[patton45]

I was talking to my kid about her solos. I told her that she was being much to technical about it all, over analzing what she wants to do and what usually comes out is a mid range only, safe solo that never really goes anywhere or mirrors the melody. She told me "its the only way I know". This approach to things is in all her classes, not just music.
Over the years we have compiled many tip books, how to improvise, riffs, etc. stuff like that. I think what is missing is a lot more playing and a lot less reading and thinking about it.

She has a year to go and hopefully she will be able to cut loose her senior year.

who has that signature here..."play the music, not the instrument"

 

[bandmommy]

I was talking to my kid about her solos. I told her that she was being much to technical about it all, over analzing what she wants to do and what usually comes out is a mid range only, safe solo that never really goes anywhere or mirrors the melody. She told me "its the only way I know". This approach to things is in all her classes, not just music.
Over the years we have compiled many tip books, how to improvise, riffs, etc. stuff like that. I think what is missing is a lot more playing and a lot less reading and thinking about it.

She has a year to go and hopefully she will be able to cut loose her senior year.

who has that signature here..."play the music, not the instrument"

That would be me...

 

[JohnGalt]

I would rather listen to a kid who is trying to be methodical and say something that has something to do with something, rather than just "not thinking about it".

 

[mike713]

I would rather listen to a kid who is trying to be methodical and say something that has something to do with something, rather than just "not thinking about it".

I would rather listen to a kid that sounds good

 

[Kelly Bucheger]

Is she listening to a *ton* of jazz? If you asked her to name her favorite saxophonist, would she have one -- someone who kills her, and who she's constantly listening to? Has jazz just totally whacked her out? Or is it like a homework assignment?

If it's the former, don't worry, let her figure stuff out, it'll come in time. If it's the latter, don't worry, because worrying won't change a darn thing!

Books and even lots of practicing won't make somebody a decent jazz soloist -- only obsessive, abnormal interest in listening to jazz will do that (along with the practicing and whatnot!)...

 

[JohnGalt]

I would rather listen to a kid that sounds good

Me too! So we agree?

 

[JohnGalt]

Books and even lots of practicing won't make somebody a decent jazz soloist -- only obsessive, abnormal interest in listening to jazz will do that (along with the practicing and whatnot!)...

Yep. Too many students coming at it like "just give me the right magical exercises to practice and before you know it I'll be burning!"

 

[playatsax]

A friend of mine was talking to our sax section about how to get his daughter to break away from the machinery of soloing and getting into the emotion. She has incredible technique, but not feeling. I wish I had her tone and skills when I was that age. Finally one of the guys said, "you may not like it, dad, but she needs to get a boyfriend and get dumped. Then the feelings will come to the surface."

 

[Harvey]

Hahaaaaaa man that was the right answer.

A soul who craves something will find a way to express that craving.

Harv

 

[bandmommy]

I've been dumped lots of times by boys. Still can't solo to save my *A*...
Some of us are just more comfortable playing what's on the paper or have a hard time being 'creative'.
Nothing wrong with that.
Lighten up Dad. She'll take more chances when she thinks she's ready.

 

[markvi58]

I find that many of my students are trying to think about all of the variations of possibilities from all of the sources they have learned from. They know the scales, arpeggiations, etc., but are so caught up on trying to assimilate everything they know in one solo that they get paralyzed by the options. Books on scales and technique are useful, and you get the ideas under your fingers so that when they come to your mind, you can execute them. But, most the time for beginning improvisers, they give the soloist too many choices to be able to consider in the fractions of milliseconds that you have when improvising. Even after the years of practice that I've put in playing jazz, I find I say more and get more compliments on solos when I play more sparsely than when I'm blazing over the changes. My advice is: say more by playing less.

 

[patton45]

I've been dumped lots of times by boys. Still can't solo to save my *A*...
Some of us are just more comfortable playing what's on the paper or have a hard time being 'creative'.
Nothing wrong with that.

That was me in high school too. Could not improvise anything. If it was written, then no problem. She has had a lot of fantastic music in her bands the past few years, a perfect storm so to speak where 6 players who are graduating are going off to major music colleges. I've never seen such talent all in one place before, and 4 years of it too. So the bar may have been raised unrealistically in the program as to what is expected. Now that the class of music gods has graduated, maybe things will calm down down a bit and get back to basics....

 

[saxomophone]

Not to name anyone in particular, but isn't that the way a lot of the hot players today play? It seems more about burnin some crazy patterns or formulaic "outside" Coltrane style chord substitutions than playing anything melodic. It's all about technique.

I'm not saying this goes for all the hot players 100% of the time or that some of them aren't creative in the way they do it, but it does seem to be the overall trend. If a player like Hank Mobley came along now we would never hear about him.

 

[paulwl]

Books and even lots of practicing won't make somebody a decent jazz soloist -- only obsessive, abnormal interest in listening to jazz will do that (along with the practicing and whatnot!)...

My observation is that the playing (including practice) channels the obsessive abnormality and makes it fruitful and productive - grounds it in something physical, aural, creative, communicative. Playing is an act of sharing.

Obsessives who don't play become jazz fans - IMHO, a much more limited kind of people than jazz musicians. You might call them older versions of the typical fanboy you'd see in youth culture - minus the exuberance or the gregariousness of youth. They can be deeply lonely and cynical people because jazz is all they have, yet they can't make jazz or even really share it. They just have to keep chasing it, collecting it, talking about it, treasuring trivia and tidbits about it.

Obsessive jazz fans are 90+ per cent male - it's brain chemistry, I believe - so young ms. patton is not in a high risk group for the pathology. But the advice to Just Go Play! stands likely to help her too, if she has the fire in the belly.

For the rest of us (mostly) guys, count this as good a reason as any to keep blowin'. Your life may depend on it!

 

[paulwl]

Not to name anyone in particular, but isn't that the way a lot of the hot players today play?
[...]
If a player like Hank Mobley came along now we would never hear about him.

Jazz is professional music now, in a way it wasn't when Mobley came on the scene. Professionalism is always about raising standards in a way that can be explained, taught, and made methodical.

To illustrate what professionalism means in jazz today, an anecdote from saxophonist Michael Zilber, who studied with Dave Liebman:

Got a grant to study with Dave Liebman. Drove five hours from Boston to his house on Long Island. Went to take a five hour lesson. I wanted to learn all his cool, snaky lines - finish off the deal, right? Well, I get in there, he puts on an Aebersold - Yardbird Suite - I start doing my Brecker pentatonics and he stops me - no man, play the changes. I start again, stops me again - man, you can't pentatonic out on this sh-t. We ended up with me having to show him I could sing the f--ing roots of the chord!!! Man, I thought this was way beneath me. It was kind of like an jazz EST session. Totally broken down. He wouldn't work on the "cool" sh-t, the modern inside out - no, he wanted me to go back to bebop, get the common language better. By the end of the day I asked - utterly defeated "so is there anything I don't need to work on?" "Sure man - you're good, a good player, but you didn't pay me to stroke you. Listen - the way you play now, 99% of the people who come to hear you will dig it. But if I walked in or Wayne walked in or Sonny walked in, we would know in four bars whether or not you'd done your homework. If that matters to you, you'll fill in the gaps - otherwise you won't." I won't deny it. I was mad and hurt. It took me months to come around to the realization that he was absolutely right, and I remain completely in his debt for telling me what I needed to know but didn't want to hear. I could have said F-- you, Dave, I can fool enough people now - I'm getting myself a record deal. But I knew I needed to do what he had told me if I wanted to look myself in the musical mirror.

Sadly, what Liebman told Zilber is seldom taken to heart these days. The common language, the stuff that used to be the foundation that gave meaning to all that outside $#!!, is giving way to technique - to professionalism for its own sake. If Hank Mobley were coming up today, some cat or another would tell him he was a 99%er - that he needed to learn to burn.

 

[Edward Turner]

So so true great article for me to ponder over as I have lost my way a little and not finding inspiration in the Little Town were I live Reading uk. I was such a student scales and more scales etc. Then I put on John Coltrains Eqiunox and went for the solo Man it all clicked; my heart and soul seemed to meet; went to a jam session packed full of people (jazzers) asked the band for eqiunox and I was off; got great applause felt in a zone; lifted to another place; felt the folk around me, warm, the weight lifted from my shoulders as I realised, let go and flow, forget the changes leave them to the base and keys, play in key and simply make love to the tune.

 

[cleger]

Jazz is professional music now, in a way it wasn't when Mobley came on the scene. Professionalism is always about raising standards in a way that can be explained, taught, and made methodical.

That's the academic side of jazz which, thank whoever you like to thank when you are thankful, is far from the whole story.

 

[AltoRuth]

Is she listening to a *ton* of jazz? If you asked her to name her favorite saxophonist, would she have one -- someone who kills her, and who she's constantly listening to? Has jazz just totally whacked her out? Or is it like a homework assignment?

If it's the former, don't worry, let her figure stuff out, it'll come in time. If it's the latter, don't worry, because worrying won't change a darn thing!

Books and even lots of practicing won't make somebody a decent jazz soloist -- only obsessive, abnormal interest in listening to jazz will do that (along with the practicing and whatnot!)...

This is the best reply ever---thanks, Kelly. I'm a long-in-the-tooth late bloomer who returned to the sax a long time after playing only in high school. I love this forum, but have felt inadequate and vaguely guilty that I can't improvise. However, I finally came to realize that my answer to Kelly's first question is a resounding "NO". (Heresy follows, so stop reading now if you are a committed jazz person). Listening to jazz, particularly "free" jazz", is pretty low on my "listening" hierarchy. So, if I don't like listening to it, why in the world world would I want to play it. Someone here commented on the gender factor in jazz and I'm still pondering that one. At times I can't help seeing it as more competitive than collaborative, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

At this stage in my life, I'm very happy being a section player in community bands and in one amateur big band, where I play lead alto (and only solo on written out parts---I'm a good reader!). If I have regret about my musical path, it is that I can't play clarinet or oboe----my first love musically is classical---and I'd love play orchestral music.

Bottom line to the OP? Open doors, but don't try to shove her through any of them, especially those that you wish that you had walked through a few years back. FWIW, neither of my two grown-up kids have as yet gravitated to musical interests/activities, but they have their own passions, a couple of which I wish I had stumbled upon in my youth.
Regards, Ruth