Staying On Topic During Your Solo

Is that if you, I like to look at soloing like telling a story or talking about something, character development in the movie, then there's continuity in the communication. And once you played, it was in key, and rhythmically for the most part it was locking down and it was grooving, feeling good, but it was like you were just constantly talking, changing from one subject to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next, then, or just talking too much, just rattling, yeah, it was just, you know, random, you know, yeah, stuff, you know, that it wasn't very conversational. Yeah, right. So this is what I would like to add to. Now, what you did is not wrong or bad, I'm not implying that at all. What we want to do is we want to get conversationalism into where you're actually talking about something with your solo, that you get into idea development. Okay, all right, like, you know, like, Indiana Jones, right? Yeah, Indiana Jones, you know, the Harrison Ford movies, right? You know, like every time he does something cool, what do you hear? Yeah, you can be in the other room and, you know, if you hear that he's doing something cool, right, the music's telling you that. And your solo should be able to hold interest, and it also needs to be able to groove and be rhythmically locked. So I think that the technical aspects, you've got, what I was missing from what you played was, I had trouble keeping up with what you were talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, because it was just like, you know, jumping around a lot. So we want to work on trying to develop the ideas, so establish an idea, right, okay. Now, do you know your way around pretty good on what you were playing there? So, uh, normally I start people off in a box and confine them to a box area, okay, but I'm not going to do that with you since you already can move around on your neck. What I want to do is I want to start with just establishing a small core idea, coming up with a rhythmic cell of four, three to four to five to six notes, and just come up with a small idea and then develop that idea, so that as you're playing, I know you're still talking about this guy, okay, all right. All right, now, uh, let me give you an example. So you heard, I was talking about this guy the whole time, I was talking about different things with him, right, but hanging around that same sort of, yeah, there's repetition, there's familiarity, tonal point, pivoting point, there, yeah, you know, that I was developing a phrase, working with that phrase, changing it slightly rhythmically, changing it slightly with different notes, like a couple times I go, which is pretty much the same rhythm as, but see, I'm still talking about that guy, right, you know, okay. And then when I concluded it, when I wanted to stop, I went back, yeah, you're done, that was a period, yeah, you know, I took you up, I talked about it, and I brought you back. Okay, so this is what I would like you to work on in your solos, is come up with a small rhythmic idea, and do this with tracks one and two, uh, track one is a straight subdivision, track two is a triplet subdivision, set the tempo wherever you want that's comfortable, because you want to make sure you can rhythmically lock with it and groove, because people should be able to dance to your solos. But see, the thing is, if somebody walks out of a room whistling your solo, you know, I mean, like, you know, you hit it out of the park. Yeah, you, and, you know, because you were really creating melodies, right, and you created something that stuck with somebody, right, right, and practicing melodies is a great way to work on solos, you know, especially like the syrupy kind of ballad ones, you know, that, uh, you know, that you get if you listen to something like, um, now, listen to the continuity here, see how that's phrased, right, and you can stop and take a breath, and then, and then when it goes to the bridge, see, it's still around that place, see the continuity of rhythm and how this is shaping the notes, right. Yeah, because the solo, you know, the melody is the ultimate solo, because at one time it was an improvised piece of music, somebody made it up, right, but it was strong enough to stand the test of time.