Re: extended solos
My experience is that in blues or rock groups, the band likes to hear the sax player " do his/her thing" so they let you ride for a long time. I sort of figured out that in order not to completely bore myself with repeated lines and ideas, I would have to really think about building my ideas. This meant to start it simple both rhymically and melodically and develop my train of thought. Not just, please excuse the term, blow my w*d right out of the gate. In that setting, though, it always behooves the soloist to keep it simple as the dancers get confused if they can't count to four. When I was in college, the horn players loved to have cutting contests on things like rhythm changes for a zillion bars to see to what extent their peers had done their transcribing and memorizing of other people's solos, but that was mostly a chest puffing, antler rattling, excercise and not very creative. It did build your vocabulary, though.
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