Improv and solo writing

Through my professional project the process of learning and then deciding to write solos has improved my playing in many ways. I now feel a lot more comfortable playing over complex chord progression. Before my project I would often stick to one scale mostly pentatonic scale while soloing but now through the research and practice I have done throughout the project. I have developed to where I can now clearly out line chords using triads, use multiple different types of scales and can reference motifs from other solos. I used various ways to learn about referencing ideas the first way was by learning the original solos in the songs. I then would find phrases or licks I liked and would find them on the sheet music. In the sheet music I would find what chord that lick was played over. I did this so I knew that in the original key that phrase over that chord worked and could then use that knowledge to play the same phrase in a different song if that chord came up again. For my research I decided to try focusing on Jazz improvisation I choose this because I had heard that the concepts were often challenging but could be adapted well into playing more complex solos in other genres. I purchased the book Comprehensive Technique for Jazz Musicians by Bert Ligon (Ligon, 1999) I used the exercises in the book to improve my playing and understanding then began creating my own exercises which eventually turned into using those techniques in my solos. The video below is an example of one of the exercises I created. This exercise uses arpeggios and passing notes to outline a common chord progression. I then developed it to try using these ideas and making improvised solos out of them which I would do for 5 minutes and write down any ideas I liked. I tried doing this for all the songs in the set and this helped me write out some of the solos in the set list. Through all this my progress in creating solos and theory has significantly improved.

My Example Exercise

Me practicing soloing over the chords from the previous exercise

Ligon, B. (1999) Comprehensive technique for jazz musicians: Anthology of technical, compositional & theoretical exercises. anthology of musical examples. United States, Milwaukee: Houston Pub.