What are the component skills of musical soloing/improvisation?

March 31, 2023 1:20 PM

Do you know what to do during a solo section when playing with a band? How did you learn? What are the component skills?

I play a musical instrument with a band sometimes. (For context, the instrument is a woodwind, and the band I would describe as a "raucous cacophony of funky danceable anti-capitalist/revolutionary/bluesy/Balkan/klezmer tunes.")

I want to learn how to solo! Typical songs might have an A section, a B section, and then a solo section (which should not sound like A or B - this is where I struggle), and maybe then A repeats and that's the end.

Currently when it's my turn in the solo section, I don't know what to do, how to start, what to aim for, how to make it sound good, like it fits the style but isn't just the melody again. This is not a skill I've ever learned. Typically I end up playing basically a glorified scale in the same key as the song.

I've tried 3 music teachers so far, but the steps they are giving me are too advanced. They might say, "Try playing along with a backing track," but I still don't know what to do. They might say "Listen to what your bandmates are doing during their solos and try to copy that," but I can copy okay but still can't come up with anything of my own. It's like I lack the vocabulary or something.

Have you learned this skill? What are the components/baby steps to work on? Do you have any resources/people to recommend (on any instrument, including voice)?

So far the most useful advice has been:

- identify the root note/key of the song
- identify the 1, 3, 5 notes of that key
- for a solo, try starting on the 3 or 5
- a teacher plays a 2-bar blues lick, and I repeat it (this feels like vocabulary practice - does this exist online somewhere?)
- make your solo either rhythm-based or note-based, but probably not both

posted by danceswithlight to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

All the advice you got was good. Try to create a hummable melody in the key you want to solo in. The Ramones don't solo much, here's an example or a really basic solo: Ramones - Howling at the Moon it basically copies the vocal line, but with guitar instead.

So maybe do a short version of the main melody of one of your songs, but transposed up an octave or down.

Also don't down a quick scale run - that's what all the big guitar players do. learn the different scales - mixolydian, lydian, whatever.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:29 PM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

You've got a strong idea of the basics! Moving on from identifying the key of the song, the next step is identifying what chord is happening right now, and identifying the 1, 3 and 5 (and maybe even 7) notes of that chord, which are all notes you can use. Once you've gotten used to identifying those, quickly, you'll want to start thinking about chord-scale theory, which lets you link scales to chords, so you can quickly identify which scale you can play over any given chord. This all takes a bit of practice, but it's simpler than it sounds - being "in a key" means that practically speaking, you'll use the same scale over lots of chords.

Building melodic vocabulary so you're not just playing scales or arpeggios is a lifelong endeavour, so don't get discouraged. There are lots of books of licks to practise (although it's incredibly boring, it really honestly does help to practise in every key). Transcribing is also a time-consuming but extremely effective way of improving your vocab - listen to players you like, and take the time to work out exactly what it is they're doing until you can do it along with the record. As you do this more often, you'll get through it more quickly.

A really effective technique is building up small ideas. Start with a short lick, maybe only a few notes long. How can you repeat that and build on it? Maybe you start it on a different beat of the bar, or maybe you repeat it, but one step further up the scale, or maybe you add one note onto the end, or at the beginning. Memorable and interesting solos are built out of ideas like this rather than "loads of notes as quickly as possible". The lick you start with can be anything, and building off a fragment of the main tune, or even of another completely different song can work really well.

Above all, don't be discouraged. When you hear someone doing something that sounds exciting, your instinct should be to figure out what they're doing. That could be harmonically (see chord-scale theory above), or rhythmically, or tonally - there's too much a player could do for me to give you advice on how to work every possibility out, but luckily part of the joy of making music is hearing new things and challenging yourself to try new techniques.
posted by spielzebub at 1:45 PM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yeah, starting out by copying the vocal melody is a classic trick, everything from John Coltrane to Nirvana. To go more toward the Coltrane end of things, play the melody as-is one time, repeat it with some embellishments, change the last two or three notes of the second time (i.e., if the melody ends with three descending notes, play the first note the same, but then ascend the scale instead of descending), and then take off from there.

At first, it's probably best to move in stepwise motion. That is, if you're in the key of C and you just played a C, the next note should be either a D or a B. You can then use these steps to build phrases. For three-note phrases, you've only got four options: C-D-C, C-D-E, C-B-C, or C-B-A. (The number of possibilities increases exponentially, 2^the number, so there are sixteen four-note phrases, 32 five-note ones, etc.) You can actually just play a couple of these phrases back to back, with some rest in between, and it'll sound cool.

As you get more experienced with stepwise motion, you can add leaps. Generally best to leap from one chord tone to another. Still in C, if you get to an E, instead of just stepping to either an F or a D, you can also leap to a G or a C. Do a big leap from C to G for even more tension.

Good solos usually have some sort of structure (just like songs themselves), rather than just noodling up and down scales. If you're playing an eight-bar solo, think about how the second two bars relate to the first two, etc. Maybe they're the same, and you're playing AABA. Maybe they're different, and you're playing ABAB. ABCB, etc., all possibilities.

Keep in mind how to resolve your solo - you want to finish it so that it leads into the next section of the song.

One thing you'll notice I keep saying is "think about" or "keep in mind", which is a lot easier said than done while you're on stage. Which is why the time to write your solos is before you actually solo. Everybody talks about people who just step on stage and improvise, but do you really think Eddie Van Halen had never played any of the phrases in "Eruption" before he stepped into the studio that day? Maybe some of the truly virtuosic musicians can do that, but for everybody else, you practice. Maybe not entire solos, but link some of your practice licks together, think about how they could work as a structure, and then when you're onstage, you can add some rubato or grace notes so it doesn't sound like a rote exercise.

There are two parts to music: the mental side (music theory) and the physical side (actually using your body to make the instrument make sound). The latter is significantly harder than the first, so if you can do that, the rest should be easy for you to master once you know where to start.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:58 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m not a great technical musician, but I’m a natural improviser if I do say so myself, so my non-technical advice is: take your favorite part of the song and play with it. Your favorite note or bit of melody—find a way to pull it out, feature it, make it a bit new or unexpected. Think of metal guitar solos—often they’re very repetitive but impressive sounding because they’re high—with woodwind you have the option of going screamingly high/squeaking.
posted by kapers at 2:39 PM on March 31, 2023

• you are after a narrative. say something.
• imitate! learn to copy parts of leads in songs you love. play along. it's how we learn language.
• which is what you're after - to play a melody in your head and move it to the fretboard without thought.
• begin with slow and simple. bb king is a good spot. so is the lead from teen spirit.
• learn to think in phrases - short combinations of notes that you know what they sound like.
• collect a catalog of phrases and learn to smoothly connect them. sentences. the lead is a paragraph, sometimes a short story.
• play slower. slower than that.
• practice with a metronome. begin learning at half tempo. don't move it up without mastering the current tempo. then, just a few bpm at a time.
• don't forget, volume. learn to shout. and to whisper.
• this is a great exercise: hear a single note in your head. play it. don't move to the next note until you're honestly successful.
• knowing scales Cmaj in 8th position and Am pentatonic in 5th position is a really good springboard.
• maybe more later...

you can do this. approach it cheerfully. vonnegut: the point of doing a thing is not to be good at it. best, _j
posted by j_curiouser at 3:09 PM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Mixing up arpeggios and stepwise motion in terms of the types of movements in your melody is good. Staying in the key is good but you can definitely also deviate into chromatic/accidental stuff—just try to do so on off beats/weaker beats and make sure it sounds diatonic on the big changes you’re soloing over. Jumping up or down. Playing around with note lengths and rhythms is good—syncopation, staccato vs legato, taking rests, varying between short notes and long ones, or going rubato can be good ways to experiment. You can use the vocal melody and/or rhythm as a starting point for any of these variations or go somewhere else entirely. Just noodling around over music is good practice, particularly looping the same song for a while—do it enough and your brain will start to suggest stuff, I bet. (If you’re a substance user, it can sometimes be fun to try doing this after a glass of wine or an edible or something to loosen your inhibitions.)
posted by music for skeletons at 3:09 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Intuition is the thingy, very gently turn your brain off and surrender to the groove. It seems counter-intuitive to concentration, but paradoxically ends up in the same space.
posted by ovvl at 7:35 PM on March 31, 2023

If you use any recreational substances, try using them- I was nervous to solo until I had done it drunk a few times. If you don’t use substances, try to loosen up and just be messy and see how things sound. I’m not a real musician and I don’t know any of the technical theory of how to solo, but I just kinda noodle around and trust that it will work out, and it sounds pretty good (good enough for paying audiences to compliment it). Might help to record yourself and listen back to it, too.

There’s no risk - even if you play something weird you can just weird your way back home. If you hit a weird note try emphasizing it a bit before you move on- it’s only a mistake if you let it sound like one.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 6:48 AM on April 1, 2023

As a formerly serious saxophone player this is what my teachers taught me about learning to improvise:

note: this stuff was how I learned to play Jazz but it should be at least somewhat relevant to any sort of improvised music.

tldr Transcribe, transcribe, transcribe

Different types of music have different melodic languages and you need to really understand them to be able to successfully improvise.

Transcription really is the best way to go. Assuming you already know how to play then you need to learn what to play and the way you do that is by seeing what others who came before you did. Ideally you should be doing this by memory so you can internalize things. You shouldn't write anything down until you are done. You can't really develop your own voice if you can't speak the language. It can be helpful to use a software tool like Transcribe to help slow down recordings or loop parts.

You should also look at the music you will be playing and identify the commonly used harmonic progressions and then try to find licks that work over them (again through transcription). Learn these licks in all 12 keys so you can use them in any situation. This is especially important for us wind players since we can't change keys just by shifting our hands around.

Now, this all takes a lot of time and effort so here is a bit of advice that may help in the short term: you can get away with playing pretty much as long you make it sound intentional and end your phrases on a chord tone. Also, if you make a mistake then play it again loudly so it sounds like you meant to do it that way.
posted by Television Name at 11:48 AM on April 1, 2023

Play with other people, and remember that outside of incredibly technical music no solo really needs to go on for very long at all.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:24 PM on April 1, 2023

Typically I end up playing basically a glorified scale in the same key as the song.

One of the early learning-to-improvise exercises/practice techniques a couple of my teachers had me do was actually pretty much this - play along with recordings (either the originals or "music minus one" versions where the "lead" instrument is missing) and just play scales.

First just the scale of the key of the song, through the whole thing. Do it in different octaves, play the scales up and down, then just up, then just down, then switch between all of the above as the song goes on. Play the scales at different tempos, half the tempo of the tune, then double the tempo, then a third of the tempo. A lot of this is training yourself to play in time and with good phrasing, but you're also at least somewhat learning to hear which notes of the scale sound "right" or "wrong" in different parts of the tune.

Then you move on to trying to play the scales of each chord of the tune as it comes up. And for me this was where soloing started to "click" - because when you've got 2, 3, or 4 chords per measure you don't have time to get through a full scale before the next chord arrives. So now you've got to figure out what to do - you probably start with just playing partial scales, but then you try playing the scale faster during some chords so you get more of the scale in, but then you're in a situation where getting from the last note you got to in the E flat scale to the root of the B minor scale isn't easy, so you have to play the B minor scale starting from a note that's not the root, and maybe go down instead of up, or maybe there's a single note you could play and hold or a short phrase that would work as a transition over the B minor from E flat to whatever chord is after the B minor.

This was in the context of playing sax & learning how to play jazz, which of course is heavy on improvisation, so while playing along to recordings or just listening to them I could start to hear how these master musicians had "solved the problem" of playing something that wasn't the melody of a tune over a chord progression, and steal their ideas. Like, "Oh, hey, Miles starts the solo with a long single note over 4 bars, and then does 2 bars of a repetitive staccato bit of the 1,2,4 & 5 notes of the E flat scale, and then plays a B flat scale down starting from the 6th note of the scale. What happens if I try this on an entirely different tune?" And what would happen is that, say, the staccato 1245 bit didn't sound too great, but a slower 1236 bit sounded good, but then it made more sense to play the scale for the next chord starting on the fifth.

And there you go, I've just created the beginning of a solo. I wasn't really improvising, of course, but I was starting to put the pieces together of how solos are built. And then with time and practice, the ideas of what to do to build a solo come more and more quickly, along with the ability to execute them smoothly.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:11 AM on April 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have wanted to learn the same thing, and I have several books on learning to improvise, and one of them (wish I could put my hands on it, I'm not sure WHICH book it is) has you start simpler than that:

Play a single note at a time - like, one note per bar, or less. Listen to it. If it didn't sound right, or sounds like it wants to go somewhere, go ahead and add another. But you don't need to start out with scales, or chord components - just play a single note. Once you feel comfortable with that, add more notes on the same tone - don't vary the melody, just the rhythm. If you were playing a B flat on the second beat, maybe throw in another B flat or two in the same bar.

THEN, once all that feels good and doable, start throwing in VERY short snippets - 3-5 notes of a scale are fine, but also maybe just the notes that make up "tea for two" or "take the A train" or "moon river". Make up your own little 3-5 note snippets and throw those in once in a while. Keep limiting yourself to very little playing - maybe alternate: a snippet for one bar, a single note, back and forth through a whole solo.

The more comfortable all this gets, the easier it will be to move on to adding more notes and more complexity. But always remember - you don't have to play lots of notes to create a good solo. Lots of times, less is more. And especially while you're learning, set yourself up for success: give yourself easy tasks that you can achieve, and then move on to something very slightly harder when you're ready.
posted by kristi at 3:00 PM on April 2, 2023

Response by poster: Super helpful! Thank you all! I've already gotten so much from transcribing songs I know :)
posted by danceswithlight at 8:56 PM on April 3, 2023