Improvising on Unfamiliar Tunes without Sounding Bad

Driving in New Jersey is the worst.

Actually, it’s the eighth-worst state to drive in (according to the internet).

Why, you ask?

I don’t know the official reason, but my biggest gripe is how hard the route is to get just about anywhere. A fifteen-minute trip can put you on six different highways.

Maybe you can relate to being glued to the GPS and unable to relax and enjoy listening to music, a podcast, an audiobook, or even just the sound of the road.

It’s a stressful experience, and it reminds me a lot of what it used to feel like soloing on tunes I don’t know well.

Trying to remember the melody, the chords, and the form is hard enough as it is. Having to improvise on top of all of that is paralyzing.

I’m better able to navigate these types of situations now because I finally accepted the fact that improvising doesn’t always need to mean coming up with a solo that is 100% original 100% of the time.

It’s okay to have “fallback” material to get you out of tight spots.

I was reminded of this while listening to some less well-known recordings of Sonny Rollins improvising over St. Thomas. He sounds amazing on each take, even though he definitely has some go-to lines that come up in every solo.

I ain’t hatin’. I never get sick of listening to Sonny Rollins, which proves my point…

Don’t feel bad about playing material in a solo that you’ve worked out beforehand…as long as it’s good!

How do you ensure you’re working out good material?

Transcribe cats like Sonny.

Yeah, I know transcribing takes a long time. But trust me, it’s worth it.

In the meantime, you can expand your jazz and blues vocabulary more quickly and easily by getting your copy of Licks for Days, which includes over 130 licks on the five most common jazz chords.

Grady O. did just that and had this to say:

I decided to purchase Licks for Days because I felt a level of maturity was missing from my improvisation language. Whenever a chord passed, I was stuck going at it from the same angle (I had a specific way of approaching each quality of chord).

Working with Licks for Days was simple – I found a line that caught my ear (of which there are plenty) and made sure I could sing the notes. Then I got to playing in all the keys (I only printed it out in C so that I could work on my transposition skills).

Licks for Days has really helped me explore tons of new options. Singing and playing the licks in all keys has helped me internalize really hip language (a relief after being told for years to only play licks out of the Charlie Parker Omnibook).

Find out all about it here:

https://go.jeffschneidermusic.com/licks-for-days

- Jeff