Thinking of ideas is a skill

One thing my jazz ensemble students struggle with, at the beginning, is coming up with ideas. Often my students won’t have any ideas for solos. Nothing. They’ll be completely lost and confused about how to think of ideas to use in solos.

That’s a skill.

The act of thinking of different ideas to use in solos is a skill. Coming up with ideas is a skill. If you’ve never tried to think of ideas for solos it’ll be difficult. But once you do it a few times and you continue practicing it, it’ll become easier and easier.

This is one reason why jazz musicians can so easily think of things to play over standards. They have no problem coming up with ideas for solos. One of the reasons for that is that they’ve done tons of work figuring out different ideas to use. They’ve practiced the skill of coming up with ideas.

So get practicing. Coming up with ideas is in itself a skill.

Once you’ve practiced it enough you’ll be able to come up with ideas much more easily.

One activity that one of my composition teachers had me to do in college was think of 10 ideas in 10 minutes. I had nothing for music to show him so he gave me a piece of sheet of manuscript paper and put on a 10 minute timer and said, “think of 10 ideas.” And he watched me. If I stopped for too long a period of time he’d say, “keep going. Just write ideas. It doesn’t matter if they’re good.”

And it made me a little uncomfortable at the time, but it was a great experience and a great exercise to do. It got me used to coming up with ideas. And it taught me a mentality or a mindset towards coming up with ideas that was super useful. It didn’t matter if I liked the ideas. Just coming up with the ideas was the goal. Just keep thinking of things. Sift through them later. Remove the ones you don’t like later. But for now, just think of the different ideas.

He taught me that it was a skill to think of ideas.

And the more you practice coming up with ideas and the more you think of new things, the better you’ll get at it.

It doesn’t help you write a full piece of music necessarily, but it helps with the initial step.

So give it a shot.

Take a piece of manuscript paper. Put on a timer. Try to think of 10 ideas in 10 minutes.