A lot of what I know is intuitive so it comes as a surprise sometimes to realise the techniques which I use subconsciously.

I think its more fulfilling when one grasps the concept of and embraces the "journey". It can be pretty disappointing for those that want to "arrive". My $0.02...

The journey is a lot more fun when you feel good about it! Sometimes improving your skills feels like pulling teeth.

Phil W said: "The first time I had to play a dozen solos per night (it's a 4 hour gig) I found it pretty hard but soling regularly in public has really advanced my performance."

..and this is what I say:

Man, improvising in public should ideally be the same issue as improvising while jamming or while practicing.

I said: Man, improvising in public should ideally be the same issue as improvising while jamming or while practicing.

Phil said: Ideally, yes! In reality I find it very different.

A few weeks ago I had an idea for a tune, and I sat down and played the melody I had in my head, easily grabbed some chords that set the mood I was after, wrote it down and that was that. Head to guitar to paper in 10 minutes.

Yeah - If you're ridding on the bus from Laredo to Mexico City with a goat and seven chickens, you may want to take a ciesta...

Me too! It's hard as F--!!!!LOL! Yup, in order to feel comfortable improvising in public, one needs to IMPROVISE IN PUBLIC!

The only thing I think when I play, after making sure I'm in the right place on the neck, is "hope I don't screw up!", and then I'm too busy to think.

When I play these days, it's about feeling whats going on around me and finding a place to fit in that has been covered yet. Beyond that, I let whatever's gonna happen take place.

That's better. I still think you could do certain things to put yourself in a place that has a higher percentage chance of good results. Not all of those things are musical knowledge like chords and scales, intangibly speaking.

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. Actually the improvising part I've always done - just not the soloing part. It's a lot of fun though!

All of a sudden (with my new regular jazz gigs) I find myself playing about 15 solos a gig and it's fun - but it's making me work. Well I say jazz, but though it's standards, it's mostly funk, samba and soul type rhythms with the odd swing 4/4 for good measure.

What I really notice is that I have to be aware of avoiding making the solos sound too similar - using similar licks or approaches. I noticed half way through he first gig that all my solos were in the top two octaves and I wasn't really utilising the full range for example.

It think that as it's funky music, maybe some of my solos could have been bassline extemporisations rather than the hornlike melodic approach I took.

The experience also helps me develop the architecture and design of solos and how to make them build and not sound too disjointed. I guess I studied for this for many years and now I'm having to get busy applying it.

Luckily the guitar and drums tend to lay down complete grooves under my solos (which I prefer) rather then dropping out - though I guess once or twice in 15 solos would have added variety.

Of course, it's not about thinking. When I get on stage I relax, listen and react (and sometimes pray for inspiration ;\) )
But when I prepare and practice I think through ideas and wanted to write some ideas for varying solos down as a practice tool.

There's a danger in over-thinking music. As John Clayton said, "There is a childlike innocence, a zone we are in when we are playing and really enjoying music. The trend towards 'left-brain' jazz is damaging a lot of players. They use rules; more leading tones, the modal approach, numerical analysis, altered scales. All of these things are good to know, but imagine if the player had the sound under his or skin first and then analysed or discovered that something was a 9/13 chord with a b5 substitution."

I hope that with my years of jazz listening before I ever played it that theory has just given names to sounds I knew. This is a text-based forum however, so rather than exchange hundreds of tiny audiofile examples, here's a list I came up with of ideas for varying and developing solos. (Please add)

Very register
Make sure phrases start at unpredictable points in the bar
Use tonal differences - EQ? but more often hand position/muting etc
Exotic scales
Dynamics
Varying time feel in relation to the beat
Phrase length
Articulation of notes - sliding, vibrato etc. and timbral/tonal shape of notes
Note length
Link to lyrics content and 'emotional' content
Repeated 'climax' type lines (I tend to repeat some of these over 15 solos
Shape of solo
Use of 'pretty' notes - 9, #11, 13
Guide tones
Developing a phrase idea
Slow, melodic or busy
Rhyhmic motifs or melodic motifs changed to fit the harmony
Going outside/inside
Bassline type extemporisations
Pentatonics
Use of space
Study of great soloists
Use of variety of theory based approaches
Call and response
Tension and release
Being aware of the melodic range of phrases and their expansion or contraction
Use of landmark notes
Blues playing (I did notice some of my blues phrasing sounded a little similar - oops)
Playing off rhythm section ideas
Alternating simple and complex
Singing what you play
Breathing like a horn or singer
Prayer ;\)
Bebop approaches
Forward Notion (I never really got quite comfortable with that)
Simple modal phrasing as in Miles' beautiful solo on So What
Quoting or rephrasing the melody

Phew.

Any thoughts?

I think that's kind of a negative attitude, in that it's defined by a negative (Don't do something...)

I prefer the affirmative method (I will do this, that, the other...)