Definitely prefer a developed musical elaboration on the theme or a prewritten solo to just jamming/improv/noodling.
I like a surf band to move musically like a school of fish, controlled and structured.
Its cool to have a song or two with some total improvisation but I prefer that as the exception to the rule.

I am surrounded by players who love to go in many directions at once. Which is sometimes good or can be horribly wrong. Plus in my opinion, I like to hear feeling over technical prowess. A lot of the time you can make the same statement in fewer notes than having to shove the whole scale bible into each passage.

This is just my preference.
Don't really want to say what is right or wrong, good or bad. It just comes down to what I like. I like it when the music stirs emotions.

_RT

to me, the more improvised solos belong in rockabilly.

surf to me seems more structured in it's solos, and 90% of all surf solos i've heard are very simply built directly off of the blues scale, thus a lot of surf solos end up sounding very similar.

usually though, i end up improvising a solo at first, then i build off of the improvisations until something solid that fits comes through. needless to say, all of my solos written like that generally sound very similar, but i'm fine with that. has anyone noticed how much the lively ones reused solos?

other times i have an idea for the solo in my head while the song is written and then i figure it out by ear. those are the solos that sound more different and creative, but usually aren't as flashy.

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Last edited: Sep 23, 2009 17:09:53

zak
The question makes it sound like it should be either/or.

Hmm... I hear ya. I tried to avoid that implication by specifying something played over a bridge, a section of the song differing from the theme, thrown in specifically to make room for the solo vs playing over the major theme. Rereading the previous sentence I'm still totally not delivering what I want to get across.

Luckily the multi-word answers are exactly what I was looking for, so even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes!

Nothing wrong with the single word answer of course. As Redd_Tyde pointed out, sometimes less is more. That can be true with words and music

I agree with Zak. Different songs call for different approaches. This is an interesting question though. If I would have been asked this question two years ago, I would have said that all soloing should be improvisational because that is the style that I had been playing for many years. And I probably had a little too much Nels Cline in my brain.

But within the last couple of years, I've started downplaying the soloing aspect and dedicated much more attention to the songwriting and melodic passages. A lot of my solos are more structured and thought out than they used to be. I guess its more a matter of taste. Like Redd_Tyde mentioned, improvisation can be wildly exiting, but at the same time disastrous. I think that is what is cool about it. I like the "train about to fly off the tracks" vibe in some forms of music. Although I don't do a whole lot of if myself these days.

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Jazz or classical? Jazz or classical?

Exact reproduction is not a bad option, especially as a starting point, and I think musicians should always do some reality checks (ask other people and/or play back recordings) to make sure their improvisation is working. If it isn't, then work out a better version and practice it.

However, anything can get dull if it is always exactly the same. If you play the same songs in the same way at all frequently then you can probably expect some people to stop coming regularly. (Not me, of course; I'm a fanatic. I live in fear that people will tell me not to come so often.) Anyway, I like to see bands try develop what they're working with, one way or another. I think that can be done well even in a very strictly traditional vein, and should be considered even by bands who plan to play a song the same way every time.

Carefully planned and practiced pseudo-improvised solos are perfectly reasonable and may even be wise for most folks. Even "free" improvization is usually best fairly carefully planned. In fact, I think it's proverbial that improvization requires even more careful planning than a straight performance. At a minimum it goes without saying that the rest of the band will want to expect the unexpected to be really happy with it, no matter how well it plays out.

I don't think solos have to be over bridges. A lot of people do them as intoductions or whatever the other end is called, or over a standard verse. Giving everyone a turn on a verse is very common, or alternating phrases - you know - "complement these four bars, or match it or top it." Improvization doesn't have to be a full solo either - just a slight variation on a turn. I've noticed that in classic surf successive verses are seldom exactly the same, and while some of this must be carefully planned development, or accidental deviations from the plan, I think most of it is just exhuberance with familiar material.

Personally I like an occasional over the top completely improvised solo (having missed them ever since they went out of vogue in the early 90's) regardless of the type of music (classical being the exception).

That being said, I'd rather hear a great song with no solo whatsoever than a horrible song with a masterfully improvised lead

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My skills are pretty limited but if im playing by myself i generally expand on the theme and if im jamming with other people end up improv soloing. Im definitely not a big on elaborate solos i think they should kept short, sweet and to the point, though there are some pretty crazy rockabilly solos that sound pretty damn good.

Well I can't improvise to save myself, so any solos in my songs are pre-written. Either that or just development. Both work for me.