Soloing- Question & Answer

Numberless

Platinum Member
I decided to work on my soloing this upcoming month so I dug up my copy of "Art of Bop" by John Riley and flipped it to the Soloing section. Previously I had only worked on the One bar Phrases section and found them to be of great use at improving my vocabulary. I started working on developing question and answers solos, if you don't have the book, the format John uses is:

Question 1 (bars 1-2)
Answer 1 (3-4)
Question 1 (5-6)
Answer 2 (7-8)
Answer 1 as question (9-10)
Answer 2 (11-12)
Answer 1 as question (13-14)
Question 1 as answer (15-16)

And I don't know if it's just me but it is soooooooo challenging, if you seen the Benny Greb Improvisation lesson then this is a similar concept but on steroids. Have any of you guys worked on stuff like this? What are your thoughts on it? I am currently having a frustrating time remembering the first answer and posing it as a question...if you've never tried something like this, give it a shot at your next practice session, I promise you it's harder than it sounds!
 
This looks very interesting. May have to check it out, and it may also re-kindle my love for soloing. I recently stopped doing them. It came to a point that I would run out ideas and by solos would sound rather boring than interesting, but since you brought this exercise up , I may have to revisit the art of soloing. That is what it is after all an art.
 
I have done this in 2, 4, and 8 bar phrases I have also done the trading 2,4,8's with other teacher's and players in context.

For me, when I first started doing it, I found it was an exercise in focus on where I was that presented the largest challenge. That has to do with my lifelong ADD issue though.

A great opportunity to work on this is to pick a song, such as Billies Bounce, Scrapple from the Apple, Oleo, Nows the Time, Little Suede Shoes, etc... and use that as the backdrop for the form you are trying to work on with the question answer.

I gained a much better understanding of all of this by listening to Philly Joe Jones for endless hours.
 
I decided to work on my soloing this upcoming month so I dug up my copy of "Art of Bop" by John Riley and flipped it to the Soloing section. Previously I had only worked on the One bar Phrases section and found them to be of great use at improving my vocabulary. I started working on developing question and answers solos, if you don't have the book, the format John uses is:

Question 1 (bars 1-2)
Answer 1 (3-4)
Question 1 (5-6)
Answer 2 (7-8)
Answer 1 as question (9-10)
Answer 2 (11-12)
Answer 1 as question (13-14)
Question 1 as answer (15-16)

And I don't know if it's just me but it is soooooooo challenging, if you seen the Benny Greb Improvisation lesson then this is a similar concept but on steroids. Have any of you guys worked on stuff like this? What are your thoughts on it? I am currently having a frustrating time remembering the first answer and posing it as a question...if you've never tried something like this, give it a shot at your next practice session, I promise you it's harder than it sounds!

Yeah,

Having never actually tried this exact exercise, I would think that just the memory part of this would be really challenging.

One idea, you might take a more compositional approach at first just to practice the process. So actually plan what you are going to play instead of improvising. Go through a couple of rounds of this just to practice working your memory in this way. People are quick to dismiss the idea of composing as opposed to improvising, but the the two processes share a lot in common. Improvisation is basically accelerated composition.

Another idea would be to take it in steps. Maybe split the exercise in half and run it that way for a while before combining.

I will have to check this out, thanks for the inspiration!
 
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