Playing the saxophone Improvised solos and “telling a story”

[LostCircuits]

I've used the story telling analogy quite often. It's not an accurate description but more a metaphor for if you have to say something, say it in a way that's interesting and captivates the audience.
As opposed to keep rambling on using the same buzz words that sound flashy and after 30 min everybody in the audience starts wondering if you really did say anything of value and interest.

You can tell a story using words, gestures, music, hand puppets or whatever suits you. The point is that you are trying to communicate something instead of rattling down bullet points-licks-riffs

 

[LostCircuits]

All good answers in the posts above.

I'd say playing something unexpected might count as a 'plot twist'.

Oops, I crapped my pants ... LOL gotto run!

 

[JSL]

That’s a hook not a solo

I could be a hook, or if it's a motif and is embellished or developed over 8 or more bars, it becomes a solo.

 

[Pete Thomas]

I could be a hook, or if it's a motif and is embellished or developed over 8 or more bars, it becomes a solo.

Luckily I've never in my life had to play that tune. But if I did I'd love to take the "hook" and turn it into a solo story.

 

[rhysonsax]

A good example of "telling a story" in an extended solo is Sonny Rollins' Blue 7.

View: https://youtu.be/8ezcRI12HgY?si=1X6Laxg2AinIfR9I&t=17


This recorded solo was the subject of an essay by Gunther Schuller in the Jazz Review magazine "Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation".

Apparently the Schuller essay had quite an impact on Sonny Rollins. He seems to have taken the analysis very seriously and spent a couple of years experimenting and relentlessly trying to figure out what was the "logic" of this "innovative thematic improvisation". The experience left him very frustrated and he was quoted as saying that he was going to stop reading his reviews.

Rhys

 

[skeller047]

Telling a story in music. That’s an analogy, and while it has a purpose and illustrates a truth, it’s also not complete.

A story is a journey, often with a purpose - to educate, illuminate and/or entertain. When we play music, we have similar goals, but use a different vehicle of expression. When I write or say the word “Apple”, a specific image comes to the reader’s or listener’s mind. When I play a specific chord or melodic motif, sometimes it evokes a specific feeling, but sometimes not. We don’t have a one-to-one correspondence between musical fragments and specific memes, like we do with words. I’m not saying this isn’t possible, I’m just saying that culturally we don’t have these associations with specific musical “words”.

Context matters. When I say “Apple”, and I have just been talking about computers, most listeners will have a different image than a red piece of fruit. In music, tempo, accompaniment, volume, articulation, etc. give a chord or melodic fragment a different association in the listener’s mind. But there is no cultural agreement on the meaning of these associations in music, such as there is with words.

So a musical story is different from a written or spoken one, but it still has meaning to an attentive listener. When I play I attempt to evoke a particular feeling, but it’s hard to describe in words what that feeling is. Seeing or hearing the word “Apple” evokes visual, textural and taste memories; listening to music evokes a series of feelings in me, but these are specific to me, and don’t have any wider cultural reinforcement - like apples do.

 

[LostCircuits]

A good example of "telling a story" in an extended solo is Sonny Rollins' Blue 7.

View: https://youtu.be/8ezcRI12HgY?si=1X6Laxg2AinIfR9I&t=17


This recorded solo was the subject of an essay by Gunther Schuller in the Jazz Review magazine "Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation".

Apparently the Schuller essay had quite an impact on Sonny Rollins. He seems to have taken the analysis very seriously and spent a couple of years experimenting and relentlessly trying to figure out what was the "logic" of this "innovative thematic improvisation". The experience left him very frustrated and he was quoted as saying that he was going to stop reading his reviews.

Rhys

That's one good example. There are many others especially the other way around as well where spoken or written language was formatted into musical or mathematical form factors. Just think poetry in the broadest sense starting with hexameters, elegiac distichons etc. all the way to Hesse's Steppenwolf, which is strictly speaking a sonata of prose.

The biggest issue is if folks get hung up on definitions instead of trying to understand the intention and accepting the limitations of each such approach. You can't roll a square but you can still move it gracefully.

 

[rhysonsax]

That's one good example. There are many others especially the other way around as well where spoken or written language was formatted into musical or mathematical form factors. Just think poetry in the broadest sense starting with hexameters, elegiac distichons etc. all the way to Hesse's Steppenwolf, which is strictly speaking a sonata of prose.

The biggest issue is if folks get hung up on definitions instead of trying to understand the intention and accepting the limitations of each such approach. You can't roll a square but you can still move it gracefully.

I don't understand whether you are discussing this in relation to improvisation or to music in general.

Rhys

 

[Jimmymack]

The story I got about the Gunther Schuller analysis is that Sonny was outraged by the over-intellectualised idiocy of it as it had nothing to do with the what, the how or the why he played it.

 

[Targa]

That's one good example. There are many others especially the other way around as well where spoken or written language was formatted into musical or mathematical form factors. Just think poetry in the broadest sense starting with hexameters, elegiac distichons etc. all the way to Hesse's Steppenwolf, which is strictly speaking a sonata of prose.

The biggest issue is if folks get hung up on definitions instead of trying to understand the intention and accepting the limitations of each such approach. You can't roll a square but you can still move it gracefully.

I don’t know about Steppenwolf being a sonata of prose but Pablo was inspired by Sydney Bechet.

 

[JSL]

I don't understand whether you are discussing this in relation to improvisation or to music in general.

Rhys

Well, "improvising a solo" is in the title of the thread, so I think it's safe to assume @LostCircuits was speaking of improvisation.

 

[mizmar]

listening to music evokes a series of feelings in me, but these are specific to me, and don’t have any wider cultural reinforcement

So, here's a thought.
One might consider music to be, in part, language without detailed semantics. Take away the specific meaning of words and grammar; and you have an amount of emotional information. Sure that varies between cultures and Languages; but within a cultural there's still plenty of commonality understood information as to whether an utterance is; a question or assertion, said angrily or happily or sadly, threatening or reassuring... And that's conveyed through variation in; tone, the rise and fall of pitch, timbre, rhythm etc.
Try saying

the word “Apple”

As a statement of fact, a question, disappointedly, delightedly etc. And listen through the word to the way you sound.
If, in a late night flight of philosophising, one accepts that; than that's the "language" used to tell stories.

 

[mark_addy]

For me it's like ski slalom - can I make it through the gates (changes) without crashing into them or falling over. I don't think at this age I'll get much further than getting better at that. But I taught myself and didn't entirely know what the notes were called for the first 20 years, so I guess I got off to a slow start 🙂

 

[LostCircuits]

I don’t know about Steppenwolf being a sonata of prose but Pablo was inspired by Sydney Bechet.

https://utppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3138/sem.v15.1.39?journalCode=seminar#:~:text=The%20end%20of%20the%20%60Tractat,'%20(vii%2C%20413)%20.&text=(vii%2C%20314)%20(both,repeated%2C%20completing%20the%20ABA%20structure.

 

[LostCircuits]

I don't understand whether you are discussing this in relation to improvisation or to music in general.

Rhys

I meant it in relation to improvisation, thanks @JSL, but I think it applies to music in general as well. Specifically the idea of trying to bridge music and story telling.

I am going out a little on a limb or possibly get off topic (OMG, what a blasphemy) but I am thinking along the lines that story TELLING is much like improvisation whereas recitation or story READING is more like playing sheet music.

Both are superseded by Youtube and TikTok nowadays but I spent a few days in a "School for Narrators" in Yogyakarta, some 45 years ago and in elementary school we had story READING competitions. There is a huge difference similar to the difference between let's say playing classical music and improvisation.

But my point was simply that it is not simply the music to story analogy but that the principle has been used both ways, that's really all there is to that thought.

 

[thomsax]

I think it probably depends on the length of the solo. If you just have eight bars or 12 bars then there is limited scope for "telling a story"

Or the tempo ...? You can tell a good story in a slow solo over 8 bars.

 

[rhysonsax]

Or the tempo ...? You can tell a good story in a slow solo over 8 bars.

Maybe an anecdote rather than a story ? I'd love to hear some examples.

Rhys

 

[Pete Effamy]

The more I ponder this, the more ridiculous the word “story” becomes.

It’s light and shade, interest; as someone said early on - use of good composition tools: build, sequences, nuance, dynamics….. etc

“to be taken on a journey “

It’s all literary descriptions, not musical.

If it’s a story - what’s the story? (No one will get the same story - and you can be fairly certain that the player isn’t thinking of a story -

C7… “off the bloke went down the pub…”

 

[Colin the Bear]

I only C2.

 

[JSL]

“to be taken on a journey “

+1. I think that's a (somewhat) better description than "to tell a story".