Why Do I Freeze Up When It's My Turn to Solo?

I played in a big band concert a while ago. Standing in the trumpet section in back of me was the fourth trumpet player. He had a solo in the next piece and I could sense he was nervous. After all, he wasn't normally the trumpet soloist.

Just before the piece got counted off, I looked back and told him, "Just start with a long, loud, high note. Don't think about where it goes. Just blow that note and let it carry you into your solo."

He did it. And he played his ass off. It wasn't the specific note he started with that was so special. It was the commitment to it that created the necessary momentum for him to play a really good solo. Once he'd started with something confident and undeniable, the rest of the solo just kept moving. He ended up really proud of what he played, and the rest of the trumpet section was surprised by his surprising performance. Only that one committed note was needed for success.

Have you ever felt some version of that fear and hesitation when you're about to solo? And right as you're starting to play, nothing comes to mind, or what you do play is so tentative it barely counts.

It's tempting to write that off as a confidence problem and leave it at that. But that fourth trumpet player already had everything he needed to play a good solo before I said a word to him. He knew the changes. He had enough of the vocabulary. Nothing about his ability changed in that moment.

What changed was that he had enough confidence to actually use what he already knew.

It's not necessarily am I ready? It's is something interfering with what I'm already ready to do?

The Freeze Can Feel Like Foot-by-Foot Skiing

Picture a skier at the top of a run, tentatively deciding how to go down the mountain.

One way is to ease into it, check your balance every few feet, make small corrections constantly, and never quite commit to speed. The other way is to push off and let gravity take over. You still make corrections, but now you're making them inside momentum, not instead of it.

Tentative skiing and tentative soloing can share the same move.

It's like when you're checking yourself with self-talk note by note, thinking, was that right?, should I have gone somewhere else?, was this good enough? You're spending your attention evaluating the last move instead of making the next one. And that halting playing process kills your ability to express yourself musically and authentically they way you hear others doing it.

That's not a lack of skill. It's a mode you've gotten stuck in, and it produces the same result as fear: blanking out as to what to play next.

The push down the ski hill works because you're moving before you know it. The corrections still happen. They just happen subsconciously inside the momentum. You're flying and there's no point to the constant questioning.

What Improvisation Research Tells Us

Some interesting research has been studies on what happens in the brain during improvisation.

In a study of jazz pianists, Charles Limb and Allen Braun found that improvisation was characterized by a certain pattern in the prefrontal cortex: activity decreased in lateral portions of the prefrontal cortex while activity increased in the medial prefrontal cortex.

The lateral prefrontal regions are associated with conscious monitoring, evaluation, focused attention, planning, and the step-by-step adjustment of behavior. The authors found that the reduced activity of that monitoring and evaluating part of the brain provided for more spontaneous, unplanned associations that are part of creative improvisation. They also looked at previous research suggesting that focused attention and conscious self-monitoring can get in the way of spontaneity and impair creative performance.

That's a much more helpful idea than simply telling tentative improvisers to "turn off their self-doubt."

The research doesn't explain why a musician freezes before a solo, and it doesn't show that the trumpet player's experience was caused by these particular brain mechanisms. But it does suggest that the mental processes that help us consciously monitor and control planned behavior aren't the processes we want running at full strength when we're trying to improvise jazz.

That changes the way we can think about confidence.

Confidence Doesn't Come First

We tend to think confidence comes first. You become confident, and that confidence gives you the freedom to play well. If you don't feel confident, the natural conclusion is that you need to somehow build more confidence before you can play freely.

But what if confidence isn't the only thing that gets you moving? What if it is partly the result of just getting moving? Once the music is underway, you have something to respond to instead of having to invent the whole beginning in your head. Confidence can emerge from that experience of moving forward without constantly checking whether you're doing it right./p>

That's why the popular "just relax" and "there are no wrong notes" advice so rarely fixes the freeze. They're asking you to stop monitoring yourself by consciously monitoring yourself.

Momentum doesn't calm your internal editor. It gives the editor less need to take over.

Three Ways to Start Moving

If momentum is the lever, the question is, how do you get it going before you feel ready?

There are a few ways in.

Way 1

The committed note

This is the brute-force version. A long, loud, undeniable note or short lick that gives you nothing to take back. It works because it's too big to hedge on. This is what I gave the trumpet player, and it's worth using for the moments when nothing else is prepared and you just need to get going.

Way 2

The prepared phrase

Decide your first few notes before your turn arrives, so there's nothing left to negotiate when it does. It doesn't need to be overly clever. It just needs to be planned in advance. You know how your solo will start.

Way 3

Picking up the thread

This is the one worth paying the most attention to, because it's not really a trick. It's jazz musicianship.

Listen to how the soloist before you ends their last solo phrase or what the band plays just before you start, and let your solo begin from there as a continuation rather than a fresh start.

You're not generating momentum out of nothing. It's already in the room. You're noticing it and stepping into it instead of waiting for a novel idea to pop into your head.

The Push Is a Principle, Not a Trick

What I gave that trumpet player wasn't encouragement. It wasn't "you've got this" or "just relax."

What I told him to do made it hard for him to tentatively creep into the solo. It worked because his basic skills were never the problem. They was there the whole time.

That's what's worth remembering the next time you feel that scary silence coming as you start your solo.

The freeze isn't proof you're not ready. You may already have everything you need to play a beautiful solo. You just need a way to get past the moment when you start doubting yourself before you've given yourself a chance to play.

A note. A phrase. Or simply the thread the last soloist left hanging.

Start there.

Let the music create the momentum, and the confidence will arrive.

The freeze isn't proof you're not ready. You already have everything you need. Just start before the doubt creeps in.