Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical HELP ME!!!!!! My piano solos SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My take on solos is: Ease up on yourself and don't get all academic with yourself. Find a style you like and do your best to emulate in your own way. You're always going to sound like yourself anyway. Chances are you do not like your playing because you have an idea in mind and you know you did not achieve it. The audience does not know that. That is why you will sometimes hear a compliment when you did not like what you played. Just relax and be yourself. That's my advice. and ...simple is better; less is more

if jazz is the style you're like to know, then get the charlie parker omnibook (in c). it's got about 150 pages of charlie parker solos. work through the whole book.note by note. phrase by phrase. it may take along time to do that .. months and months and very possibly more than a year.

as you learn to play the solos do everything you can to get them in your ear. sing them. analyse them. LISTEN to charlie parker play them! transpose whole solos or just licks from solos into different keys. turn the omnibook upside down and play the solos! ... i think from my tone you can understand the larger concept. which is you need to know this stuff not just a little bit but a LOT!!!!

i hope this helps .... of course there are a lot of different ways to learn to play jazz solos. and some might even be shorter than what i'm suggesting. but what i'm suggesting will work .. if you stick with it!

good luck!