How do you learn to play a good solo!
Of course you need to get some good technique under your belt. This includes scales, arpeggios, patterns and licks (plenty of those here). You also need to know how to apply all this to the music, only a very few tunes only have one chord so sooner or later you will need to know your way around some basic chord changes, and not just for jazz solos.
Jazz improvisation teaching is placing more & more emphasis on learning specific scales to fit a chord type. While this approach has some merits (you can gain confidence in soloing over a chord sequence quite quickly), the danger is that you miss the wider picture. It can become easy to get into the habit of running up and down scales rather than finding interesting melodic phrases that can hold the listener’s interest by building up tension and releasing it, or by giving a solo a real musical shape.
To get this kind of skill probably the best thing you can do is to listen, learn and transcribe some solos. Then try to analyse what the player is doing or the way they are thinking. I have done simple analyses of some of the solos on these pages to show you how to approach understanding what makes a well structured solos. You can learn some good jazz licks, but best of all, you must learn how to put them together in order to create interest, e.g. tension & release leading to a satifactory conclusion of the solo - exactly as if you are composing. Of course, it’s useful to learn lots of licks and phrases, but best of all try to invent your own.
The following transcriptions and analyses from the Breakfastroom site will give you some ideas about what to look for and how to analyse saxophone solos:
Transcribing a Saxophone Solo
At first this is quite a daunting task, but well worth doing your own transcriptions rather than buying them if you have the time (and cheaper). By doing them yourself you will be training your ears and probably get a much better understanding of the solo. There are several ways to make your transcribing life easier.
- Initially pick some easy solos, the hardest part can be working out complex rhythms so choose something quite basic, e.g. solos where the player is sticking mostly to quavers (8th notes).
- Before starting the transcription, listen over and over again, learn to sing along with the solo.
- Learn some basic keyboard technique. This will also help with understanding the harmony.
- Understand the shape of the solo, the form of the harmony (AABA etc), the number of choruses.
Use all the resources at your fingertips, I recommend some transcription software such as Transcribe.
If you don't have the time to do your own, there are thousands of jazz and saxophone transcriptions available to buy. Just make sure you analyse and understand them as well as learn to play them. I shall be gradually adding more transcribed solos to these pages so please keep coming back!
