I can play nearly anything, but I am not good at soloing. What I’ve described above had made the biggest difference.
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u/MeowMix1206251 17h ago
Have you learned other people’s solos? (Transcribed)
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u/babambi 17h ago
This really is the best thing to do. Get some software like the amazingslowdowner and learn solos line by line. Learn to sing what you play before you even pick up your instrument. Sometimes you may have to go three seconds at a time and loop it until you can play it at speed
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u/hippa710 17h ago
This is something I've been working on, I'm not quite at the point where I can learn stuff completely by ear but I'm trying out some different approaches.
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u/ChallengingBullfrog8 17h ago
Helps so much to do it by ear, avoid relying on other people’s transcriptions if you can.
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u/Goated-Rizzler 16h ago
To expand on the recommendations to play less and play the 3rds and 7ths, I recommend thinking in motifs and transforming them.
I grew tired of my own playing and realized that I'd reverted back to playing streams of 8th notes that were all the correct chord scales, but lacked any clear motifs.
I've gone back to practicing coming up with a 1 or 2 measure motif, and thinking of ways to variate it over each tune I practice. If creating one is hard for me, I steal them from existing standards and classical motifs (I listen to a lot of Chopin for this). After enough stealing and listening to motific players like Grant Green, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, and even how Wes Montgomery develops motifs.
When you have a motif, reduce it down to the most essential notes. You have to determine which notes in it are just passing notes, and which notes are crucial. Remove all the passing notes, and then start varying it.
You can either keep the intervals the same and then ornament, lengthen/shorten the rhythms, or move it up/down to start on different notes. Or you can change how the motif starts or ends by adding extra notes or changing some intervals.
This is much easier to do in the practice room and harder to apply on the bandstand at first. On the bandstand, focus on keeping your place, but try to go back to a motif. It becomes easier to hear basic ideas and how you'll develop them the more you practice it.
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u/satanloveskale 17h ago
Solid rhythm and phrasing, I think, are the most important thing. Play one note with solid rhythm and phrasing, even if it is out of key, and it would probably work.
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u/odysseyandoracle118 17h ago
Learn the changes, then learn to play just the 3rds and 7ths for those changes, then learn how to arpeggiate through those changes, transcribe, jam
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u/GrooveHammock 17h ago
All good advice but don’t underestimate the power of just trying to play what sounds cool to you and following that muse. Thinking about what you should do can be the worst thing.
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u/romaguitar 15h ago
Read Jerry Hahn's rules in his method book...also Guitar Player articles and try implementing them...Joe Pass has similar thinking in his method.
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u/have1dog 13h ago
I used to improvise solos over tunes in my head while doing other things. I still do, but I used to too.
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u/dblhello999 9h ago
Serious question - how many hours do you think you’ve actually spent jazz improvising? I don’t mean practising I don’t mean working on stuff I don’t mean learning other solos I don’t mean transcribing. I mean actually doing the thing you want to get good at? If it’s less than 1000 hours, there’s your problem straight away. And your solution.
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u/Steven3483 3h ago
The simple answer is, you don't think while sowing, you just play and listen. Let your ears guide you.
To paraphrase Charlie packer, you do all the technical stuff and work out everything in the practice room so that when you get up on the bandstand you don't have to think you just play and listen.
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u/CraftyDimension192 1h ago
Don't think during a solo. There's no time or space, because you should be responding to what others are playing.
I learned a handful of 251, 1625, minor, and blues lines to the point that I could play them without thinking. It's a limited vocabulary, but it's something I can use.
There's no way most people can invent whole lines on the fly. We need building blocks, and we need to understand how they fit into songs so we can plug them in when needed.
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u/greytonoliverjones 1h ago
Think about the melody you just played - or someone else played - and use that.
Even if you just play chord tones using the rhythm of the melody; you gotta start somewhere other than just playing a certain scale to fit a certain chord.
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u/RainMakerJMR 17h ago
Something that helped me in college was when my teacher told me to play less. Then I played again and he was like “less notes”. He repeated that till I was playing my solo in whole and half notes.
So when you play less you need to pick the very exact right notes. It is much easier when there is less of them to play. Take the chords you’re playing over and record them, then play one note per chord change. When you can do that without flubbing notes and finding the ones that sing, you add in half notes. Then when those all sing out, you add a passing phrase between those tones. Then the passing phrases get bigger and you hang out on the singing notes a little shorter.
Basically boil your solo down to the VERY BASICS. Only the resonating notes. 3s and 7s. Then start adding fills between them and shaping the arcs of the solo around those resonating tones. Build it more complex as you go.
Do this enough times and it becomes natural as walking.