How I Went From Hating to Loving My Solos

Yesterday, during our class check-in call for Making the Changes, a student asked when things started to click for me on my journey to becoming a better improviser.

I told him that there wasn’t a single watershed moment where everything fell into place. Rather, I experienced multiple “aha” moments along the way.

One such aha moment happened after ten years of playing subpar solos in live performances. Each time I had an opportunity to improvise in front of people, I would play wrong notes or squeak or lose the beat or forget the changes or all of the above.

Once I finally figured out why I kept choking, everything changed. I felt good about my performances. The crippling self-criticism went away. I even stopped getting nervous before it was my turn to solo.

So, what was the big realization?

Well, if you’re thinking it had to do with getting rid of perfectionism, think again.

Even though perfectionism is another issue I’ve had to deal with, this particular aha moment came about when I unearthed a deep-seated belief: that which sounds good should feel hard.

In other words, I felt that if I played stuff that was easy for me, it would sound too simple or totally lame.

Of course, when I tried to improvise lines that I thought were “impressively difficult,” I ended up sounding like I was hanging on for dear life.

The truth is, in fact, the opposite: What feels easy to you, sounds good to others.

Now, I’m not saying you should be complacent. On the contrary – you can still challenge yourself and take risks on the bandstand.

Just know that it’s okay to play what you know.

And remember this: the stuff you’ve been practicing over and over may sound old hat to you, but it’s brand spankin’ new for everyone else that wasn’t there in the shed with you.

Unfortunately, this hard = good mentality has saturated much of the jazz education space. So many of the books and videos out there are about fancy triadic chromatic methods, complex metric modulations, and exotic double diminished chords.

I’m not knockin’ any of that by the way. I just don’t see enough cool-sounding material out there that’s geared toward beginner and intermediate players.

For whatever reason, the beginner stuff is always dumbed down so much that it sounds stupid.

That’s why I decided it was time to create a lick pack that was loaded with lines that are easy to play and sound super hip.

Well, I ended up creating three such lick packs – the Classic, Modern, and Blues packs from the Level 1 collection in my Sick Licks series.

You can get ‘em on sale this week for 20% off. And if you want to save real big, the Level 1 bundle deal is also 20% off.

Click here to pick your pack and enter code SICKSUMMER at checkout.

Happy shedding,

Jeff