Veggie Dave
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A continuation of a discussion from my thread about not knowing if something is good or not. This may actually be nothing more than the worthless ramblings of someone who couldn't find anything to watch on TV and couldn't get his horn out because it's late and his neighbours would kill him 
but it was something I couldn't stop thinking about after improvising rather than writing solos was brought up in the other thread.
When I first discovered jazz I was amazed that if you went to see a jazz band you wouldn't hear the songs you fell in love on the record, the songs that brought you to the gig in the first place, because it's all improvised. The idea that almost everything other than the head was improvised and that you had no idea what they were going to play struck me as woefully unprofessional.
I know that will sound utterly bizarre to anyone who has grown up with jazz, but the solos in pop and rock music are an integral part of the song. Start messing with the solo and you're messing with the song as whole. For example, Hazel O'Conner's Will You is as much the solo as it is the singing and the lyrics. If you do that song as a cover then you don't just have to sing it in tune, you better nail Wesley McGoogan's solo, too, because that's what the audience wants to hear - the song they fell in love with. You don't change the solo in the same way you don't rewrite the lyrics. Start improvising and the audience will just assume you either don't know the song or can't play it. Either way, you pull them out of the performance. You may do a great solo, but it's not the right solo.
A rock/pop audience also isn't expecting the musicians on stage to start trying stuff that may or may not work. They expect a fully rehearsed, note perfect performance of their favourite songs. In all my time as a rock musician, the only time someone didn't play a part the way it was recorded was because they couldn't do it. The attitude of the audience and other musicians in the scene was that they could only do it in the studio, with a thousand takes and unlimited overdubs, but in the real world they couldn't cut it. Basically, they were fakes. The exact attitude most musicians have today of people who use auto-tune, quantize etc.
For some reason, there are those who consider this fully rehearsed sort of performance as somehow inferior to a jazz performance. It really isn't. In many ways it's actually much harder because there is absolutely no where to hide when something goes wrong. You can improvise your way out of a mistake with the best solo you've ever played but to the audience it doesn't matter because you haven't played the song the right way. Of course, if you're playing classical you better not make a single mistake because there's no way to cover it.
As a performer you really need to understand the different attitudes of your audience. You don't turn up to a jazz gig with two choruses of prewritten solos for each song because you really can't play jazz that way, it simply won't work. Plus the audience expects to hear experimentation. They're happy to hear you make mistakes because that's part of the (terrifying) excitement that is jazz. In the same way, you don't turn up to a pop gig and expect to get away with improvising iconic songs. You certainly don't want to turn up to a pop gig and start banging out your cool flat 9 augmented 13 arpeggios and playing 'outside the chord' licks to an audience that either has no idea what you're doing or is likely to think it's nothing more than an unmusical cacophony. And you don't turn up to a classical performance or theatrical show without knowing what you're going to play, when you're going to play it and how.
As a musician who expects people to pay to see you play, or who expects to be paid to play, your job is to play in the style your audience expects. It's an integral part of the job. Ego and nonsensical prejudice has no place if you want to be taken seriously. Neither improvised or rehearsed is the superior way, neither is the way 'real musicians' do it. They're equally important approaches to different types of performance and you better understand which is which if you want people to ask you to play in their band/show.
but it was something I couldn't stop thinking about after improvising rather than writing solos was brought up in the other thread.When I first discovered jazz I was amazed that if you went to see a jazz band you wouldn't hear the songs you fell in love on the record, the songs that brought you to the gig in the first place, because it's all improvised. The idea that almost everything other than the head was improvised and that you had no idea what they were going to play struck me as woefully unprofessional.
I know that will sound utterly bizarre to anyone who has grown up with jazz, but the solos in pop and rock music are an integral part of the song. Start messing with the solo and you're messing with the song as whole. For example, Hazel O'Conner's Will You is as much the solo as it is the singing and the lyrics. If you do that song as a cover then you don't just have to sing it in tune, you better nail Wesley McGoogan's solo, too, because that's what the audience wants to hear - the song they fell in love with. You don't change the solo in the same way you don't rewrite the lyrics. Start improvising and the audience will just assume you either don't know the song or can't play it. Either way, you pull them out of the performance. You may do a great solo, but it's not the right solo.
A rock/pop audience also isn't expecting the musicians on stage to start trying stuff that may or may not work. They expect a fully rehearsed, note perfect performance of their favourite songs. In all my time as a rock musician, the only time someone didn't play a part the way it was recorded was because they couldn't do it. The attitude of the audience and other musicians in the scene was that they could only do it in the studio, with a thousand takes and unlimited overdubs, but in the real world they couldn't cut it. Basically, they were fakes. The exact attitude most musicians have today of people who use auto-tune, quantize etc.
For some reason, there are those who consider this fully rehearsed sort of performance as somehow inferior to a jazz performance. It really isn't. In many ways it's actually much harder because there is absolutely no where to hide when something goes wrong. You can improvise your way out of a mistake with the best solo you've ever played but to the audience it doesn't matter because you haven't played the song the right way. Of course, if you're playing classical you better not make a single mistake because there's no way to cover it.
As a performer you really need to understand the different attitudes of your audience. You don't turn up to a jazz gig with two choruses of prewritten solos for each song because you really can't play jazz that way, it simply won't work. Plus the audience expects to hear experimentation. They're happy to hear you make mistakes because that's part of the (terrifying) excitement that is jazz. In the same way, you don't turn up to a pop gig and expect to get away with improvising iconic songs. You certainly don't want to turn up to a pop gig and start banging out your cool flat 9 augmented 13 arpeggios and playing 'outside the chord' licks to an audience that either has no idea what you're doing or is likely to think it's nothing more than an unmusical cacophony. And you don't turn up to a classical performance or theatrical show without knowing what you're going to play, when you're going to play it and how.
As a musician who expects people to pay to see you play, or who expects to be paid to play, your job is to play in the style your audience expects. It's an integral part of the job. Ego and nonsensical prejudice has no place if you want to be taken seriously. Neither improvised or rehearsed is the superior way, neither is the way 'real musicians' do it. They're equally important approaches to different types of performance and you better understand which is which if you want people to ask you to play in their band/show.
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