Improvising and leadership: You Can't Have One Without the Other.
To paraphrase a funny quote by John C. Maxwell, “if you call yourself a leader, and no one is following, you’re not leading, you’re just taking a walk.” And I make mention of this because it’s important for musicians to see the correlation between soloing and leadership. Meaning that leaders have to be able to project clear visions in order to elicit buy-in from those in their charge. And the clearer the steps are for how to accomplish a mission, the easier it’ll also be for others to offer up relevant ideas that may be even better than what the leader has proposed.
Now I bring this up because if you want to accomplish anything big, you’ll need the help of a team. And a good example of this would be the difference between a great solo that’s performed to a metronome click as opposed to the same solo being performed with a world-class band behind them. You’ll only get so far on your own. And to quote Maxwell once again, “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group.” So in the case of music, the downside of not moving in lockstep with your band is that if when you’re soloing you don’t know how to communicate the direction you’re trying to go, the other musicians might either dig in their heels by offering minimal amounts of support, or worse, attempt to sabotage you by temporarily refusing to play behind you, or by playing tricky ideas to disorient you as a way to express their frustration. So now let’s look at the hidden mechanisms behind what actually makes a quality solo.
When we talk about quality within any area of music, the yard stick is always clarity. As in clarity of intent, both rhythmically and harmonically. So just because a soloist thinks to play an idea, it doesn’t mean that its execution will always translate as clear to the listener as it was perceived in the mind of the performer. A clear example of this is the way your voice occurs to you when you hear it on a recording. For many people, the rhythm and tone of their voice tends to not match the memory they have of themselves speaking into the recorded device. That said, while clarity of rhythm is merely an issue of sound-separation, harmonic clarity involves a few more layers of insight.
Over the years I’ve concluded that there are three harmonic levels to soloing. And to be aware of these levels allows you to use them like manual gears on a bike or in a vehicle, so that you can shift to the gear you need when the terrain dictates it.
Gear #1 (diatonic/horizontal playing): This means that the notes you use will either be scales that belong to the chord you’re addressing (i.e. diatonic = belonging to), or you’re going to assemble the chord tones of each chord in such a way that it creates the illusion of a domino effect where each one sounds like they’re falling into the next, much like reading words horizontally in a book from left to right.
Gear #2 (diatonic/vertical playing): This combines diatonic playing with chord stacking. Therefore, you can either arpeggiate the notes of only one chord or superimpose another chord on top of the chord you’re supposed to be playing to make another chord. And this works best when chords ring out long enough for the listener to figure out that you want them to focus on how well you can go up and down harmonically as opposed to going across horizontally. This would be analogous to a gymnast who wants you to marvel at how well they can do a series of back handsprings in one spot (vertical), as opposed to across a floor (horizontal) where your hands and feet have to be positioned in such a way to propel yourself.
Gear #3: This is just like gear #1. However, you get to superimpose the outlining of whatever chord progression you want, so long as it resolves back into the fray of the song’s original chord progression. This would be analogous to a 007 scene where Bond is chasing a bad guy across the top of a train but is too far away to easily catch him. So instead, he gets the good fortune of being picked up by a helicopter and then sat back down on the train just a little closer to the person he’s chasing. So again, it matters less about where you start your chord substitutions, and more about how you resolve them back into the original harmonic structure of a song.
What’s great about this idea is that it gives your solo structure. Too many times I’ve either heard people solo where it sounded like their solo ended too early or too late. And since these three gears follow an order of least to most tension, it makes sense to know where you want to start so that you know what direction to go in.
Suggested Takeaways…
a) The difference between horizontal and vertical playing is the difference between a series of back handsprings across a floor as opposed to in one spot.
b) The utilitarian goal of soloing is to guide the listener along a logical sounding harmonic path, with the aid of clearly articulated rhythms and harmony.
c) To understand the three harmonic gears allows a soloist to not only take more ownership over when they choose to shift gears, but also allows them to know which appropriate gear to shift to when they need to. So the longer the solo, the more gears it helps to have. The shorter, you’re better off choosing a gear and making the most of it.