Monday, November 22, 2021

World's shortest jazz solo exercise

A quick little item— I know I've posted it before in other forms, maybe this time will be the best. For jazz students, this may be the most useful thing on the site for soloing and filling.  

This is a summary of a very well known right hand lead solo method used with the book Syncopation. You play the rhythms in the book with your right hand, accented, in a swing rhythm, and fill out the triplets quietly with the left hand. Following that rule, the first triplet exercise below is an interpretation of this rhythm— this is background, it doesn't even matter if you get this part:  


So practice this: 


Move your right hand around the toms however you like: 


Also play with your right hand on the cymbal, with bass drum in unison: 


Then improvise— play the RLL portion for as long as you like, transition with a RLR into the LLR pattern, which you can then play as long as you like, going straight back to the RLL sticking whenever you like: 



Add hihat on beats 2 and 4. 

The actual solo method using the book is a little more involved, but this will be extremely useful even without doing that. Practice trading improvised 2s, 4s, 8s, and Blues choruses this way, with all of the moves, and bango, you're a jazz soloist. 

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