Great soloists don’t just play notes — they tell stories. And one of the most practical ways to sharpen your storytelling is to borrow from writers, who have spent centuries figuring out how to make narratives compelling. This lesson takes a list of literary devices and repurposes them as phrasing tools you can reach for right now.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: A concrete vocabulary of phrasing ideas — rhyming, alliteration, juxtaposition, cliffhangers, plot, and more — that you can apply immediately to make your solos more coherent, purposeful, and expressive. There’s no right or wrong way to use these; they’re nudges, not rules.
Rhyming and Alliteration
Rhyming in literature means ending multiple lines with the same sound. For us, that translates to ending phrases on the same note, the same rhythm, or the same short melodic tag — a little hook that returns at the close of each idea to give the listener something to hold on to. Alliteration is the mirror image: it’s about beginnings. Start several phrases on the same note or with the same rhythmic kick-off, then take each one somewhere different. Together, these two devices give your solo an internal logic that listeners feel even if they can’t name it.
Acrostic Progressions and Common Forms
An acrostic poem hides a word down the left-hand margin. An acrostic progression in music means the starts of your phrases connect through some shared theme — a rising motif, a common note, or even a melody that only becomes visible when you zoom out and read across the beginnings. It’s similar to alliteration but broader: the link might be subtle rather than identical. Common forms borrow structural templates from poetry — AABB (two rhyming pairs), AAB (blues form), AABBA (limerick), and more exotic shapes like a haiku’s brevity. Try mapping one of those forms onto a chorus and see what constraints do for your creativity.
Juxtaposition and Cliffhangers
Juxtaposition is contrast for its own sake: dense flurries of notes against long, slow lines; high register against low; loud against soft; sharp tone against mellow. The trick is to make the contrast feel deliberate rather than accidental. A cliffhanger is equally powerful — end a phrase before it resolves, or stop on an unexpected note, and the listener leans forward. Leaving a phrase melodically or rhythmically unresolved creates tension that the next phrase (or the one after that) gets to pay off.
Plot, Foreshadowing, and Thinking of the Ending First
A good story isn’t written word by word with no idea of where it’s going. Before you start soloing, decide what kind of solo you want: exciting? mellow? intense? melodic? That pre-solo planning is your plot. Even more powerful is thinking of the ending first — hear a strong two-bar climax in your head, and then spend the whole solo teasing and building toward it. As the transcript puts it, you can “foreshadow” that ending from sixteen bars out, introducing fragments early so the arrival feels earned. Improvising doesn’t mean abandoning structure; it means carrying the structure inside you.
If you’ve got a strong two-bar idea to finish on, that can fuel an incredibly large amount of soloing beforehand. It could fill 16, 32 bars beforehand of just teasing into this climax that you plan to get to.
Quotations and the Rule of Three
Quoting a melody or rhythm the audience already knows is an instant connection — their ear lights up and they’re right there with you. Keep it brief and make sure it fits the context. The rule of three is the simplest device on the list: repeat something exactly three times for dramatic effect. It’s everywhere in music precisely because it works. You’ll see John McLean doing this in the video linked below — watch how he combines rhyming, alliteration, and the rule of three in a single passage, and notice how the acrostic idea plays out across the starts of consecutive phrases.
Taking it further: These devices can be layered. A solo might open with alliteration (same starting motif), build through juxtaposition (sparse against dense), and close with a rule-of-three climax you planned before you played the first note. Study vocalists and horn players — they use all of this instinctively. The Kurt Elling video referenced in this lesson is an excellent place to start watching for these devices in real time.
Your homework: Pick just two devices from this list — rhyming and the cliffhanger are a good starting pair — and take them into a backing-track session this week. After each chorus, ask yourself: did my phrase endings rhyme? Did I leave at least one phrase unresolved? Keep a mental note of where it felt natural and where it felt forced. Bring those observations to the group.
Here’s the link to the solo from the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7cT73tDQr4