Hi all,
Below I have made a non-technical analysis on different ways to form questions and responses in soloing/improvization. This analysis is based on Satriani's - the extremist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP7OYW8rA20) where I think it includes all of the following approaches to make his soloing more musical and interesting.
1. questions are usually repeated taking different responses each time
2. Adjacent Questions have small rhythm/melodic variations. Similarly for responses
3. Responses may also be small variations of the questions
4. Sometimes questions will ascend the scale and responses descend or the opposite
5. Other times questions will be mainly based on longer duration notes (half and quarter notes) and responses on shorter duration notes like eighths or sixteenths or the opposite
6. a question may also be a repeating phrase. After it is played repeatedly, a response will follow.
7. responses can also be formed by repeating phrases
8. questions and responses can be short phrases or longer phrases (longer phrases have a feeling like going downhill then climbing up and start to roll with speed again)
9. often responses are played in higher octave or lower octave than questions
10. Also in general, it uses a lot of different rhythm patterns and pauses (even very short ones) at the end of most phrases
I have tried to record an example for most of the above scenarios. I must admit that it may be hard to spot the demonstrated points in the given examples since I was trying also to play something interesting at the same time, which I found it wasn't easy to come up with good ideas. All examples are attached in this post.
I played each example so many times in order to provide the best possible recording but unfortunately there are still some issues.
Let me know on your suggestions and what you think.