Question regarding cycling through arpeggios

T1mothy

I learned the arpeggios to see structure under actual musical ideas. Not to create music itself. It calmed my worried mind after transcribing couple of solos and not getting anywhere. I am at the starting point of grasping some language. What songs should I be looking at (not players, I got those chosen) when looking for single chord phrases (short ideally)? I mean those ii Vs I hear from many of my favourite players sound amazing and I can get those down but I believe tackling minors and dominants first and collecting lets say 10 ways of how to express myself over each of these qualities by myself first might bring some deeper understanding. Im also slightly disturbed by however amazing the phrase is (and I AM trying to find short phrases) it sort of loses the beauty when deprived of the context.

kevingcox

I think you touch on a good point, much of the effect of a great phrase or lick is where it resides in the context of what is happening around it. Some of my favourite passages of music don't sound nearly as good on their own or as another lick in a series of canned licks. It can be so easy to forget the flow that builds up to a great moment in music.

There aren't many of Django's solos that sound like a bunch of licks strung together (at least not to me), but there are many other players who definitely sound that way sometimes.

T1mothy

Yet still gathering language is so emphasized (and I mean it makes sense. Id like to know WHAT to play and just adjust that to my likings) and Im not sure how to go about it..

jwpfeifer

I completely agree with Jazzaferri on this. If you take the analogy that soloing is similar to learning a language then the arpeggios (as useful as they are) represent only a collection of notes that work over a given chord progression, in the same way that a collection of words might be used to form sentences. But the real "music" happens when the right words, with the right timing are put together to make meaningful statements. Arpeggios by themselves aren't all that meaningful or interesting musically even though it is important to know them. (similar to knowing a vocabulary of words you can use)

For me, the best approach is to learn other people's solos, then analyze the various phrases in those solos. From that you can see how the arpeggios are applied, and how chromatic notes are used to connect those notes in interesting ways to make musical sentences (similar to learning how to put words together to create common phrases in a language).

Then you can start to group together your favorite musical licks from other people's solos (and create variations of your own) into various categories such as: common licks to use over minor chords, major licks, dominant 7 licks, diminished, etc. I bought some transcriptions of several of Django's solos to work from and this has helped me a lot in terms of building up a vocabulary of things I can use when soloing over Gypsy Jazz tunes. I'm still new to Gypsy Jazz but this same approach has worked well for me over the years when learning Blues, Country-chicken-picking, Rockabilly, Jazz, etc. It's all based on the same kinds of musical concepts, just a different set of vocabulary and accents :-)

-Jim