I'm Peter Martin, and I'm Adam Anas.

Welcome to the You'll Hear It Podcast.

Today we're going to talk about our favorite soloing hacks that actually work. And you're not talking about musicians who are hacks who solo.

Well, we might get into that, but we're going to talk about like some hacks within the

solo first. So I guess we're talking about ways to play a good soul that people will stand up

and cheer for at the end. And some kind of hacks is like a shortcut, right? I don't know anything

about that, but I'll do what I can. Okay, sounds good. Okay, the first one, we always like to

start simple and we like to start effective. And that is to listen. Okay, the first one, we always like to start simple and we like to start effective.

And that is to listen.

So a lot of times we get to our solo, our time to shine, and for some reason we think we don't have to listen to what's happening around us.

And we just want to jump into everything that we know.

A lot of times that doesn't lead to the most effective solo.

If you listen to what's happening around you, there's a lot of great ideas there.

So sometimes you might think you have a great place to start your solo, but actually it

doesn't sound that good or even if it was potentially going to sound good, it's going to

come out contrived because you've been planning it and you've been having it sitting in your back pocket since the beginning of the night. So what I like to do is a lot of times is just start my solo, give a little bit of silence, which a lot of times is kind of what the tune needs anyway, and just wait for something to happen with the bass player, the drummer, at the room, a a door close or something to give me an idea

to kind of start my solo I also like that because it kind of gives me some confidence then to say

I can take anything that happens and turn into something good and it forces me to start that

storytelling kind of process so but the foundation of that is just listen so at the beginning

your solo the hack is don't play anything, listen. That might be for two beats, might be for two bars, might be for eight bars, but just listen a little bit and then let the magic happen. Yeah, I mean, you can even take that one step further and practice, you know, on the gig or on the jam session, you know, saying, I'm just going to listen to the snare drum for this

first chorus and just react to that. And that doesn't mean copying everything that the snare drum

plays, but being reactive to what the drummer is playing just with his or her left hand.

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