You’ve got some language and you’ve got chops, maybe some bebop language from Charlie Parker or Paul Chambers. You take a solo over an F blues on your electric bass, and it still sounds boring.
If you’re working out how to solo on electric bass, especially in jazz, here’s what I’d check first. Chances are you’re playing on the one. I mean both of them: beat one, and degree one, which is the root. Bass players start on both out of habit, because that’s what we’re used to from playing bass lines.
Good language still sounds boring on beat one
Bootsy Collins once said that everything is on the one, and he’s right. When you’re playing a bass line, the one ends up being the most important part. It’s also extremely important in soloing, but in a different way. You have to feel it without always playing it.
In the course, I play a solo over an F blues with some really good language in it, a lot of it bebop language that comes from Charlie Parker or Paul Chambers, and it sounds boring. The reason is that I’m playing on beat one every single time.
Playing on beat one constantly in your solo makes really good language sound boring.
Cole Davis
Even if you have language and you have chops, what would otherwise be a really good solo gets boring as soon as you start playing on beat one constantly, the same way you would in a bass line. We bass players fall prey to this all the time, because we’re so used to everything being on the one. You’re almost a prisoner to it. Where’s the one? Oh, there it is. Okay, good.
This has nothing to do with scales or modes. I’m no expert in scales or modes. They don’t even teach scales or modes at Juilliard, where I went to college. What you need is to feel the form without being bound to one, two, three, four.
Feel the one without playing it
Anybody can tell you not to start all your lines on beat one. The question is how you practice it. You don’t need to transcribe a Charlie Parker solo and get in over your head. You practice it with a subtracted bass line.
Take a simple bass line on a blues and leave beat one out, while you keep the time. That lets you feel the one without having to play it. Then play around with the rest of the bar. Another way in is to play over the bar line, so you get used to feeling the form without playing beat one all the time.
In the course, I play a phrase where you hear the one, but it’s actually beat two. You think it’s the one. Then when I come back to the real one, it feels really good. It feels interesting and unusual and funky. That’s how you want to play.
Expect this to feel strange at first. A lot of us are uncomfortable with silence, and bass players most of all, because we’re playing all the time. Even the drummer lays out some of the time. But if a bass player lays out on a gig, it’s a disaster. It sends a panic button to everyone on stage. So when the quarter notes go away, something in you says, uh oh, where are the quarter notes? Get back to the quarter notes. That panic is what gets in the way of your solo.
Get off the root, too
When a bass player thinks of F7, what notes come to mind? Root and fifth. That’s right for us, because that’s our job. A saxophone player, a trumpet player, a pianist or a guitarist thinks of thirds and sevenths, A and E-flat on F7, because they know the bass player’s got the root and fifth.
That’s where our solos tend to suffer. We’re dealing with the bass notes and not the solo notes. If the bass player is already playing that note and you play it too, that’s not harmony, that’s unison. When you’re taking a solo, you want to play good, interesting harmony.
This doesn’t mean you avoid the root. Charlie Parker probably played a C on a C7 at some point. You just don’t start on it. When I hear a bass player start their line on the root, already I’m bored. It’s a great bass line, but they don’t know how to play a solo without going back to that root. If I hear them start on the third, now I’m thinking, okay, they know how to solo. And that makes everyone else’s job more fun. Now the pianist doesn’t have to pretend they’re comping for an imaginary soloist while the bass player walks.
So you reverse the roles. The third and seventh become your primary notes, and the root and fifth become reinforcements you use sparingly. You need the root in there, because you can’t make a good melodic statement with two notes. In other words, you’re not starting on beat one or degree one. Of course you’ll start there occasionally, but not most of the time.
Try this today: an F blues with no ones
When you’re first learning to solo, leave the metronome off for this. I’m an advocate of the metronome, and Ron Carter uses the metronome. But I always say feel before time. You want to feel the one before you drill it in with the click.
- Warm up on two chords. Go back and forth from F7 to B-flat 7, playing the third and the seventh with the root in between. Nothing else. Listen to how quickly it starts to sound like the melodies you hear in real soloing.
- Walk, then drop beat one. Play a simple bass line on a blues. Then play it again with beat one left out of every bar, and keep the time.
- Start every line on the third. Using only the 1, 3, 5 and 7, play a full chorus where every line starts on the third.
- Leave space in unusual places. If the space always comes back to beat one, it just sounds like a slightly more rhythmically advanced walking bass line. Leave space where you wouldn’t in a two-feel, do it arbitrarily, and let your ideas breathe.
- Then add the click. Once you can feel it, put the metronome on just beat four, which is what I do, and play it again.
That’s the start of the path in Jazz Soloing on Electric Bass: From the Beginning, where we build a solo from a bass line instead of a blank canvas. Everything here starts from walking, so if you want more of that under your fingers, there’s Walking on Electric Bass: Part 2. And if you want something to practice with, there are the free practice tools.
Before you learn another lick, play one chorus without the one, and listen to how different the licks you already have start to sound.
