So I hear a lot of beginner to intermediate Jazz solos that sound like this
so before I go on and show you a more professional sounding Jazz solo let's
first talk about what's wrong with this first one because on the face of it there's actually
some good notes being played there and I'm even hitting chord tones so it sounds like
I'm playing the chord changes but ultimately there are two things that are critically wrong
that's making this Jazz solo sound amateur first let's take a look here at this first
phrase so it goes and you'll notice that the next phrase goes like this
and the next phrase goes
which leads us to the first problem is this we have basically phrases that are constantly
starting on the downbeats therefore everything just kind of sounds like it's landing on one all
the time and that's really not what great jazz musicians are doing in a second I'll show you
what great jazz musicians are doing but when you listen through this it's just painfully clear that
every single phrase starting on a downbeat sounds incredibly redundant and ultimately kind of boring
now that leads us to the second problem with this solo which is this we have a phrase right here
a phrase right here which is kind of connected to this next phrase right here but since we're
using larger subdivisions like quarter notes it does feel like its own separate phrase then
we have another short phrase another short phrase another short phrase and then another short phrase
here here and finally here so again listening to these first three lines it sounds like this oh
and then continuing on
foreign so really broken up short phrases now honestly that's not a bad way to start a solo
it's not really always a good idea to start guns blazing with lots of notes you'll hear Miles Davis
play a lot like this but what I hear from a lot of beginner jazz players is this tendency to
do this for an entire chorus and then another chorus and then another chorus and that's not
really what professional Jazz musicians are doing so what are professional Jazz musicians doing well
take a listen to this Pro level Jazz solo that uses some similar themes to the beginner one
foreign
sounded a lot better right well you may think oh that's because you played more
beboppy lines and more isms that you would hear in popular Jazz language yes we added
some of that in there but it would have been impossible to do with the beginner Jazz solo
playing the short choppy phrases and everything on the downbeats so let's take a look here at
the first two bars here of this Pro Jazz solo so we're playing a jazz blues here
so we're starting B flat seven and it starts on the end of one so one foreign
just like that so automatically we're adding what's called syncopation right we're starting
not on the downbeat we're starting on the end of one now leading in to the E flat 7 here we start
with a pickup we start the line on the end of four right we're not just starting the line on
B1 we're starting on the end of four that's the sound that a lot of jazz musicians are
going for now listen to the next two bars over top of the next B flat seven sounds like this
could do notice how this line here ends on the end of two and ties into beats three and four
so when you look throughout this solo there are different examples here of how we're not starting
on the beat one or always on downbeats we're starting and ending on offbeat so for example
right here in the B flat seven we actually end the line on the end of one we have an ornamental
pickup here leading into this G7 six chord at the end of the solo we actually end the whole
line on the end of four before the last chord is actually even played this is very common in
jazz now we'll talk about some strategies of how to address this but let's look at the next thing
in this Jazz solo that is fixed from the beginner Jazz solo which is the longer flowing eighth note
lines now we do have some space between phrases for example right here there's a space over here
we can call this a space because it's a longer subdivision and then it's followed by a two beat
rest and then over here another two bead rest so there is definitely space in this solo for
sure but oftentimes what you want to hear is yes smaller broken up phrases but then every once in
a while give the listener a little bit of a relief with a longer flowing eighth note line for example
let's look right here with this ornamental pickup that's going into the g76 chord foreign
so that line there it's a longer flowing eighth note line that literally spans for one two three
bars it gives the listener relief from shorter chopped up phrases I encourage
you to go listen to some of your favorite jazz musicians and hear how they do this for example
Sonny Rollins solo on St Thomas he starts his solo really rhythmic smaller broken up phrases
but then all of a sudden he'll break out into a longer flowing eighth note line and it just
sounds incredible to your ears so the question you've been waiting for how do I get better at
playing longer flowing eighth note lines and not playing every single phrase starting on the
downbeat let's start with a simple exercise I often give to my inner circle members for
practicing playing longer flowing eighth note lines so exercise one is called The Continuous
subdivision exercise so the exercise goes like this first let's start with a very
simple subdivision that is easy to play right so let's do half notes let's do half notes for one
whole chorus over top of the Blues so let's improvise and it sounds like this foreign
pretty simple to start right so now let's move on to quarter notes
foreign
awesome so we're getting used to playing continuous subdivisions throughout a whole
song form now here's the money one let's go to continuous eighth notes over top of this Blues
thank you
thank you so continuous eighth notes it's actually not that easy to do especially if
we're doing something longer than a 12 Bar form like a 32 Bar form and the idea of it
isn't really to play the best lines ever it's not really the idea to play the perfect notes
and sometimes it's actually acceptable of course to play the wrong notes but the idea is to get
used to playing those longer lines continuously in time with great Groove in great time feel and
so the more you do this you exaggerate the process the more it's going to become more
natural for you to play those longer flowing eighth note lines that don't necessarily sound
planned they sound improvised and it sounds natural so that's exercise one The Continuous
subdivision exercise the exaggerated process to help you start creating more longer flowing eighth
note lines in your solos exercise number two is the offbeat phrase starter exercise the offbeat
phrase starter exercise which obviously tackles the problem of playing only on the downbeats so
the idea behind this one is just to be very intentional and choose an offbeat that you
want to start on right so any of the hands of one of the main downbeats that we're talking
about and certainly not starting on beat one so a really simple one would be let's just
start lines and phrases on the end of one so let me go ahead and start improvising and I'm
only going to be thinking about starting my phrases on the end of one like this
so starting most of the phrases there on the ends of one right and so it's okay too if we're kind of
breaking our rules a little bit with playing the longer flowing eighth note lines here because the
purpose of this exercise is really to get you used to playing on the ends of right and so we
can change this exercise up too right we could play Let's Start every single phrase on the end
of four we could start every single phrase on the end of three right and so by being very
intentional about this what you're doing is you're training your ears and your muscle memory to start
playing more on these beats and feeling these beats internally rather than every single phrase
on the downbeat so by the way if you're listening to all this and you're like that's awesome Brent
but I have zero idea how to improvise at all well first of all feel free to practice these
things using scales or basic patterns at first but second of all definitely check out my free
guide called The Jazz improv made easy fast track guide I'll leave that down in the description as
well as on the screen here in a second it really kind of goes over some very basics of jazz improv
it's gonna get you started it's completely free and I know you're going to benefit a ton from it
just as thousands of others have and finally it's important to mention that these are only just two
things that I hear that create kind of amateur sounding Jazz solos but I have a video on the
screen right now that goes over 10 different things that maybe making you sound still a
little bit amateur when just fixing a few of them could really get you on the path to sounding more
like a jazz Pro so check that out on the screen right now if you found value from this video
please hit the like button please subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next one cheers