Jazz Trombone F.A.Q.
1) I have to play an improvised solo in my school
band. HELP! What can I do
to prepare for this?
Jeff Adams: There is no quick-fix for this which you can do on
your own if you
have no experience with improvisation. The only quick-fix for this is to find
someone, your band director, private teacher, or an
area pro, and ask them to
help you write one out or to pay them to write one
out.
Sam Burtis: Practice improvising. Find a rhythm section and
play...at least a
pianist or guitarist, better yet if you can get a
bassist, perfect if you can get
a drummer too. If that's out of the question, at the
very least learn the
changes on the piano, and try to UNDERSTAND how they
work harmonically.
Lots of good books to help w/this, but a good
teacher is always better.
Alex Iles: Every aspiring jazz musician must deal with this
dilemma at some point.
You are actually taking the first step in a process
that may carry you forward
in music for the rest of your life. There will most likely
be many more chances
to improvise in the future, so don't panic! How well you play your first solo
is not going to make or break your future in jazz!
You should probably spend a
fair amount of time outside of your regular
rehearsal working on a few basics
to feel more comfortable with your first few
attempts.
The first thing to do is to make sure that you can
FEEL the time and HEAR the
melody and chords of the tune you are being asked to
solo on. It is a good idea
to learn the melody of the tune by ear, even if it
is stated by another
instrument or section. The most daunting obstacle
for a first time soloist has
to be all those crazy chord symbols. If you have NO
piano experience, have your
band's pianist or guitarist play each of them for
you SLOWLY. Once you are
comfortable with that, learn the whole song's
harmony this way one chord at a
time [preferably on the piano yourself], then learn
to play all those notes on
your horn IN TIME (even if it is slow at first). Now
you know the tune and the harmony.
You don't really need to memorize much more than
that yet. When you have more time,
you will spend more time on chord/scale
relationships, transcribing and PLAYING.
Pay special attention to playing AND keeping track
of the time and feel of the music.
Start slowly and work up to the tempo. Hera and play
in TIME, even if you are slow at
first. Strive to play the notes you hear/play with
great time and a swinging sense of
rhythm.
In the short run, you may choose to write out a solo or have someone write one out for you, but use this as a map, not the final destination. Every time you play the written solo [which may just outline the melody to the song you are learning!], embellish it by adding notes and/or spaces. This IS improvisation too! Get comfortablewith your written solo, but don't get "married" to it. Whenever I have listened to young jazz players playing their first solos, I tend toremember the players who went for broke,with a strong sense of time, and a few wrong notes here and there, rather than the players who are intent on "nailing" an obviously totally preplanned solo [and it is pretty obvious when someone isplaying a totally written out solo]. There is a certain degree of preplanning to 90% of the great jazz solos you hear, but it is those moments when a soloist turns him/herself over to instinct [even a beginner's] that make the soloist memorable.
Chris Smith: Ah, yes...I remember it well. My first solo with
the high school
school jazz band. It had all the usual scary
elements, plus a few unusual ones:
1) I was supposed to memorize the chord changes
(which I didn't understand at
ALL) and walk up to the front of the stage to play
something coherent. I was
usually lucky if I didn't play 3 bad notes in a row,
and I knew nothing about
the hieroglyphics that were called "chord
changes".
2) There was some expectation in the band that I was
going to do really well
because my father was a jazz trombonist himself. You
know, "Oh, he's gonna be
GREAT. It's in his blood."
3) My parents were in the audience. I knew they had
to be expecting something
great from me......and I couldn't let down my
father.....and he could probably
understand every note we were playing.......and
could rip off fantastic solos on
any tune, the first time.......and......
4) Another kid's father was videotaping the concert-
so everything I did, good
or bad, would be preserved forever.
Are you nervous yet?
Well, I did NOT play like a pro, but I survived. I
can still remember the awful
feeling of playing bad notes and having no idea of
what to do next, leaving the
bad ones to hang in everyone's ears. It was torture.
But I survived. And evidently a couple of things
sounded okay, because people
were encouraging about my playing.
Keep in mind- I knew NOTHING. I had no idea of what
I was doing, and was
navigating purely by ear and the audacity of a
17-year-old.
Since then, to make a very long story short, I have
developed my own ideas about
how people can go about preparing for jazz trombone solos
when they have little or
no experience as an improviser.
Note that I said "can go about". I didn't
say "should go about".
Everything here is my own opinion, formed from my
own experiences as a
performer, teacher, and listener, and may not work
for you. I hope it does help,
though.
I am of the opinion that a completely improvised
solo is too big a task for any
person (of ANY age) to tackle their first time out.
Or their second. Or tenth.
I think that for the first few months, or up to a
year in their beginning the
practice of improvising, people should prepare their
solos.
This means that they will have definite ideas about
what they're going to play,
and may even have it completely planned out!
Some people might say, "Hey! How are they going
to learn to play jazz that way?"
I say that they will learn more quickly, will play
better solos once they DO
start really improvising, and are more likely NOT to
quit trying because of bad-note-induced frustration
or embarrassment.
Let's get down to work now.
To be methodical about "preparing" a solo,
and help yourself to practice for the
big moment, you can try the following:
Try to
make a tape of your band rehearsing the tune. Then you can take the
tape home and use it to practice with.
If you
have the chord changes to the tune, determine yourself (if you are
able to, or else seek the assistance of a teacher or
someone else who
understands chord changes) exactly WHAT the notes of
the various chords are.
EXAMPLE- a C7 chord would include C, E, G and Bb.
Write
these "good notes" out on a piece of music paper as stacked whole
notes (marked in the appropriate number of measures-
if there's more than one
chord to a measure, it's okay to have many whole
notes in that measure), with
the chord changes above them. Also, you may find
that there are already some
"good notes" written in on your part as a
"suggested solo". Feel free to use the
notes or rhythms written down as you please. Much of
many improvised solos
consists of reworked material from other solos.
Now you should have a nice little "road
map" or "guide-sheet" for "constructing"
a solo.
Begin
playing these good notes in a simple melodic way- start with just one
or two notes (and never play all of them in one
measure, at least when you're
getting started) and a simple melody, i.e. **eighth
note- quarter note- eighth
note**
When you
find yourself having played an idea that appeals to you, WRITE IT
DOWN! If you can't figure out how to notate the
rhythms, then just write down
the notes as whole notes and try to remember what
the rhythm you played was.
Then go and have someone who KNOWS how to write
rhythms down and have
them help you.
After
you've done the above for a while, you should have more than a few
ideas going. Work WITH them, and ON them. You might
try changing the notes
around, keeping the notes but changing the rhythm,
adding some things to a
phrase, deleting some part of a phrase (this is an
important skill- learning how
to EDIT musically), basically honing,
reconstructing, and polishing your ideas. In a way
you are composing.
After
you have these ideas all together, practice playing the solo
beginning to end. Imagine you are someone listening
to yourself play. Does the
solo "tell a musical story"?
Is it interesting, in that it is NOT too
predictable?
Does it build to a climax in volume, density of
notes, or tessitura (higher or
lower range of your instrument)?
If the answer to the above questions is yes, good
work. Continue to polish your
little creation. Remember to put feeling into your
playing. Try to make it just a LITTLE
different each time, whether you are adding notes,
changing a phrase, whatever.
Play as though someone you really care about is
listening.
If you still have some work to do before you feel
like your solo is interesting
and satisfactory to you, try going back to earlier
steps and being methodical
about things. But don't overdo it. If you've made
progress in this working
session, take a break and move on to some other area
of practice. Try taking a
playing break and putting on some jazz album to
listen to. You may get some ideas from other
sources. Or if you have a tape of
the tune you'll be soloing on, try singing or
humming a solo along with it. This
will undoubtedly bring out your creativity.
While
we're on the subject of creativity, I'd like to mention that being
creative and "surefooted" (meaning you
keep your equilibrium) in a musical way
is as natural a process as is every individual's
ability to carry on a
conversation with someone else. When you run into
someone on the street and
begin talking with them, you don't always know what
you
will be saying in the next thirty seconds, but it
usually works out that you
find a way to convey your thoughts coherently.
And another part of it is that sometimes in a
conversation you DO have an idea
about what you want to say a long time before you
actually say it, but there is
a period of time before you DO say what you're
thinking about (because the other
person may be talking, or you may be talking, or it
is a subject which hasn't
been introduced into the conversation yet).
But you CAN usually work this preconceived idea into
the conversation at the
appropriate moment, right? You just hold it in your
mind until the time is
right. Playing an improvised (or prepared, for that
matter) solo is exactly the
same sort of thing. You have ideas (musical notes,
or thoughts) in your mind,
and articulate them (through playing or speaking)
when the time is right to do
so. Sometimes an idea comes to you JUST before you
say or play it. Other times,
you wait to use it at the right moment. At still
other times, the idea just
flows out of you, without any seeming conscious
effort. All of this is natural.
What is unnatural, is many people's ideas that
improvising is an unnatural and
difficult thing to do.
Here's some further thoughts of mine concerning jazz
music and
improvising.......this is "going beyong the
question" in a way, but I hope some
of it will be helpful.....
I trust that you know that there's more to jazz then
picking some "good notes".
If you really want to play jazz, you must first
immerse yourself in it. Listen,
listen, and listen more! Jazz requires more than
just a casual interest by it's
players.
Picking some "good notes", blowing a few
loose choruses now and then for kicks,
and basically trying to have a good time might sound
like a good approach to
some (I've seen it given as advice MANY times), but
there is a whole lot more to
jazz and to improvising than will EVER be discussed
on any internet discussion
list.
Sometimes it's difficult for me to keep seeing these
signs that jazz is still a
mystery to so many people. This great American art
form is deserving of more
attention and respect than it gets from the public
as well as other musicians.
(stepping down from podium)
Having said that, I can tell you that there is no
shortage of material to help
people learn to improvise in jazz music. The
Aebersold series is an excellent
way to get comfortable with jazz. Buy the early
instructive titles and play with
them every day. There are many good books on
understanding (and putting into
practice) improvising technique. Hal Crook's book
How To Improvise(available
from Advance Music) is one of the best. Another is
The Jazz Theory Book by Mark
Levine (Sher Music).
And I'll say it again (I constantly recommend this
to
people)- learn, by ear, other people's recorded jazz
solos!
Very slowly, the music will begin to reveal itself
to you, and you will be on
your way. (I stole this last line from Wynton- part
of jazz is knowing when to
appropriate someone else's licks.) ; -)
The best thing you can do is to foster your own
curiosity in jazz by listening
to it constantly, seeing people play it in person,
and reading on the subject.
In the end, no one can really teach you how to play
jazz. No method and no
person can tell you (with the same authority as we
have about the various
orchestral excerpts) WHAT to play. You must learn it
for yourself, one step at a
time. But it's a great, exciting journey. And
there's no thrill like creating
your own swinging music.