Phrasing, solos, fiddle tunes

[blongnl]

Hi All,

Here's a question:

How did you learn to "move around a melody" when taking a break or solo? I'm just getting the hang of taking breaks, and I'd like to have a sense of what I can do when I practice to work on tastefully and interestingly solo over fiddle tunes melodies.

Can anyone recommend any resource on this topic?

[Pete Martin]

Play the chords slowly to the piece you are working on. Sing out loud what you want the solo to sound like. Then learn it!

[T.D.Nydn]

There's a few ways I approach this..I usually start with some sense of the melody,whether it's even the correct notes or not,,just sort of get the intervals close..and then start deviating into the unreckonizable,but always throwing some kind of oringinal notes in as a glue to hold it together.another way is to follow the beat,or feel of the tune,play to the beat,I start off simple and build to completely untasteful.never blow your wad right off in the beginning,save it for the end...

[UsuallyPickin]

One way is to have a form , an outline. for constructing a solo. You need a beginning ie. a kickoff , a middle composed of the melody and a few arpeggios and double stops and a conclusion , generally a flashy lick ending on the tonic tone of the key chord. You want to stay close enough to the melody that it can be recognized in what you are playing. Otherwise you will sound like you are noodling. R/

[farmerjones]

Play the chords slowly to the piece you are working on. Sing out loud what you want the solo to sound like. Then learn it!

Yep. Or whistle it. It being the melody or the break/solo.

[Pete Martin]

If you can't sing very slowly what you want the solo to sound like, then you need to study the style. The best way to do this is transcribe and learn solos from your favorite player(s).

[jshane]

Play the chords slowly to the piece you are working on. Sing out loud what you want the solo to sound like. Then learn it!

The absolute best advice. (and the only real way to do it I think, except for mechanically).

[Joel Glassman]

The way I've done it is to collect 10 versions of a fiddle tune.
This is easy to do from Youtube or buying mp3s on Amazon.
There will be a variety of interpretations. Learn them
as if they were different tunes. Then be able to substitute different
A and B sections as you are playing. It can be intuitive or more structured
depending on your style. Once you are very proficient at blending versions
it becomes improvisation. I highly recommend being able to sing or hum along
with recordings and your own playing. It makes for a great personal connection
with the music.

[SincereCorgi]

The late, great John McGann had a whole book called something like "Developing Melodic Variations on Fiddle Tunes" that would give you a lot of good ideas.

[JeffD]

One component to this is to listen a lot to the kind of music the tune is a part of. The melodic variation should, in most cases, be tastefully within the genre. The genre kind of has invisible limits to what kinds of variations sound cool but are still within the genre. The only way to know is to listen a lot.

So for example, if the tune is some old Carter Family song from the early 30s, well listening to a lot of that music tells me what kinds of variations will sound authentic enough or at least not jarring.

The exception would be when your variation is a deliberate attempt to update or modernize a tune, or to jazzify it. There again, a lot of listening pays off because you will be able to hear (almost feel) exactly where your solo becomes transgressive, and either emphasize that or play with it some.

I really think that listening is 3/4 of playing. Over and over I keep bumping into this.

[farmerjones]

I really think that listening is 3/4 of playing. Over and over I keep bumping into this.

So true! Research & Development is where my non-musical life converges with the musical. Listening is the Research. Research is very important. So when you get to the development stage you're more efficient. Also like Jeff referred, by the time one gets to the key, the chords, the time signature, and the style, there is precious little that actually fits. True enough, one is free to paint outside the lines, but knowing where the lines are takes research.

[Skip Kelley]

There is alot of great advice! One thing that has always helped me, was to listen to the song repeatedly and get it in my head. Then sit down and start working on the mandolin to pull it out of your brain. As Tony Rice once said, "if you can hear it you can play it".

[stevedenver]

i play the melody over and over, sometimes for forty minutes or more.

sounds silly, but i read about john hartford doing darlin corrie for an hour or more with friends, and, tried this. for me variations begin to present themselves, and like in a jazz " head" once the theme is firmly established,variations are like adding spices or colors to a routine or bland base or background. Trills, pull offs hammer ons, slides are all a start, at coloring and phrasing, then, new notes. for me often minors and mixolidian, just a scale in another place that fits over the changes and works. sometimes dissonant notes too, for tension and resolution.

im also big on mash ups, ie fitting a second, different song into the first songs changes, then mix.

i fully agree with chords as THE musical skeleton.

by really working a tune for long periods,

this ingrains the phrasing, and helps me identify certain critical chord notes, 3 and 5 and 7.

i will often change things , to minor, try a mode, change fingerboard position and leading fingers to play the melody. for me this long working brings out fingering and melody changes and also changes in phrasing and timing.

once you know the tune physically and mentally, you experiment with new notes. see what sounds good and fits.