You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Save a Solo That Heads South - #38

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

In this very special, heart-breaking episode, Peter and Adam go over some alternative techniques to save a dying solo. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to save a solo that heads south. Like when your solo takes off to Miami? Yes, well maybe even further south. Like Bogota? Yeah, all the way down, Antarctica. Oh, boy. Right.

Wait, is that north or south? I was forgetting. It depends on which way you head. That's true. That's true. How do we know where we've been if we don't know where we're going? That's right. Okay, so no, so this is the, you're playing and things are going good.

And then at a certain point, you know, depending on how cutthroat the club is, like people are clapping, but then they're reaching for the tomatoes and they're about to throw them at you. The solo's gone down. You lost them. Maybe you lost your concentration. Maybe, God forbid, you pull out your phone while you were soloing and started to send a text to your girlfriend or boyfriend. What are you doing after they get? Hey, don't judge. Don't judge.

Yeah, you lost your concentration somehow. Or, you know what, you just started screwing up. Or maybe we could blame the drummer or the singer. We love to do that. But something happened. Your solo's going south. what do you do? Well, the first thing you could do, and I love the way you described this, Peter, is to play some bluesy stuff.

No, but actually, this is really great advice, because you can never go wrong with the blues. That's right. When you're playing jazz, the blues will always save you. It is the most definitive thing you can do to relay emotion in this music is to play the blues and understand how to use it. And I feel you on this because when I think I'm losing an audience, I start playing the blues, and all of a sudden I see people are with me. And that just goes to show you the power of the blues. Right, right.

And I think it's, you know, yeah, it's a little bit of a crutch. It can be, but it works and it's good. It sounds good. We enjoy it. We enjoy listening to it. Absolutely. You know, it's like a chef that you make a dish and it's really good or you think it's going to be good you get to the end and you're like, ah, it doesn't quite have that, mf, let's throw a stick of butter in there,

no matter what it is, and whisk that in there. We're going to Pauline this until it's good. So, I mean, hey, nothing wrong with that. I mean, Paula Dean, something wrong with her. Oh. The technique, nothing wrong with that. You know what I'm saying. Okay, I mean, basically what we're talking about is,

where I see this going, and as it probably should, because we're desperate, when the going gets desperate, sell out, basically, you know? So, bluesy stuff. It is, it's a little bit of sellout, all good. Okay, well, you know what? So if we're going to do that, if that doesn't work, I mean, if we're selling out. You know, what you can do is get physical, you know, and basically this is about diverting attention away from the horrible solo you're playing. So you

might stand up if you're a pianist or if you're a trumpet player, you know, lean down, groan, you know, make it seem like it's really difficult. Like how bad you're playing is actually taking effort and divert from that. Get them into it by the looks of it. Yeah, yeah. And you know what, if you can't sound good, at least you can look good. I do remember years ago, when I was still in high school, and I got to take a trip with my father up to New York, and we went, heard some great music at the Village Vanguard,

and then, actually, Woody Shaw, Quintip. And then we went over, someone said, oh, there's a late-night jam session at the Blue Nau. I was like, oh, I want to go to that. So my dad took me over there, and we come in, and there's these young players, and they, you know, it's like the Young Lions era, and they had suits on and, like, vests, and double-breasted suits, and shoulder pads,

you know, they had been to the overall. oak tree for sure but they um the oak tree yeah so they get up there I'm like man this is going to be like literally the greatest sex tent I've ever heard I mean they look great like they held their instruments nice horns beautiful cases and they got up there yeah how they sound they sounded horrible I'm sure all of them sounded horrible I mean it was it was pretty funny so so but but you can get away with some stuff physically I think all right so our next thing is to quote corny melodies now I'm going to tell you a story about one of our closest friends Peter and I both very close with an amazingly talented musician, probably one of the most talented musicians I know.

I know he listens to the podcast too. So I'm going to call you out. Sean Weil is an amazing violinist. He's a great improviser. Possible future guest. Yeah, I think we're actually going to plan on having him on. So, Sean, if you're listening, get your, you'll hear it lists together of things you want to talk about. But he's an awesome guy. He's an awesome musician. And whenever he doesn't know what to play, he plays if I only had a brain from the Wizard of Faz. Now, I used to think, oh, this, what is he doing? Why is he doing this? But then I notice on gigs, every time he does it, the whole audience starts to smile.

And I thought, Sean, wow, you genius. Yeah, yeah, he knows something. He knows something. But this is actually not bad advice to, it doesn't have to be corny, but you can play melodies or tunes, quote from tunes that are famous. Yep. And then another thing you could do, our next one is to quote a famous solo, even if it's not tune. So, I mean, that's basically just sort of piggybacking on the greats. So your solo's

going south. So, you know, obviously, whatever creativity got you, dug you into this hole, you're probably going to need somebody else's solo to dig you out. So that's to just quote somebody else, a great solo. Is that the genesis of that? What is, I don't even know this one. That's it. Oh, you, I don't even know. I know. I'm so hip. I don't even know the lame stuff. Go ahead. Well, I mean, the other thing is, too, if you're quoting a great solo, at least it'll make people think of another soloist instead of you, which is probably good at that point, you know. All right, this is one of my favorite ones. There's so many personal stories with this, because I know so many people who use these techniques. It's to repeat a phrase over and over again.

I've seen, I swear, I've seen a drummer who was kind of having a hard time in his drum solo, his open drum solo. And to get his way out, he just started playing the same rhythm. ducat do doca do for like a minute it was like a mantra i mean no it was it became like at first you're like is he really doing this but then the audience came with him and by the end of his solo they were going crazy wow it's a great way to dig yourself out nice nice um well another way is just to start playing fast random stuff you know like it because normally we we we discourage somebody from doing that but again now we're we're really using diversionary techniques here we're just i'm just yeah i'm realizing that this episode is like all the stuff we tell you not to do on a regular basis,

but if you're really having a hard time, if you're desperate, yeah. Yeah, so just play some random fast stuff. And you know what, in general, just start playing chromatically. Yep. You know, because obviously you do not have a handle on the changes or you wouldn't be in the situation. So just play chromatically and pretend like you're a free player. That's great. You can't play a wrong change if you're playing the chromatic scale.

Exactly. I mean, all the notes are there. That's right. Yeah, that brings us to our next thing on this list, which is to smile and cheese for the audience. everybody likes a big, brilliant smile. Big toothy grin. Yeah, and if you're going to sound terrible, at least you're going to look happy doing it.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And finally, if that doesn't work, just close your eyes and groove. You know, just get real solid and sad and just resign yourself to the sickening state you've brought your solo and invite, you know, sympathy, maybe.

That's how I look all the time when I play. So what do I get like? I guess I could start smiling then. But this is really like bottom level. I mean like it's gone south and it's getting worse and you know. So hopefully you'll never get to that point. Maybe some of the first ones will be helpful. I will say if you're finding yourself having to use a lot of these diversionary tactics especially,

you might need to be practicing a little more, listen to a few more solos. Check out some of our other episodes. I was going to say if you've done more for these things in the past month, you might want to think about getting a teacher. But hey, if you have any ideas for this of how to save a solo, head south, please leave them in the comments. If you like this podcast, please give us a rating. We don't accept anything below a five.

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say it together, but You'll Hear, you'll hear it. Nice. That's it for today's episode of You'll Hear We'll be back tomorrow, but if you need more information, you can go to you'll hear it.