My all-time favorite tenor player is Getz. He didn't shred. Occasional bursts of speed, but mostly lyrical. Turrentine is second. Favorite all-time alto player is Desmond.
I can play fast. Whenever I find myself playing too fast too often, I consciously try to back off and play more melodically. The way I figure it is if you play too fast all the time, it loses it's impact and becomes a blur to the average listener.
There are plenty of other tools in the expressive tool-box. Long tones, themes and variations, solo development, pitch deviations, dynamics, ornaments, dissonance & resolve, and even silence.
But I play for a living, and I play for a general audience. I figure I'm not there to lecture them on the cerebral points of playing, but to have a dialog with them and entertain them.
When playing solos, I like to think of my playing with the audience like playing with a cat on a toy at the end of a string. If you let the cat catch the toy too often, the cat loses interest. If the cat seldom catches the toy, it loses interest.
So I want the audience to be able to predict where I'm going for much of the time (catch the toy) but surprise them part of the time too (didn't catch the toy). I've been playing pop music since I was in high school, and I can usually size up an audience and know how far to push them. Then once the gig starts, I just pay attention to them.
I paid off the mortgage, didn't have to work day jobs as a wage slave to some faceless corporation, take vacations every year, and don't live in the upper crust by any stretch of imagination, but I'm loving life and making a living doing what I would do for free.
I wake up in the morning, go to bed at night, and in between do what I want to do. In other words, I'm successful.
If I played nothing but bebop none of this would have been available to me.
Insights and incites by Notes
