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Jonathan Shacklock


From:
London, UK
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2018 5:06 am    
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Say you have a bit of time to stretch out, 16 bars or more or an uptempo song. What strategies do you use to work out a knockout solo? Maybe you always wing it? If so what's going through your mind regarding scales, root notes, positions, stitching together licks, etc? What if you have preparation time for a gig or session and you really want to craft something together? How do you go about it?
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Donny Hinson

 

From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2018 10:21 am    
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Even when I have time, I don't "prepare", that's not my style. Mostly, I wing it just by stringing a lot of things together that I and a lot of other players have done before. Since much the fast stuff I play is based on 3-pick rolls and techniques that other steelers generally don't use, that gives some variety and uniqueness to what I do.

As far as the thought process, I don't plan or think a lot about it beforehand. But when I'm playing, I'm always thinking ahead a few bars so that there's a smooth and seamless flow.
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Paul Sutherland

 

From:
Placerville, California
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2018 10:55 am    
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When I try to play as many fast licks as possible it sounds very unmusical. It's sort of the equivalent of watching a gymnast doing a routine full of challenging technical elements, but with very little grace and style. Boring!!

Even though the tempo is up, I think it's best to try to develop some sort of theme. So start out with a strong lick, and then pause, then repeat the opening lick, or a close variation of it. The lick doesn't have to be complex or even particularly hard to play. Just play it with authority. Then do something else for awhile. Then return to the opening lick to finish it off. The pause(s) are as important as the notes you play. Make a musical statement. Don't just do back-flips.

Let me add: Play with timing. The timing with which you play notes can be varied and can make a huge difference in the overall effect. And intersperse your playing with legato and staccato passages. Don't just play all of one or the other. Finally, mix things up between single note runs and chord passages.
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Pete Burak

 

From:
Portland, OR USA
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2018 1:04 pm    
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I try to go with, An Embellishment Of The Melody.
"I'll Fix Your Flat Tire Merle" comes to mind.
You can play fast ABC-pedal licks over the GCD progression, but keep the timing/phrasing of the licks in line with the Melody.
You end up adding alot of "Rests" between the fast runs.
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Ronald Heinzel

 

From:
Hollister, California, USA
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2018 6:34 pm    
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Pete Burak wrote:
I try to go with, An Embellishment Of The Melody.
"I'll Fix Your Flat Tire Merle" comes to mind.
You can play fast ABC-pedal licks over the GCD progression, but keep the timing/phrasing of the licks in line with the Melody.
You end up adding alot of "Rests" between the fast runs.

I've always thought the steel in that tune was outstanding.
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Mike Neer


From:
NJ
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2018 6:56 pm    
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I was always of the improvising nature when I played guitar, meaning I never worked things out in advance, but developed my solo as a mini composition.

When I started listening to steel guitar players more in improv situations, I noticed that some players had their solos worked out, which disappointed me. However, years later, now that I am a steel player, I find myself leaning a little more toward that approach, at least in creating longer flowing lines that move in and out of tonality the way I want them to.

One of the things that influenced me was the fact that Lennie Tristano, possibly one of the first to have a system of teaching jazz improvisation, used to have his students write out solos over standard changes, but the way they wanted to sound, not necessarily the way they could play. This type of exercise is really good for helping you zero in on the specific type of tension or vibe you want to put across.
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Josh Braun


From:
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Post  Posted 22 Jun 2018 7:13 am    
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I almost always improvise.

With any solo I'll always be doing at least 2 things:

1) Accentuate any guide tones across chord changes
2) Use repetition/themes to communicate the development of an idea

Now 16 bars at a fast pace goes quick! I have some chops, but I'm no Travis Toy, so I'm probably going to use fast passages to do something like:

1) Rapidly ascend/descend into the next change
2) Create tension through repetition (e.g., a fast, recurring A pedal lick in 16th notes)
3) Embellishment after a melodic line, or after a melodic idea terminates

YMMV - good luck!
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Jonathan Shacklock


From:
London, UK
Post  Posted 23 Jun 2018 1:26 am    
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So many well articulated ideas in this thread, thank you.

Josh Braun wrote:

1) Accentuate any guide tones across chord changes


I'm new to the phrase "guide tones" - are these notes common to the chords on either side of the change? Or maybe a run of notes from one root to another?

Also Josh, you mentioned "Embellishment after a line" - yes! I often hear that from really good players, a sort of suffix to the main idea. Sometimes you get a little throwaway lick at the end of a great solo that just buttons it off perfectly.

Mike, what you say about "moving in and out of tonality" really hits on something - so many good solos play on that edge. There's definitely more to this than playing chord positions and "legal notes". I don't think I've got the deep theory or the ears to work that stuff out yet but it's great food for thought.
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Ron Hogan

 

From:
Nashville, TN, usa
Post  Posted 23 Jun 2018 7:07 am    
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https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=328732&highlight=
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Josh Braun


From:
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Post  Posted 23 Jun 2018 8:23 am    
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Jonathan Shacklock wrote:
I'm new to the phrase "guide tones" - are these notes common to the chords on either side of the change? Or maybe a run of notes from one root to another


There's some good guides out there on the web that offer fuller explanations, but generally talk about using "guide tones" in a solo refers to the way certain notes in a given chord (usually the 3rd and 7th) will voice lead into the next chord change (usually very closely, by a 1/2 step).

For instance, going from C7 to G7, the 3rd of C major (e), moves to the 7th of G major (f), and the flat 7 of C (Bb) becomes the 3rd of G (b).

Because the 3rds and 7ths of a chord are so strong and give the chord its "flavor" (whether it's major/minor/dominant), sounding these "guide tones" makes a melodic lines constructed with them evoke the chord changes that are occurring. Or, in other words, your line will necessarily be following the harmonic structure of the piece, sound coherent and "fit".

A great example of hearing this is by listening to almost any jazz solo (esp. bop or hard-bop). Even without accompaniment you can "hear" the chord changes that are implied by the solo. But it applies in any western improvisational context. Solos that fail to hit guide tones often sound arbitrary, contextless or episodic (because they don't fit in with or react to the underlying harmony).
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Jonathan Shacklock


From:
London, UK
Post  Posted 23 Jun 2018 2:19 pm    
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Thanks Josh, very clearly explained. I'm going to spend some time working on this. Cool
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Fred Treece


From:
California, USA
Post  Posted 23 Jun 2018 3:48 pm    
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Mike Neer wrote:

One of the things that influenced me was the fact that Lennie Tristano, possibly one of the first to have a system of teaching jazz improvisation, used to have his students write out solos over standard changes, but the way they wanted to sound, not necessarily the way they could play. This type of exercise is really good for helping you zero in on the specific type of tension or vibe you want to put across.


Lots of great information in this thread on how to construct a solo as far as the musical end of things goes, but it all seems to assume the technique for “speed-picking” type playing at tempos north of 120 bpm is already in the tank.

The ability to coordinate alternate picking, double and triple stops, staccato and legato, bar slides and position movement, pedal and lever changes - all figure into the equation of playing a coherent and artful solo. This is maybe the other side of the coin the teacher in Mike’s comment may have been trying to illuminate. You have to be able to create the sound of the notes you hear in your head.
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Sonny Jenkins


From:
Texas Masonic Retirement Center,,,Arlington Tx
Post  Posted 24 Jun 2018 5:38 am    
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Don't forget Hal and Weldon's little 3 String, 2 Finger, 1 Pedal (or something like that) lick.
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Michael Johnstone


From:
Sylmar,Ca. USA
Post  Posted 24 Jun 2018 5:12 pm    
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Ideally a player strives to develop the technique and musical theory so he can dream up good ideas from an encyclopedic bag of styles he's developed over many years and get to those ideas on his instrument instantaneously. In the real world - for most of us anyhow, it goes more like this: Once I had to take a turn on Orange Blossom Special in a band with a tremendous musician named Cody Bryant who played fiddle, banjo, mandolin and guitar all at a very intense and musical level. Oh I'd skated thru that thing periodically for years in bar bands with mixed results but in Cody's band I needed to deliver the bacon. At first I just winged it for a few gigs and over a few dozen nights I started getting good ideas for this section or that section and tried to remember those parts and play them every night. I always seemed to stumble in the same spots however and had to take those sections to the woodshed. Eventually after developing the final connecting tissue between the sections, I realized I had, over time, distilled probably the best solo I was ever gonna play in that song and it all came from my brain. After that I went thru some fine tuning, trying new things but I had something dynamite to fall back on if I was less than inspired. Lotsa guys go this route at least some of the time including some great bebop giants like the tenor solo by Illinois Jacquet on "Flying Home" which he developed like this I'm sure and now that solo is considered a "composition" and studied, dissected and taught at music schools. It does kind require that you're playing in a steady gigging band.

One other thing I'd say about soloing at fast tempos is make sure all the things you play are easy to play. By that I mean easy to pick cleanly without any technique land mines like tricky crossovers, double thumbing and things that are hard to flow fast. That could extend to pedal and knee lever placement choices too and many of us have changed our copedants around over the years to get the most combinations and easy to get to positioning.
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Bill Cunningham


From:
Atlanta, Ga. USA
Post  Posted 26 Jun 2018 8:59 pm    
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Michael Johnstone wrote:
Ideally a player strives to develop the technique and musical theory so he can dream up good ideas from an encyclopedic bag of styles he's developed over many years and get to those ideas on his instrument instantaneously.


That reminds me of an interview with Maurice Anderson, maybe in the old Steel Guitarist Magazine. He said something along the lines of "I'm more worried about not be able to think of something to play rather than not be able to play what I can think." I wonder what percentage of the world's steel players are at that level. To have a head full of original licks and just be able to execute them!
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Michael Johnstone


From:
Sylmar,Ca. USA
Post  Posted 27 Jun 2018 7:47 pm    
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Quote:
I wonder what percentage of the world's steel players are at that level. To have a head full of original licks and just be able to execute them!


Some obvious few are closer than the rest of us but I don't expect even they think they have arrived at that place yet. The better you get, the more you realize how much stuff you'll never be able to play. As much musical headroom as Buddy Emmons had, even he struggled and was always running the edges of his ability.
It's the old "receding horizon" analogy.
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Tony Prior


From:
Charlotte NC
Post  Posted 28 Jun 2018 12:58 am    
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like those comments above, NO planned solo, maybe a planned idea. Sometimes based around the melody or sometimes based around some phrases in my head that I have been messing with at home.

Heres my take, it's not planned , it's auto pilot which is based on your "seat time" and knowledge of the fret board as well as the song chord construction, which is the road map. Knowing multiple redundant positions or "pockets " which allows us to connect the dots (phrases) without thinking about it. Kinda like how many ways do we know how to drive to the grocery store and back.

The process is never ending . There is always something new to add or another path to get to where we are going. How well do we know the fret board, how well do we understand the use of our levers, peds or a bar slant.

Then we have to consider how good is our right hand technique ! Cross picking, alternate picking, banjo rolls etc...a lifetime of stuff to have fun with !


Then of course the first thing we must realize is "If we can't play it slow, we can't play it fast " !

Work on a few phrases that you are comfortable with in several positions on the fret board , to me thats the starting point, even if it appears repetitious.

Personally, I have begun to go the other direction from fast solo's, as I get older I play slower but hopefully smarter . Sometimes I listen to other players execute really fast speed picking lines , very well executed , but to me theres no music, just a flurry of notes. I reflect back on my own experiences and came to realize I did the exact same thing ! Go figure. Sad
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Billy McCombs


From:
Bakersfield California, USA
Post  Posted 28 Jun 2018 3:25 am    
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I have a CD of a Famous picker, he's going 100 miles a hour and sounds really great. So, when I slowed it down so I try to copy a bit of it I was surprised that it sounded like a Train Wreck.
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Fred Treece


From:
California, USA
Post  Posted 28 Jun 2018 8:18 am    
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Billy McCombs wrote:
I have a CD of a Famous picker, he's going 100 miles a hour and sounds really great. So, when I slowed it down so I try to copy a bit of it I was surprised that it sounded like a Train Wreck.

That’s hilarious! I wonder what the solo from Together Again sounds like at quadruple time? Very Happy
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Joachim Kettner


From:
Germany
Post  Posted 28 Jun 2018 11:31 am    
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Maybe there's a Bluegrass version of "Together Again" somewhere, Fred.
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David Mason


From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2018 4:53 pm    
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In order to make thematic sense, you need some amount of consistency through repetition. In this case, I would (mentally) lay out three or four "boxes", basically being locations of the neck where there are a number of adjacent notes - notes within a diatonic or pentatonic scale. Meaning, places I CAN go fast and not slurp and die. And then I would try to overlay the same rhythmic pattern over these different boxes.

Generally, start low and slow, end fast and high. Using just two of these boxes alternately, you can even set up a one-man "call-and-response" idea. A lot of people say the beginning and end are most important - like, if you've got a song with a lusty, roaring chorus, work out a pre-digested end where you peel off a burner and your solo's last note fades into the exact same note as the first note of the chorus. Pop 'em right out of their chairs if you get it right. "White Rabbit?"

B) Don't listen to Miles Davis, he's nuts.
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Landon Johnson

 

From:
Washington, USA
Post  Posted 30 Jun 2018 8:07 pm     How I do it...
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1. I steal melody lines from songs that have the same chord structure and use them in a solo. "Dream" (Everlys) and "You're Only Lonely" (JD Souther) have the same basic chord progression; when I play one I scarf the melody line from the other and it fits quite nicely if you syncopate/time it right. It's always interesting when another musician picks it out...

2. I make sure I can play the melody in the verses AND choruses/breaks. You never know when the lead vocalist may have a coughing fit... and I always have something I can fall back on if I break a string. Always a Plan B, and Plan C is to chord it out with arpeggios or diads.

3. My classical training way back when has taught me that composers get a lot of mileage out of 'variations on a theme'. To me this means all the little ditties from that genre - trills, mordents, turns, grace notes, accents... adding a 3rd or 5th.

4. Letting the music breathe. I've always felt that the faster you play, the more difficult it is to be expressive. In my 6-string days I was much more a David Gilmour than an Eddie Van Halen. Those tendencies towards long, sweeping and relatively simple lead parts serves me well on the Pedal Steel.

5. That all important 'mute' button where you don't play. Sitting out a verse has a much more tangible effect than a bucketful of technique played throughout the entire song. Many a song I play the intro, sit out a verse, then come in on a second verse or chorus, maybe sit out a final verse. There are also some songs where I don't play at all.

6. Don't drink from the same well too often - keep an eye on the licks you're using and make sure you aren't repeating the same cool lick you just figured out in every song you play.

7. Get to the point where you can LOOK UP once in a while and enjoy the scenery. A good vibe is more about the people than the music. This is the one thing I miss from the 6-string world... I could play without looking at my instrument and was able to participate in the event. With the steel, and I'm only 8 months in, I am so busy keeping track of everything I don't have time for the event itself. The visual cues you get from your audience and fellow musicians will give you clues as to what to play next.

8. When you make a mistake, look at someone else in amazement.

Just my take - excellent question!
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Bobby Nelson


From:
North Carolina, USA
Post  Posted 1 Jul 2018 1:42 am    
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6. Don't drink from the same well too often - keep an eye on the licks you're using and make sure you aren't repeating the same cool lick you just figured out in every song you play.
Quote:


That is some of the best advice I've read so far. Of course, a guy with limited experience is going to repeat the stuff he is good at now and then but, this is a good lesson to keep in mind.

Now that we have the "Magic" of the internet, we can study and hear how the Allman Brothers Band (not steel I know, but some of the best improvisation ever) developed the long , and seemingly perfect solos found on the Fillmore East album. Over that year an a half or two yr period that they were playing almost every night some where, you can go listen to some of those shows, and hear the solos develop.

Then, there is my favorite of all: Wes Montgomery. It would seem to me that a bad note never came from the tip of Wes' thumb, and he rarely repeated himself verbatim.

The things I've learned from these folks, and many others is that it doesn't matter how astounding it is if it ain't musical. My approach to 6 string will serve me well in my transition to pedal steel in that: 1) I was never one for humongously long solos - usually 2 verses at most in live situations - maybe a little longer if I needed to eat up time. And 2) I'm a big believer in a beginning; a middle; and an ending.
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David Mason


From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
Post  Posted 2 Jul 2018 5:59 pm    
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One of the shocking reveals of the net and particularly sugarmegs.org can be unearthed among the "jam bands" so well known for "improvisation." Like,

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO........

The Grateful Dead? Eeek! You actually CAN listen to five "Dark Stars" in a row, and find that the connecting bits varied, but: they did have very-well defined sections which were played in a specific order, with coherent parts - almost like... a regular band?
Whoa! Confused Crying or Very sad

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO........

This is NOT a very popular avenue of discussion among Deadheads for some reason. In fact, even most of the other, undeaded normies have a really appalling sense of what improvisation even is.

Whoa! Confused Crying or Very sad

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/
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