The LAZY Way to an Awesome Solo: 3 Secrets From a Jazz Musician 

The funny thing about this video is I have heard and briefly prioritized these 3 secrets, and I knew what the last 2 were once you started talking about them.... but I keep forgetting! I'm going to print them out and tape them above my piano.

These are very useful lessons. Online teachers often teach scales and modes as if that's all you need to know. Turning them into something musical requires a lot more. It's great to hear you talk about some of that.

This is an incredibly useful advice for me. Thanks!!

The guy on the left hand side of the big band image is doing pretty well to hold down his spot considering he only has one arm and no instrument.

Great teacher

best advice I ever got was make it musical in your head and land it in time. wrong notes can be fixed and turned into leading tones is another good one

Great job!!!

Great stuff!

Well put! Thank you 🙏

Excellent lesson!

Splendid advice! Big thanks!

Great video!

Good advice Jeff. Keep it coming! 🎶

insightful !!

Great advice thank you!

This video is pure gold! 🎶

Great advice thanks

Very worthwhile video, thanks!

Wow thank you this is super helpful!

This is something to remember,great video thanks a lot!

Thanks!

Absolutely genius..thks so much

Thanks

Absolutely superb content Jeff-added & saved to my favourites list. Thank you so much for posting this great content cheers

Best advice, plain simple and effective. Very grateful, thank you🙏

Those are really good and solid advices, explained in a clear, accessible and respectful way. Well done!

Gold tips I knew but amazingly presented

First video that really make sense to me on solo. Thanks a lot.

🤯 thank you! 🙏 🙏🙏

This is such an efficient example of good advice!

This is gold ! Thx it is really useful 🙏🏻

Great video! Thank you. I must say that I am now waiting for a specific video on rhythmic patterns for improvising...

Excellent reminder of real strong fundamentals, cool !

Wonderfully honest, previous and straight forward information. I wish you played some short examples for the 2 first secrets to give us the feeling meanwhile. Great video!

that guy that u talked abt in the second secret was literally just playing "backburner" arranged by carl strommen

'very good. Best regards.

Great tips, thanks 🙏. But the thing that really amazed me is that you have Kerplunk 😃! I played that as a kid growing up in the UK in the 70s - very unexpected 😂.

Nice

Great points here Jeff, especially the first about rhythm. Love your videos.

I've seen many many lessons and had many teachers, but noone told me to prioritize rythm over notes. It makes so much sense... Thank u!

Great advice-tyvm. This is the message that comes first, isn't talked about enough: rhythm-put the notes to the rhythm. Don't get lost in scales and lose site of the rhythm. Repeat yourself is also so important. People like to identify patterns and the secret to this is repeat yourself. Call and response is a great way to build on this concept. Finally start small, build energy. Concept is king. All and all great advice!

Wow! Very consistent approach, that makes too much sense. Despite simple, it will be a true help to me, too many times so lost and insecure on exploring improvisations. Thank you!! Hugs from Brazil!

Love the first tip! Rhythm over pitches

Great tutorial! 👌 I recognized that Miles Davis, in many cases, also plays solos with lots of space and rhythm. But even when it is sparse, it always makes total sense and, has a good memorizable pattern and creates the perfect mood! 🔥

Great life lessons

Great video, Jeff! Really great, important tips! Thanks so much!... Just FYI, not that it matters much, but @ 7:17, the piano solo music should be b-flat at bar 5 on the triplets...

I played one of your big band charts "The Way Home" a few years ago, it was really beautiful

Love the AI artwork 3:26 😆 Good content as usual lol 💖

7:16 The contrast is fascinating and instructive. I'm sold! 🎹

I loved everything about this video except the super bright light in the background!

All true. Rhythm, repetition (or motif), and space will help you develop phrasing, which is the foundation to a great solo.

Super helpful. Thanks, you hit my weak point:-)

This is great stuff. I’ve never heard of you before now, but you sound like someone who’s studied some composition, and spent a good bit of time applying it. I remember a little picture of Dizzy Gillespie on the bulletin board of one of David Baker’s Associate Instructors in the 90s with the caption, “Think of a rhythm, and put a note on it.” That always stuck. Nice little vid here for the young jazz player!

Thanks for sharing this. The first two were quite helpful, as I am just getting started in playing jazz. Third point though, I was confused by. When you played the two different solos, I found the second to be boring, and the first super engaging. So I was surprised when you actually said number two was the better one. So...I clearly am missing something in your point there!

Barnaby Dickenson has a good video about this. He is a trombonist in UK.

So funny, as you went into your second point about repetition, my first thought was Sonny Rollins’ solo in “St. Thomas,” and sure enough that was your example 😂

Great tips, Thank-you. Anyone have some better references for the rhythm part? I’m a little confused with that one. I’ll think I’ll take the course too.

Great lesson!! But man, that A.I. art is weird. That picture at 3:29, most of the musicians are missing arms or have two rights. Just creepy. 🤨

Regarding rhythm: More than once I've played a bar or two of un-pitched ghost notes because I was lost, and got away with it because it was in time.

Pitches get stitches.

I'm a classical pianist, slowly expanding into the jazz world. Except for my earliest years, I've never bothered with scales/exercises/etc. in all the keys (or any of the keys). It's more important to think of the structure of a scale or chord or key in relative terms. A major scale is WWHWWWH. A progression is V/VI/II or something (not G/A/D). And unless you need to transpose live, I wouldn't bother with lots of different keys. Just the ones for the pieces I'm working on. I learn the key and scales that I come across in the piece I'm working on. No more. No less. And then to master whatever sequences and fingerings are necessary for the "problem at hand". What you said about "space" is more profound than you made out. My music only started to improve when I paid more attention to the space *between* the notes than the notes themselves. I took time to jump from one note to a faraway note (and after a while it somehow didn't seem so far away anymore). Space is where music breathes. And what I tend to do now is create an image of where I'm going with the music... it's usually a moving image, or a dream journey, and the image could be emotional (rather than visual). And then to play the same piece, but with a different image. And, even with classical pieces by the Grand Master, I sometimes change the notes just for the fun of it. (Of course, they improvised all the time, so I'm probably not doing anything different from how they performed their own pieces. Saying that, they're not masterful composers for nothing. No matter how much I try to change the music, their written version nearly always sounds the best!) 😂

I like the video! Do you have any suggestions on better solos on things that don't swing? What is your opinion on Bruce Hornsby's "The Way it is" solo? It sounds pretty busy to me but still enjoyable. And he certainly had a lot of success with it. I have to play this on a gig soon and I'm not sure what approach to use. I think I'll try starting small like you suggest. And focussing on rhythm.

there is one thing to master even before rhythm: I know so many soloing beginners who do not meet the form, they don't know where they are in the chorus. This problem must be solved before anything else.

yea def, rhythm is everything, like kinda literally, even pitch is rhythm, its hertz which is rhythm, and its kinda of the bases of all physical matter too kinda but maybe not a convo for this vid haha but yea rhythm is kind of all that there is

Is that a small electronic keyboard you are holding at the beginning of this video? Do you have the link to it?

I was playing the other night, on my strat - with JJazzlab for the progressions, and found that my admittedly poor solos followed the rhythm styles I was playing over… so rhythm is definitely important - and having a basic solo that gets embellished as you go on is what I’ve now heard from several sources. Maybe I’ll really get ‘it’ one day - and those solos will flow whatever instrument I’m playing!

RE: #1 Rhythm first... In other words "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"

0. Play in all keys, know your chord tones 0:24 1. Put notes to rhythm 1:27 2. Motivic development 3:17 3. Start small (more space) 6:57

Repetition legitimizes Repetition legitimizes Repetition legitimizes

Putting my own pedagogical vocabulary to this excellent video: “lyrical”. Focus on soloing lyrically, with space, melodic phrases, and a narrative arc, and you’ll instantly sound better

lol third secret I guess before the notes showed that it was pauses

It's true. It's one of Pat Metheny' s secrets: strong rythm patterns, repetitions .

#2 - my first thought: yeah, you don't have a rhythm without repetition. For sure.

Who is buried under the flag in the background?

Not "lazy" at all. Tasteful self-restraint is hard.

You can play the wrong note at the right time, but you cannot play the right not at the wrong time!

The best solo is the one you don't play - A random guy

Repetition legitimizes.

Who let you have a child 😂

The St Thomas solo may be typical, but I can"t come to enjoy it, even if it's from a Master. I just dont like these repetitions. I'm struggling to improvise, currently learning St Thomas :) I'm a bass and double bass player. I'm trying to learn soloing, but I don't enjoy it at all. It always "degenerates" into grooves. I can improvise a groovy bass line, but I'm getting lost and bored when trying to solo.

Great video, but AI images suck.

I heard you left the smashing pumpkins, a real shame

seems like a long pitch sale. old info repackaged. It’s too bad musicians have to earn money this way. It seems like it should all be free at this point, instead of being resold over and over for decades, but i suppose that’s how music teaching has always been

Great video!