What Jazz Soloists Know

Read an amazing article earlier today on The 99% by Scott McDowell:

What Jazz Soloists Know About Creative Collaboration...

"One of the defining elements of jazz is improvisation, the act of composing on the fly.  Anyone who’s heard a classic Miles trumpet solo knows the potential beauty of individual improvisation within the group setting. The team depends on each person to contribute his unique skills, ideas and views to the collaboration, and the individual relies on the team for support, guidance and judgment.

Since it depends on improvisation, jazz is highly interactive.  A player must be responsive to the moment-by-moment actions of the other musicians. Like a properly tuned creative team, jazz is above all a collaborative pursuit in service to the composition (the agreed upon goal), and the individual voices in the band (the members of the team)." - Scott McDowell

His bullet points to enriching your skills as a team member by mimicing the great jazz soloists are as follows:

1. Practice until it’s intuitive. The only way to learn improvisation is by doing, and the only way to become great is by doing repeatedly.


2. Listen. Pay close attention to those around you. Heightening the skill of listening, if you do nothing else, will have a significant impact on the team.


3. Try not to repeat yourself.  Make an effort to constantly develop new approaches and angles. Charlie Parker was a relentless harmonic innovator, constantly editing his solos in real time at blistering speeds and changing the jazz vocabulary in the process.

4. Spur others into action. In jazz it’s called “comping” (an abbreviation of “accompanying”) when one instrumentalist plays a phrase or group of notes to support or provoke the soloist.


5. Fail admirably. It happens often in live jazz settings and it’s usually noticeable. The thing is: nobody cares. Missteps are part of the path to greatness, and those solos that do become classics sound that much sweeter.

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“It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.” - Oscar Peterson

-Frey




1. Miles Davis - "Seven Steps to Heaven" 
2. Charlie Parker - "Koko" 
3. Oscar Peterson - "Cottontail" 
4. Lennie Tristano - "Line Up" 
5. Ornette Coleman - "Lonely Woman"