The Soloist
Soloing chops and improvisational vocabulary.
In my mind, there is no singular path towards being a great soloist. It requires that you have internalized information and built your vocabulary but what you actually have to say as a soloist is unique to you, what you listen to, whom you emulate, how you practice, etc… What I’ll try to do here is to give you the tools you need to remove common obstacles to speaking freely on the instrument.
One main thing to consider is that you shouldn’t necessarily treat ‘soloing’ as separate from your bass playing. How you approach one, is an extension of the other. It can be especially helpful early on in your development to really think of soloing as playing your bass lines ideas.. just more freely and with more range on the instrument.
By extension, when you start practicing more soloistic concepts and approaches, that will also evolve the way you approach your bass lines and licks. They are very much connected! I find that a lot of students initially freeze up when it comes to solos because it seems like an entirely new thing. I’ve heard some really fantastic bass players immediately sound stiff and uncomfortable as soon as they start taking a solo. You don’t even have to immediately jump to the upper register when you start a solo… In fact, it’s often better if you transition from your bass lines to the solo ideas simply by expanding and expounding upon those same ideas in the lower register…. leading them up into a more soloistic range organically.
A good bassist thinks compositionally and speaks in complete sentences. The same is true for a soloist, except you now have the complete freedom to play what you want!
The enemy of a good solo is fear and perceived expectations. Don’t feel like you need to instantly become super impressive and blazing fast because it’s a solo. Just breathe and… play!. Have fun with it. It takes time and practice before it may feel natural but much of that depends on your own psychology and how you think about it all.
Let’s kick it off with a few videos where I’m just talking about certain aspects that deserve much thought when it comes to obtaining a certain level of ability with your instrument.
— sections.
We start here, before anything else, because soloing is as much a mental skill as a technical one. This section is about the headspace of being a soloist — what it actually feels like to have something to say, how to deal with the fear of taking solos in front of people, and how to start thinking about your own voice on the instrument. The technique without the mindset is just exercises.
It’s of the utmost importance that we develop a solid foundation. When you couple good practice with a strong foundation, we have the most efficient path towards realizing real growth on our instrument.
Click the button in order to download some helpful shape diagrams for the pentatonic, major and minor scales referenced in a few of these lessons.
A good soloist needs to have a solid understanding of basic harmony and harmonic function. A great soloist never stops learning about the ways in which they can expand their harmonic vocabulary. We’ll dive a little bit deeper in the lessons to come but this is a good place to start.
The following videos are designed to help you with both your internalization of scales and how to use them but also your mindset with regard to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of it all.
And here, we begin to explore arpeggios and, by extension, chord construction. Chords are really just scales played in 3rds (instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, we will be stacking them in 3rds — 1, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4, 6 or 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, as you’ll come to think of them).
Now we put it to work. This section is about actually soloing — using the limited vocabulary you've got so far, navigating real chord changes, learning to construct lines that go somewhere instead of just running scales. You'll sound rough at first. That's the point. We learn by doing.
Let’s go a bit further in our exploration of scales, chord scales & modes.
Advanced harmonic work — extensions, upper structures, voice leading, substitutions. As a soloist, this is where the magic happens. These are the tools that let you imply harmonies, suggest substitutions, and play lines that sound like you're hearing more than just what's on the chart.
Make sure to download the worksheets at the bottom of the page.
Chords are a phenomenal way to map out harmonic shapes on your fretboard (and they sound cool, too). Internalizing chord shapes and relationships not only gives you an interesting sonic palette from which to draw from, but it also gives you a quick skeletal structure of harmony which you can make use of in your bass lines, solos, and licks. Studying chords on your instrument helps with everything, whether or not you ever intend to actually play them on the gig.
While transcription is a fantastic way to develop your ‘ears’ (and more fun and satisfying in some ways), there are other ways to really take your development to the next level — specifically training yourself to improve upon your relative pitch, or even develop perfect pitch (yes, you can train yourself to have perfect pitch or, at the very least, much-improved relative pitch).
Sing along with your practice. Learn to really pay attention to the sounds of the intervals. Hearing a melody or bass line and singing it back is a great way to start developing pitch recognition. If you have a piano, play chords and try to identify each note of the chord with your voice. Play a basic triad and try to sing the available tensions of the chord (advanced mode!).
Harmonomics — a buddy of mine (and phenomenal versatile musician) developed an ear-training app that is a deep dive right into the serious kind of ear-training one would do at a conservatory. He uses it regularly and it shows.
Transcription is at the heart of the fluent soloist. Not only do you need to explore the vocabulary of music in a broad way but you need to have a deep understanding of different styles and approaches as to how one can navigate chord changes, vamps, solo intros, etc.
There are MANY ways to approach a solo. It’s important to have a sense of what it is you’re trying to accomplish (or even who you’re trying to ‘channel’ in the moment). Groove solos, melodic solos, chops, rhythmic solos, advanced reharmonizations — there are a million ways to approach a musical statement. The more you can ‘hear’ and the more approaches and players you’ve explored, the better.
Harmonic awareness and rhythm, married with an explorative approach. As I said in The Improvisor’s Path: Rhythm + Harmony = Melody.
A good solo often has more to do with great phrases and a connection of ideas. I find it useful to try and begin every solo with a melodic statement. This gives you something to build upon. Make a statement, leave a space. Make another related statement. Keep building.
You simply can’t have good phrases without good rhythm. Develop your rhythmic vocabulary as much as your harmonic vocabulary.
Personally, working with rhythm like this (like a drummer) was crucial in my development of my internal time and external time-feel. I still feel like this is one of the best ways to begin your exploration of time and time-keeping (aside from just playing music with recordings and other humans, of course — NOTHING beats that, ultimately).
Tip: Take your time with each of these lessons (especially when things get a little more open to interpretation). It’s not a sprint — it’s a marathon.
