Structuring a solo around a melody?

Hey all,

I'm trying to construct a good solo for a song that I transposed to the key of C (Ray Charles' Drown in My Own Tears). I have the C maj scale down and the C blues scale down, along with the C minor pentatonic. Is there any way to create a good solo that corresponds with the melody of the song besides to do so by ear? Thanks.

I think what you're asking is about improvisation, or creating variations on a theme. Seemingly simple question, but it goes to the heart of that magic we call music. The ear and intuition are probably better than any formula or rules of thumb.

Dougf is has good points, but to give you a couple ideas...

First: Make sure you can actually play the melody of the song.

Second: Find the part of the melody that goes somewhere. Go somewhere else.

Muddle about a whole bunch of times finding something fun.

Find a way to go back to the part of the melody that brings it all back together, from wherever else you went.

Now, that's a great song, but it's a little hard to do this with, cause of it's style. However, there are a lot of great little horn fills you could build off of. Also, that little piano riff he puts in is a great starting point. Try theme and variation around that.

Also, listen to every version of the song you can find. Sometimes people will do different arrangements and you can steal ideas from the novel arrangements to form the basis of your solo.

or insert there altered progression as what you solo over.

This thread just kind of reminded me of Stevie Ray Vaughan. I was a huge fan of that guy, and seen him in person many times. I loved that guys style, and when he played, the band would be behind him as he played the melody, then you could actually see him "leave" and just go off on a blues tangent in a trance like state. We used to laugh, because the band behind him would kinda look at each other and grin, and try to follow him, or just stay the course with the rhythmn until Stevie came back, hahhah.. Stevie would snap back, and flow back into the melody, and him and the band would continue on like nothing had happened. I LOVED that about Stevie Ray Vaughan, and actually not so uncommon with blues guitarists. I can't compete, but I tend to do that myself, and just make it mine, and own it when I am into it. I have several songs that I do several different ways, depending on my mood..

Im not so sure you can actually apply a "formula" to that..

Remember, if you steal from enough places, you can call it research instead

PoisonDart said:

Dougf is has good points, but to give you a couple ideas...

First: Make sure you can actually play the melody of the song.

Second: Find the part of the melody that goes somewhere. Go somewhere else.

Muddle about a whole bunch of times finding something fun.

Find a way to go back to the part of the melody that brings it all back together, from wherever else you went.

Now, that's a great song, but it's a little hard to do this with, cause of it's style. However, there are a lot of great little horn fills you could build off of. Also, that little piano riff he puts in is a great starting point. Try theme and variation around that.

Also, listen to every version of the song you can find. Sometimes people will do different arrangements and you can steal ideas from the novel arrangements to form the basis of your solo.

or insert there altered progression as what you solo over.

Click to expand...

These are all excellent suggestions, and I didn't mean to dis on theory and rules of thumb. I remember a quote, something to the effect, "the apprentice must know the rules, the master must know when to break them".