From mtneuman@mailbag.com Sun Oct 13 15:18:25 2002
Subject:Re: tuning/transposition/self-teaching advancement...

> I personally find Gb and Ab to be my toughest keys for interesting solos.

Solos is a whole different story, but, the type of musician that I am, soloing
is *not important*. IMHO soloing is not important unless you're striving for a
solo career, say, Joey D. If you're not, put soloing work on the backburner and
concentrate on your comping, LH, and runs. As your changes get more expressive
this will help your soloing in the long run, anyways.

> A very cool trick I picked up from a great jazz player when I was a kid is
> to use as few notes as possible to support the chord.

A related method to this is, when comping, change the notes you're playing as
little as possible. As the chords change, keep as many of the same notes
involved . . . this actually sounds a great deal more impressive than doing a
lot of movement, and it opens up to a lot more rhythmic ideas. This is actually
a lot harder than it sounds, as your unchanging notes have to work for each
chord.

For example, Bbm Gb F change (notice I'm not writing any extentions in) your
chords could be (lowest note to highest note) Eb Ab Db over Bb and Gb, and Eb A
Db over F. You're only changing one note among three chords . . .
This will not sound good to everybody, or more accurately, not everybody is able
to make this sort of thing sound good.