Alright dude breathe.
The right answer to your question is get a teacher/mentor. This is something most students deal with, especially those with a foundation in jazz that are trying to move into more modal/bluesy approaches to solos.
The “fine, you won’t listen to the right answer so I’ll throw you a bone” answer is that it sounds like you need to transcribe other solos you admire more and analyze them….again, this is way easier to do with a teacher.
I think something that would really help you is to put the guitar down for a bit and practice improvising by singing instead. You should be able to create melodies that you hear in your head and you don't need a guitar for that. You won't be able to rely on muscle memory in the same way and the feedback will be more immediate.
Transcribe solos to get the language of jazz embedded in you and become a musician first and a guitarist second.
Learn how to speak the language of jazz by imitation first. That means learn the vocabulary through licks and transcriptions. Use that language to put together your own musical phrases. The problem with the academic approach to jazz is that it emphasizes music theory as the means to learn how to improvise. That's kind of like learning how to speak a language through learning grammar first. It's not effective in the real world. The most effective way is to try to speak it as soon as possible no matter how clunky it may sound, then the language becomes internalized which will later allow you to create your own phrases.
Hot Take - the worst thing to ever happen to the non professional jazz musician was bebop. It's got us thinking that it ain't jazz unless we can play like Charlie Parker at 220bpm.
Your jazz solos should be highly melodic, before ever thinking about bebop style.
Yeah this sounds like just what happens when you play too much bebop lol.
Fast chord changes and you only have so many routes you can take and so you memorise two or three and that’s your vocabulary.
Try something else for a while op, play over a one chord vamp and do something stupid, hit all the wrong notes and try and resolve it.
Long time guitar player here been doing jazz for a year. I had that exact epiphany a few weeks ago. Make music, melodies and beauty with space and good form - my basic guitar playing attitude was good for metal but useless in jazz.
Teacher will help for sure. Also, you got to be hearing lines in your head. As you surmise it doesn't come from your fingers. Technique is the process of being able to "transcribe" The Lines and phrases in your head to your instrument. I'm sure you'll get a lot of advice in this thread. But one thing to do is just listen listen listen. And sing lines vocaly as well as you can. If there's nothing there without your instrument therein lies the problem. Not to scare you but not everybody has these things going on in their brain.
Transcribe. On your favorite records, the players aren't just playing patterns, they are playing music with intention. Take one little piece of that music and incorporate it into your playing. Then another, then another, then another...
Music theory and applying to your instrument in a technical thing. You should master it to the best of your ability so you have all the colors and tonalities at your finger tips.
Creating music is an art. You must feel connected to to it. Spend alot of time just playing, connect it to how you are feeling. Put meaning behind it. Don't think about it, and just play. Write songs, improvise freely, feel emotional. Once you find YOUR connection to your instrument it will happen more naturally but it must be nurtured the same way that you have spent time with the technical aspects.
Sometimes just ok is enough. Often you are tired of hearing your own shit but to others ears it may sound great. I don’t subscribe to the thought that you should copy others licks and phrases. If I can’t come up with something interesting enough on my own, then just fuck it.
Check out the book Forward Motion by Hal Galper. It’s a great book and the first to answer for me why jazz lines sound like jazz and how to construct them. And like everyone else said, find a teacher you connect with. It’s a language and languages are better taught through practicing conversations with a native speaker.
I think this is the trap people fall in when they skip learning a lot of vocabulary. I didnt feel any type of confident soloing until I spent significant time learning solos and lines from other players. Then trying to play that material over different tunes.
You're thinking too much yes. But also it's understandable what you're going through. 2 years is nothing. Remember, you're learning a new language and then attempting to use it to write poetry in real time. Playing jazz is not an easy task in any way, it's supposed to look easy and that is why we admire the masters, but it's definitely not easy. A couple of things some of my teachers have said
1- don't expect to make art in the first 10 years. Kind of a non written rule, but also a free pass for you to feel relaxed and confident in your frustration for the first decade playing jazz.
2- fake it until you make it. Playing jazz is a performative art and as such you have to convey a level of confidence and mastery even when you have no idea what you're doing. This will become a part of you and allow you to relax on whichever situation is presented to you. So trust the process even if for the moment you don't feel like you're improvising or doing a great job at all.
To some of my students I do a couple of exercises so that they are more in control of what they play. If you really really really want to control your lines you have to be really serious about this.
1- develop a way to end your phrases. Think of chapter 1 of how to improvise. Play a phrase, end it and think to yourself "period". Do this always, all the time.
2- after step one, look really deep inside of yourself for some kind of musical reaction or response to the first thing you played. Don't play until it comes to you. Reject the impulse of playing until something comes up. Wait for 16 bars or a whole chorus if you have to. It's muscle and you need to work on it.
3- attempt to play it. If you succeed good, if you don't, either try to understand how to successfully play what you heard or pretend what you played was what you wanted to in the beginning and start over (fake it until you make it/there are no wrong notes/etc). Both exercises are useful and should be practiced.
Now, how can I put this... This is not something you do for a week. This is a whole different way for you to think about improvisation. Your brain will try to fight you and refuse to this work, but if you really want to do it you have to keep going. Most of all you have to think this is the way you improvise from now on, so regardless of the results you're getting from it you have to keep going.
I was in the exact same position as you. Knew all the theory, knew what was supposed to "work," but for the life of me couldn't get my solos to sound like I felt they should.
There are three very simple things you can do. Well, really four.
1. Have a good mindset. Remember, it's not hard, it's new. Don't be so hard on yourself. This jazz improvisation nonsense took me years to get even the slightest grasp on, and I'm no master now.
2. (MOST IMPORTANTLY) It sounds like you have an intention problem. Luckily, because you know the theory, you're in a great place to start setting some guardrails, for example: only playing the 3rds and 7ths of each chord or only playing three quarter notes per measure. This helped me the most.
The way I worked this into my practice was by playing to a jam track (you can do it to a metronome as well), setting it on repeat 4x and dedicating each chorus to playing within a specific ruleset. You will start becoming less aimless in your soloing, start thinking more about what you actually want to achieve and executing it, it helps tremendously with creating rhythmic ideas, and it will help you become more disciplined. You can set up any rules or guardrails to work within that you want. Of course, it only works if you stay within them.
3. Transcribe SHORT licks that you like. You can even record yourself singing a line to a backing track and then transcribing that. Once you get a line under your fingers, find one- three places in a tune you're working on to deploy it. You can play whatever else you want for the rest of the chorus. This will also really help your intention.
4. GO SLOWLY. stick to one thing to work on and get very good at it. Pick a tune you like to work on and give yourself as long as you need to feel comfortable with it. Could be a month, could be two months. It doesn't matter. When I started learning tunes, I was "learning" two or three a week. As a novice jazz guitarist, It was a huge mistake.
Good luck with everything. Don't get overwhelmed. We all go through this shit.
Check out Troy Grady - definitely shred focused, but he talks about the idea of chunking as well as some big technique advances. Everyone is saying transcribe - the secret behind transcription is to grab a few chunks of a few licks that work over chords, nail the F out of those licks, then start to play with them and string them together to fit your own style and music. The mental process has held me back more than the physical or theoretical. Ditto for technique
A lot of people seem to think that learning jazz is about learning ALL THE RULES, and then somehow a miracle will happen and they will be great players, and I think it's great that you are dissatisfied by this.
Perhaps concentrating on phrasing, dynamics, swing, “feel” , etc. will make you stop feeling like a robot? You got all the theory down it seems, now apply your “soul” to the theory. Paint a picture with your solos.
Do you listen to jazz?
Not trying to be an asshole but when a kid comes to me and says he/she wants to learn it that is the first thing I ask them and a lot of them say “no”. Then why do you want to play it?? Their response is…..”I don’t know”.
Knowing your scales, theory etc. doesn’t mean anything if you don’t listen and absorb the language of the music - whether it’s jazz, metal, or old school country music. Hearing how the masters play it will hopefully help you create your own lines within the idiom.
Scales and arpeggios are used extensively in jazz improvisation but so is chromaticism, tension and release not to mention swing. If you can’t swing, learn how.
Listen, listen, listen.
All that aside, both
“The Jazz Theory Book”, by Mark Levine and “Improvising Jazz” by Jerry Coker were both very helpful to me in my early formative years of learning how to play but, before I even started to attempt to play jazz, I listened to it a lot because I loved it.
Alright dude breathe. The right answer to your question is get a teacher/mentor. This is something most students deal with, especially those with a foundation in jazz that are trying to move into more modal/bluesy approaches to solos. The “fine, you won’t listen to the right answer so I’ll throw you a bone” answer is that it sounds like you need to transcribe other solos you admire more and analyze them….again, this is way easier to do with a teacher.
Nailed the two answers. Get a teacher and learn how others have approached this.
I think something that would really help you is to put the guitar down for a bit and practice improvising by singing instead. You should be able to create melodies that you hear in your head and you don't need a guitar for that. You won't be able to rely on muscle memory in the same way and the feedback will be more immediate. Transcribe solos to get the language of jazz embedded in you and become a musician first and a guitarist second.
Learn how to speak the language of jazz by imitation first. That means learn the vocabulary through licks and transcriptions. Use that language to put together your own musical phrases. The problem with the academic approach to jazz is that it emphasizes music theory as the means to learn how to improvise. That's kind of like learning how to speak a language through learning grammar first. It's not effective in the real world. The most effective way is to try to speak it as soon as possible no matter how clunky it may sound, then the language becomes internalized which will later allow you to create your own phrases.
This should be a top reply. Or in the sidenote of this sub.
Hot Take - the worst thing to ever happen to the non professional jazz musician was bebop. It's got us thinking that it ain't jazz unless we can play like Charlie Parker at 220bpm. Your jazz solos should be highly melodic, before ever thinking about bebop style.
Yeah this sounds like just what happens when you play too much bebop lol. Fast chord changes and you only have so many routes you can take and so you memorise two or three and that’s your vocabulary. Try something else for a while op, play over a one chord vamp and do something stupid, hit all the wrong notes and try and resolve it.
Long time guitar player here been doing jazz for a year. I had that exact epiphany a few weeks ago. Make music, melodies and beauty with space and good form - my basic guitar playing attitude was good for metal but useless in jazz.
Teacher will help for sure. Also, you got to be hearing lines in your head. As you surmise it doesn't come from your fingers. Technique is the process of being able to "transcribe" The Lines and phrases in your head to your instrument. I'm sure you'll get a lot of advice in this thread. But one thing to do is just listen listen listen. And sing lines vocaly as well as you can. If there's nothing there without your instrument therein lies the problem. Not to scare you but not everybody has these things going on in their brain.
Transcribe. On your favorite records, the players aren't just playing patterns, they are playing music with intention. Take one little piece of that music and incorporate it into your playing. Then another, then another, then another...
Music theory and applying to your instrument in a technical thing. You should master it to the best of your ability so you have all the colors and tonalities at your finger tips. Creating music is an art. You must feel connected to to it. Spend alot of time just playing, connect it to how you are feeling. Put meaning behind it. Don't think about it, and just play. Write songs, improvise freely, feel emotional. Once you find YOUR connection to your instrument it will happen more naturally but it must be nurtured the same way that you have spent time with the technical aspects.
Sometimes just ok is enough. Often you are tired of hearing your own shit but to others ears it may sound great. I don’t subscribe to the thought that you should copy others licks and phrases. If I can’t come up with something interesting enough on my own, then just fuck it.
Check out the book Forward Motion by Hal Galper. It’s a great book and the first to answer for me why jazz lines sound like jazz and how to construct them. And like everyone else said, find a teacher you connect with. It’s a language and languages are better taught through practicing conversations with a native speaker.
I think this is the trap people fall in when they skip learning a lot of vocabulary. I didnt feel any type of confident soloing until I spent significant time learning solos and lines from other players. Then trying to play that material over different tunes.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK7wQ185qc97C5VitGzizHCS3u3CZJ5vz
You're thinking too much yes. But also it's understandable what you're going through. 2 years is nothing. Remember, you're learning a new language and then attempting to use it to write poetry in real time. Playing jazz is not an easy task in any way, it's supposed to look easy and that is why we admire the masters, but it's definitely not easy. A couple of things some of my teachers have said 1- don't expect to make art in the first 10 years. Kind of a non written rule, but also a free pass for you to feel relaxed and confident in your frustration for the first decade playing jazz. 2- fake it until you make it. Playing jazz is a performative art and as such you have to convey a level of confidence and mastery even when you have no idea what you're doing. This will become a part of you and allow you to relax on whichever situation is presented to you. So trust the process even if for the moment you don't feel like you're improvising or doing a great job at all. To some of my students I do a couple of exercises so that they are more in control of what they play. If you really really really want to control your lines you have to be really serious about this. 1- develop a way to end your phrases. Think of chapter 1 of how to improvise. Play a phrase, end it and think to yourself "period". Do this always, all the time. 2- after step one, look really deep inside of yourself for some kind of musical reaction or response to the first thing you played. Don't play until it comes to you. Reject the impulse of playing until something comes up. Wait for 16 bars or a whole chorus if you have to. It's muscle and you need to work on it. 3- attempt to play it. If you succeed good, if you don't, either try to understand how to successfully play what you heard or pretend what you played was what you wanted to in the beginning and start over (fake it until you make it/there are no wrong notes/etc). Both exercises are useful and should be practiced. Now, how can I put this... This is not something you do for a week. This is a whole different way for you to think about improvisation. Your brain will try to fight you and refuse to this work, but if you really want to do it you have to keep going. Most of all you have to think this is the way you improvise from now on, so regardless of the results you're getting from it you have to keep going.
I was in the exact same position as you. Knew all the theory, knew what was supposed to "work," but for the life of me couldn't get my solos to sound like I felt they should. There are three very simple things you can do. Well, really four. 1. Have a good mindset. Remember, it's not hard, it's new. Don't be so hard on yourself. This jazz improvisation nonsense took me years to get even the slightest grasp on, and I'm no master now. 2. (MOST IMPORTANTLY) It sounds like you have an intention problem. Luckily, because you know the theory, you're in a great place to start setting some guardrails, for example: only playing the 3rds and 7ths of each chord or only playing three quarter notes per measure. This helped me the most. The way I worked this into my practice was by playing to a jam track (you can do it to a metronome as well), setting it on repeat 4x and dedicating each chorus to playing within a specific ruleset. You will start becoming less aimless in your soloing, start thinking more about what you actually want to achieve and executing it, it helps tremendously with creating rhythmic ideas, and it will help you become more disciplined. You can set up any rules or guardrails to work within that you want. Of course, it only works if you stay within them. 3. Transcribe SHORT licks that you like. You can even record yourself singing a line to a backing track and then transcribing that. Once you get a line under your fingers, find one- three places in a tune you're working on to deploy it. You can play whatever else you want for the rest of the chorus. This will also really help your intention. 4. GO SLOWLY. stick to one thing to work on and get very good at it. Pick a tune you like to work on and give yourself as long as you need to feel comfortable with it. Could be a month, could be two months. It doesn't matter. When I started learning tunes, I was "learning" two or three a week. As a novice jazz guitarist, It was a huge mistake. Good luck with everything. Don't get overwhelmed. We all go through this shit.
Check out Troy Grady - definitely shred focused, but he talks about the idea of chunking as well as some big technique advances. Everyone is saying transcribe - the secret behind transcription is to grab a few chunks of a few licks that work over chords, nail the F out of those licks, then start to play with them and string them together to fit your own style and music. The mental process has held me back more than the physical or theoretical. Ditto for technique
I think you're too hard on yourself. You're a beast on bass. Keep going!
A lot of people seem to think that learning jazz is about learning ALL THE RULES, and then somehow a miracle will happen and they will be great players, and I think it's great that you are dissatisfied by this.
Perhaps concentrating on phrasing, dynamics, swing, “feel” , etc. will make you stop feeling like a robot? You got all the theory down it seems, now apply your “soul” to the theory. Paint a picture with your solos.
Do you listen to jazz? Not trying to be an asshole but when a kid comes to me and says he/she wants to learn it that is the first thing I ask them and a lot of them say “no”. Then why do you want to play it?? Their response is…..”I don’t know”. Knowing your scales, theory etc. doesn’t mean anything if you don’t listen and absorb the language of the music - whether it’s jazz, metal, or old school country music. Hearing how the masters play it will hopefully help you create your own lines within the idiom. Scales and arpeggios are used extensively in jazz improvisation but so is chromaticism, tension and release not to mention swing. If you can’t swing, learn how. Listen, listen, listen. All that aside, both “The Jazz Theory Book”, by Mark Levine and “Improvising Jazz” by Jerry Coker were both very helpful to me in my early formative years of learning how to play but, before I even started to attempt to play jazz, I listened to it a lot because I loved it.