[Dixielandjazz] Re: Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 6, Issue 49

[Charlie Hooks]

on 6/26/03 3:33 PM, Stephen Barbone at barbonestreet at earthlink.net wrote:

Where am I going on a song? I don't know, but the audience seems to enjoy
the
conversation. Before hand, I think only of the song itself, the words, the
meaning, the
feeling and as I start to play something, the right brain (I guess) takes
over and I am
soloing totally by ear and right brain.

Maybe we are saying similar things but imaging them differently.  I don't
play pat choruses--except for one that I call my Ab chorus used on Tiger
Rag, Burbone St. Parade, and other tunes with the same chords--but I always
need to "decide" what I'm going to play at least one bar and preferably two
or three ahead.  Simple inspiration needs to come in bar-lengths, in
clusters of sound comprised of the chords and the line you are heading into.
Otherwise, you'll just play random notes--whatever holes your fingers happen
to be covering.  I tend to "hear" a bar or two ahead and then play what I'm
hearing.  And I agree with you that much of this comes from the feeling of
the song, much influenced by the words of the song.  Yet I  know more than
one good player who claims never to care about any words, even to slow
ballads.  Go figure.

Charlie