Treatise on improvisation

"Since I can't read music and everything, I find out that I do the best when I just... listen for where, where i'm trying to go with it, where it can go, and not try to rush it, not try to make up things as i'm going, just let them come out, then I'm a lot better off, if I start trying to pay attention to where I am on the neck, or this is the proper way to do this or that, then I end up thinking that thing through, instead of playing from the heart I'm playing from the mind, and that's where I find that I get in trouble."
- Stevie Ray Vaughan

I was just listening to some records of yesterday's gig. My solo sounds truly awful... noodly non-phrases everywhere and no resolution whatsoever.

I realise the problem now, having just a minute ago done a few recordings which are surprisingly satisfactory.
The phrase given by some of the musicians i respect the most : Zhaohan, Shawn, Xiumin, Hyqel - 'Just whack" is far more profound than I initially thought.

On one level, you need to understand why a solo works. How the artist manipulates notes, phrasing, harmony in order to create an effect.

On the other hand, I realise that thinking about your solo ruins it. There is a place in the soul where both art and the appreciation of it comes from, which slowly assimilates every revelation in listening, in reading or in viewing and makes it part of you. Innately, just by appreciation of it, the musician understands intuitively the effect of what he hears, and this intuition goes here and becomes part of you, and this is the only part of you which understands it well enough to use it.

No amount of theory will correct for a deficiency here.
Solos come from here, not from analysis, and to force an effect on your solo is tantamount to editing your very being. It doesn't work; human beings are far too strong for that.

This is not to say that musicians (or, for that matter, writers and artists) should not transcribe, memorise and analyse other people's work. This is essential; it adds a body of physical technique that can be drawn upon when improvising. Without physical technique musical ideas cannot be realised. Thus when the musical sense demands the sound of, say, a tritone substitution of D7, one must actually be able to play it in order to have any effect.

That is the beauty of any art, be it music or writing or visual; it cannot come solely from the rational mind which is so easily duplicated with circuitry; it must come from the part of humans (call it the subconscious, call it the soul) that responds to the world with a wonder that may never be replicated.

adam

*edit* in a quick update, i'd just like to note that having spent 2 hours on my dismal soloing I have FAILED COMPLETELY to do my lit essay. GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh.