Beginner impro Is it a good idea to write out solos? Or must they be 100% improvised?

Is it a good idea for beginners to write out solos? Is it a helpful thing to encourage?

EDIT: changed to cover all genres not just jazz

 

[Colin the Bear]

Imagine improvising a solo on Baker St, Careless whisper or Sade's Smooth operater. There'd be ructions and demands for money back. I suppose those examples date me.

If you're playing in a tribute band, be it Pink Floyd, Glen Miller or Mozart, it goes how it goes. Great to listen to but not my choice to play.

 

[mark_addy]

You might also try to sing/hum along with those tunes, to internalize, and do the same for creating your solo.
The horn can get in the way of your music, depending on your skills.

Those are good ideas - I'm OK at that, staying in a key and perhaps using blue notes, but the unexpected bit of the gag (this all seems to me to be a bit like humour, in a way) is the 'going outside' things that some players do. I am pretty locked into the key, and when (say) 251s happen which move the key around, I can usually make it through the gates - so tunes with lots of changes keep me busy. I am aware of one or two substitutions which I probably overuse because they fall easily to the fingers (that thing which starts in half steps and ends in whole tones, which sounds OK over a 5 chord (dom 7?), for instance. I don't know what it is, a pianist once showed it to me!). But I can't even sing the 'outside, and then back in' things i hear which I like. I think I might have to learn something off pat, and see if it makes its way into the stuff which pops up as I play along. I've even been driving myself and my wife batty with playing descending triads in half steps. This feels like formal music, which is somewhere I've never been. I'm a bit old for it!

 

[AlonW]

There is so much written music for a beginner to absorb. If they are writing out their solos, then how will they ever learn to improvise and rely on their impulses to spontaneously create?

 

[Pete Effamy]

There is so much written music for a beginner to absorb. If they are writing out their solos, then how will they ever learn to improvise and rely on their impulses to spontaneously create?

It’s a tool. It’s your “working out”. It doesn’t mean that you start writing out solos and you’re not then allowed to improvise. Treat it like a sketch before putting paint to canvas.

 

[AlonW]

It’s a tool. It’s your “working out”. It doesn’t mean that you start writing out solos and you’re not then allowed to improvise. Treat it like a sketch before putting paint to canvas.

Writing out a solo can be creative too. But if the teacher wrote it out, it would not aid improvisation.

 

[SuperAction80]

Different instrument, but writing out Zappa's solos night after night really seemed to work for Steve Vai. Different era for a much younger musician, though. I can't say that I'd know what to do with "super stardom". Still, I can't think of a better way of checking your ear, understanding rhythms, and probably learning something about harmonic relationships along the way.

 

[Pete Effamy]

Writing out a solo can be creative too. But if the teacher wrote it out, it would not aid improvisation.

Unless you wanted to see an example of hitting good guide tones / 3rds and 7ths or just getting a good idea for general stock phrases and how they are created - like the 1 - 3 - 5 - 6 - octave sound (if you don’t know it already).

 

[PiccoloPirate]

There is a tradition of studying composition, writing solos etc etc in music, with the teacher.

Old school stuff.
Just hit continue.

http://www.opus28.co.uk/Fux_Gradus.pdf

 

[Tonehole]

I guess we all could stand to take a lesson!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1wbP_gDwN0&t=213s

 

[turf3]

If you are playing African American improvised music, precomposing solos is antithetical to the whole concept.

There can be great instructional value in learning someone else's solos note for note, but just like you don't play scale exercises in performance, you don't play someone else's solos in performance.

I know there are groups where they reproduce a famous recording note for note, but that's a party trick, not creative musicianship.

I should clarify this.

Certainly in classical music solos are common and almost never improvised. In the last hundred years, even cadenzas of concerti are written out.

In pop music there are certain "signature licks" (the sax lick in Baker Street was mentioned above). To me, these aren't improvised solos, they don't serve the same purpose, they are essentially the same thing as a bass line or the melody of the chorus of a tune.

A grey area exists with things like the "In the Mood" dogfight or the Buddy Hackett solo in "String of Pearls" [extra point for anyone who catches the old bandsmen's joke there]. While those solos may have started out improvised, at this point they're more like "signature licks" to be honest. They're part of the melody of the tune at this point.

What I'm talking about is when you get to a point in the tune and there are a bunch of chord symbols indicating "improvise here!" That's where the idea of African American improvised music is to make your own thing. There is great pedagogical value in transcribing, reproducing, learning from what other people have played; but in that kind of music, personal expression trumps technique every time.

I heard a story about Roland Kirk - that he was playing a gig that was also a sort of "open-ish mike" - and one girl came up to recite her poetry (this was a thing, some of us will remember, reciting poetry over a jazz rhythm section background), and it was pretty lame, and this guy was heckling her from the front row. Well, Kirk ALWAYS knew what was going on in the house, and he stopped the band and said (paraphrasing, best I can remember) "Hey, you, smart guy! She's doing what she can do, she's got the nerve to get up here and TRY. What are YOU going to do, smart guy? Play an instrument? We got instruments, come up here and show us what you can do! Got something better to say? Let's hear it! Wanna fight? Come on up here, I'll kick your ass!"

That's the jazz attitude - trying and failing always beats avoiding failure by pre-programming everything. (Rahsaan WAS a jazz attitude...)

 

[JayeNM]

good answers here....my approach has always been...you can LEARN from written/transcribed solos from recording...maybe us them to get some quotes and licks under your fingers and into muscle memory...

But when time comes to perform it...don't get hung up on copying those licks, phrases exactly.

Likewise if you have a 'solo concept' for a tune....write it out see what you can compose...play it, learn it...but do not PLAN on playing it 'verbatim', live. That intention will mess you up because it is adding a layer of "i gotta memorize this and execute it" to what should be something a bit more fun than that...and then if you splat your written solo, live, now you go into 'troubleshoot' mode...kinda like a figure skater who fell or stumbled... and perhaps cannot get yourself out of it without you thinking 'I messed up, gotta get back on track, uh-oh'....which then becomes the primary thought residing in your head for the rest of the solo...

While throwing in a lick or phrase or 'nugget', even if you splat some of it...is still much more fun....

 

[JayeNM]

There's nothing worse than hitting what I call a 'black wall': time for a sax solo and having mentally no clue what to play!

- improvising on 'rhythm' can often be just as effective as improvising on 'melody'

Whenever that happens to me....I literally just start playing the root note of the chords but syncopate them to make it sound like I am still soloing, lol...so I fall back to phrasing as opposed to note selection....just as sort of a 'reset', then start adding the third then maybe seventh in there until I regain my composure and bearings....

 

[Pete Effamy]

The short answer is to use whatever helps. A friend of mine teaches at a conservatoire. When talking to a guitarist about chord voicing / structure he was told that he didn’t want to be told that as the journey was the exciting part and that he’d rather find out for himself.

Well, as per a recent thread: my mate and I got within a whisker of being orchestral clarinet players. We both veered off into jazz / pop sax - no sax lessons apart from using our ears.

The result? We still remark about various aspects of playing: “I wish I knew that 40 years ago”.

Mostly in music, there are no short cuts: apart from avoiding travelling (a long way) down a dead end or just not having enough info (avoiding the “wrong” or poor info.

 

[Pete Effamy]

The result? We still remark about various aspects of playing: “I wish I knew that 40 years ago”.

The comedic reply to this is: you never asked. And that’s it in a nutshell.

 

[JayeNM]

A friend of mine teaches at a conservatoire. When talking to a guitarist about chord voicing / structure he was told that he didn’t want to be told that as the journey was the exciting part and that he’d rather find out for himself.

A former drummer of mine once related a story where he had takes a Jazz Composing studio with Chick Corea. Chick wanted them to play the melody while he tinkled the keys and asked them to verbally give him the chord changes, but when someone got to something like "Bb minor 7 b5" Chick would say - 'don't give me all that, I'll figure it from the melody - just tell me root, major/minor, maybe 6th, 7, if you insist"