I'm Peter Martin, and I'm Adam Manus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast.

Today we're going to give you seven things to listen for with learning a solo.

Let's do eight?

I don't know.

Seven.

Oh, right.

Well, you know what?

I'm open to eight if we have eight. But I bet we're going to come out to just seven. We'll see. Okay, we'll see. Okay. So, when you're learning a solo, we're talking about, you know, either transcribing or just even better yet, maybe just learning it by ear. And, you know, we're probably going to just skip over the obvious things like the notes and the tempo and all those kind of things in order to play it we're gonna assume that you're learning the solo yeah but these are things that you may miss and I think that the important part of this are things to listen for while you're learning the solo don't wait until the end as much as you can you know I mean it's there's a lot when you're learning a solo. You're trying to hear the notes, first of all, just to put it together. But these will be kind of bonus things that will really develop your ears, develop your concept, your improv

playing in general. And the first I'm going to say is interaction. So this one's easy to overlook

because if you're learning a piano solo on a trio

recording, you're obviously focused in on the piano. If you're learning a trumpet solo on a

quintet recording, you're focused in because that's the solo you're learning. But take advantage

of that opportunity to learn how that instrumentalist is interacting with others around them because

it affects what they play.

Sometimes he can give you important clues as to what's being played too.

Like I remember learning, you know, Thelonius Monk's solos, and I couldn't quite tell, like,

it would seem so simple where he was going harmonically, but I wasn't sure about it.

And sometimes I'll listen for the bass player, and Monk would leave some space, and the bass would play a note that was easier for me to find, and then I would use that to kind of fill in what Monk was playing. And that's not even so much interaction as opposed to, I mean, it is sometimes, but it's just kind of listening to everything that's happening. But then you can also really listen to the interaction, like between the drummer and the pianist is always fun, between the bass player and the drummer. And if you're learning like a drum solo or just the way a drummer plays on a tune, so important to learn how he interacts with the bass player. If you're a horn player learning, how they're interacting with drummer or the pianos, you know, all that. So just interaction in general and what else is happening. I love that. There's so much to learn other than just the notes of what the musician is playing. I mean, the interaction, you can't take that solo out of the context of what's going on around it. Right. And so, you know, don't. Really pay attention to what's happening. I love that. And I mean the process of learning, the reason we put this first and kind of caution you on this is even if you don't want to take it out of that context, you know, getting inside of the solo and trying to learn, it kind of forces you out. So you have to be very conscious and make a real concerted effort to check out the interaction. That's right. All right, number two of eight is phrasing.

You like that?

I love it.

Frasing is an incredibly important thing to pay attention to when you're learning a solo,

because, again, with the context, right?

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