Learning solos, tunes or devices

J D Sauser · From: Wellington, Florida

There are several schools or ideologies peddled around from books to videos and now he internet avalanche of real knowledge and also increasingly very real bull crap.

In Jazz specifically -but it's certainly limited to that genre- there are 3 main suggestions:

- Learn TUNES, as many as possible
or
- Learn SOLOS, as many as possible
or
- Learn "DEVICES": ii-,V,I the I,vi-,ii-,V,I and so forth, learn your arpeggios, learn to connect from chord to chord etc. Scales and some modes may also b part of that and only once you have a good "tool chest" collected go to learn tunes and solos.

As one may suspect by the way I described the last suggestion in such detail, that's the one I've MAINLY gone down or always come back to for the past 3 years of re-learning steel guitar in a different way. Now, in my earlier years, I DID learn tunes and solos from the greats, first from ear, then later from TAB and I could play Buddy Emmons' Christmas Album note for note, which was the farthest I got until I called it "good nite" in 2001.
After that I picked up jazz rhythm guitar and quickly came to play with some of the greats of Gypsy Jazz in Europe. I LEARNED a lot about what I later learned is the evidence of Functional Harmony (which works well with Jazz Standards, Bebop, HardBop and Soul and R&B as well a evidently Country and Country Swing).
I've long theorized that learning bass ought to be a must. To me playing Swing rhythm guitar, has done just that. I can analyze most any progression, find cadences and thus simplify demystify enormously most any tune. Which is great to then applying devices like ii,V's and ii.V.I's in major or minor and connect all the cadences moving so often in 4ths.

Now this all swings us nicely back into learning tunes, because so much now makes more sense and is easier to "understand" an apply acquired knowledge to and develop and expand, and brought me to Solos.

Now there was I time, I threw all my energy at sounding and playing like my heroes. Yes, Buddy Emmons is one of them, but my dedication went more towards Speedy West and Jerry Byrd. Like a good fan, I got all their records and I got Jerry Byrds "testaments" (the big binder).

I have seen TWO guys, both professionals, who could "clone" another pro to the point they could play even a tune their idol had never played and still make you believe it was that other guy playing it:
Tom Brumley playing on his pre-WWII Rickenbacher B7 as a "Byrd" and
Gary Hogue playing on his Emmons PP with a Nashville 400, doing a whole set with Marty Stewart sounding off "BE" and after a break sounding like Bob White on the same setup behind Hank Thompson. Gary Hogue was known for that ability. ME? Nope!

So a few years ago, when I decided to pick up steel again, but go at it differently on what quickly became a different tuning and not totally "standard" one, I made one vow, that I would NOT try to copy anybody. I was going to explore who "J-D" is... musically. And today I am quite happy with that decision.
I do listen to others, but mostly sax, horn, flute (for my interest in single note improvisation) and also guitar, keys etc. in the genre I am after which is Jazz, Bebop, R&B, Soul. When I listen to steel, it's because I love the instrument, most steel recordings are not in the style I am looking to acquire but I still love to listen. I haven't been at a steel show since 2000, but I do long to go back to one, although most I knew are long gone and missed. I am not yet sure how to go to the Dallas show knowing I won't meet Maurice Anderson. But I will.

- Learn Solos! (as many as possible, too!).
I started learning or try to learn solos, many times too soon, not quite equipped enough and also lacking technique. And often had to crawl out of a cul-de-sac I cockily rocketed myself into, backwards, back to working on "vocabulary" and "grammar".
At his point, I AM working on solos on various progression, from Autumn Leaves over Blue Bossa to Rhythm Changes and lately There Will Never Be Another You (besides fooling around with All Of Me and Fly Me To The Moon, which I keep as test benches because I've heard them two way too often to the point that I don't like them very much anymore).
I hear solos everyday for hours... in the back ground and sometimes analyzing the ones which trigger my interest.
But here's what I am trying to get to:
I found out that most of the time I spend learning to PLAY a solo, I spend on veering off... playing almost but differently. I guess that it's my engineer's mind and my tendency to "orthodoxy" (adhering to strictness) which taught me to try to focus on doing it "RIGHT"... "to the letter", but some time ago, I made a decision (it so seems I can't do anything without "deciding") NOT to concentrate anymore on "EXACTITUDE" but to just LEARN FROM the solo.
"Close" is more than close enough. I am learning not only from other people with other goals, other problems, but of other times, with different experiences in influences and thus other goals. MAYBE the solo we hear, is NOT exactly what that person really aimed for. We learned that with Buddy Emmons ushering dissatisfaction with his 1962 "Steel Guitar Jazz" Album which many of us see as the greatest Jazz Steel Guitar Album still today. And many did learn these solos note for note!

At the end of any practice day one has to ask himself the same question we hear every election cycle: "Are you better off than.... ?" Have we progressed in a meaningful manner?

... J-D.
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Was it JFK who said: Ask Not What TAB Can Do For You - Rather Ask Yourself "What Would B.B. King Do?"

A Little Mental Health Warning:

Tablature KILLS SKILLS.
The uses of Tablature is addictive and has been linked to reduced musical fertility.
Those who produce Tablature did never use it.

I say it humorously, but I mean it.

Roger Rettig · From: Naples, FL

Amusing signature, JD. Smile

I never use tab.

Do I have any? Certainly, and from some of the best who ever played, but I have never got past the first two measures without losing patience and reverting to playing properly:

That means figuring it out for yourself!

I refer to C6; being 'late to the party', as it were, I thought acquiring some blueprints to tricky (American Songbook repertoire) tunes would get me off the ground on the back neck.

Guess what? After laboriously following the two measures 'by rote', I realized that - I knew all that already.

There's only one 'trick' - you have to know the chords.
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Roger Rettig: Emmons D10, Quilter TT-12 & TT-15, B-bender Teles and Martins - and, at last, a Gibson Super 400!
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J D Sauser · From: Wellington, Florida

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