What makes a solo great?
What you need to play a terrific solo
Transcribe great solos
Great musicians make soloing look easy. They close their eyes and let it rip.
What could be easier than making up music on the spur of the moment?
Soloing isn’t near as easy as it ooks.
Soloist who makes it appear so effortless actually spent countelss hours practicing his scales, learning just the right fingerings, and working thru thousands of chord changes in his head.
Think about it.
when you hear a great singer, a beautiful melody, are you impress with how fast she is singing?
No.
You are ipmressed by how she is singing, her technique, her phrasing, the way she interprets and sells the melody. It’s not showig off, it’s about making a connection with the song, with other musicians and with the audience.
A great solow is more than just stringing together a lot of notes one after another.
In a great solo, the notes combine to crfeate melodies.
It’s the quality of the melodies you create that define your solo.
Soloing is nothing more than composing melodies really fast.
Your improvised melodies, like those of a songwriter have to make sense, to have a musical form.
You must improvise in coheive phrases, building interest and tension over the course of the solo and the solo peaks, the tension released.
A good solo, like a good melody tells a story.
there is a defined beginning, middle and end, with each part of the solo building on and referring to what came before.
The solo is not just one note after anotehr, or even one phrase after another. It goes somewhere, and the trip from beg to end is an interesting one.
To become an accomplished soloist, you learn to improvise in melodic phrases.
Tags: solo