Tips for Great Guitar Solos

Here are some tools to use and strategize with when your trying to come up with ideas for guitar solos and nice lead lines in the context of modern music. None of these are mysterious or unreachable for even beginner guitar players. We use other similar and related templates to help us in other areas of our work, school, sports, and lives; so this can be considered the guitar-solo template.

Music as conversation:

My favourite soloists in music always seem to have an inate sense of what the other 

instruments in a song are doing and how to converse with them in a meaningful way. 

Even though they (guitarist) might be the prominent soloist in the band, they seem to be looking to play off something the bassist, drummer or keyboardist is doing underneath or to the side of them.   

Melody playback:

Great guitarists always use the songs melodies and themes to help come up with

solos and lines. I like to learn some of the vocal melody lines at different locations on the

fretboard and sneak them into my solos, lines and riffs. Sometimes it helps to use melodic content

as your start the solo or as your move up higher on the neck and build to a high point in the solo.

  

Rhythmic changes:

Many beginning guitar players make the mistake of being too predictable. Lead lines that 

always start at the top of the bar or always on the on-beat can often sound uninteresting

and unimaginative and leave the audience unmoved. It's important to mix things up with 

lines of unequal length, starting on the off-beats and playing over the bar-line. Adding 

triplets, rhythmic hick-ups and space between lines can add a fantastic amount of

dynamics, tension and excitement to your playing.  

Linear vs. Positional:

If positional playing (in one scale form) is putting me in a musical rut or not working in a 

specific song I will try a linear approach (playing on one or two strings). Sometimes

a small adjustment of that type will put you on a fresh path to new inspiration or

just on the path to what the song really needs. 

Chord or Target tones:

Just as horn players and piano players love to play lines that include arpeggios, triads and 

chord tones, many guitarist avoid this approach because it takes a fair amount of fretboard and

theory knowledge. A solution is to start with simple small triadic shapes on the 1st 3 strings and

highlight those in lead lines. A perfect example of this is the solo in 'Comfortably Numb'.

Phrases and sentences:

Way to many guitarist solo with musical run-on sentences. Try to leave some blank space

at the end a lick or phrase, like a period at the end of a sentence. I might try to play 4

phrases for an 8 bar solo or think of a solo as a musical poem. It will help create those

wonderful story lines we hear in classic solos. 

Space or "Air":

Don't be afraid to leave space and air in your solos. Sometimes the best thing to do 

when you want to play is to be silent and listen to what's going on around you in the

music. Try for 25% less notes in your solos. 

I hope this helps you to at least begin to strategize and think about soloing in different ways. 

Enjoying Music

When we talk about the enjoyment of food, we are not generally thinking about the 'grabbing' of a greasy hamburger from the drive-thru on our way to a ball-game that we should have been at 5 minutes ago. When we talk about the enjoyment on nature, we generally don't gravitate toward a picnic in the middle of a busy city street. When we talk about enjoyment of art, our minds don't lean toward discussing the merits of the 'visual perspective and composition' in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, and when we think about a thing like Canadian culture, crime and poverty might easily take a backseat to Hockey and Peacekeeping.

So in considering music, the pure enjoyment of it shouldn't be: rushed, as in the way we sometime eat; cluttered, with peripheral noise of the busyness of life, like a busy street; frivolous, like the cheap art of cartoons and media; or 'out of context', like misplacing the virtue for the vice in music.

The context for this will be to slow down, let the music take the centre stage, feel it's full meaning and see the good and the beautiful within it's forms.

ENJOY YOUR MUSIC THIS WEEK!

Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific. ~Aaron Copland

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. ~Confucius

Music can noble hints impart,

Engender fury, kindle love,

With unsuspected eloquence can move,

And manage all the man with secret art.

~Joseph Addison

The Right Hand Rules

A common mistake that many guitar players make is to allow the right hand follow the left. For strummers, pickers, riffers, and shredders this can cause overall rhythm and phrasing problems that stall development and musicality in many guitarist. It's really the right hand that gives the pros the advantage over novice players in touch, dynamics, articulation, and most of all rhythm and groove.

To break this down, I will use the example of a beginner guitarist learning how to strum through basic chord progressions. When I work with new students I will let them know that I expect them to be strumming along to the mp3s of the songs that they are learning sometime within the 1st month. Many of them think this is not possible and once they start working on the chords they comment that their chord changes are not fast enough to keep up to the music. I will do a simple demonstration of me playing the same chord progression and literally tapping my head between each chord change without stopping the right hand rhythm. The student sees immediately that I'm taking even more time between chords by tapping my head than they are with their slower chord changes but that the secret is to not stop the right hand strumming; Let the left hand catch up to or follow the right. To do this well the left hand has to start the chord change on the last part of the previous strum pattern (see below).

                                                                ^

                                                              Change point

By keeping the right hand moving you'll play seamlessly and smoothly through any chord progression in the very first month of your guitar playing journey. 

The same sort of principle will apply to all styles and roles you'll play on your guitar. Rhythm is the boss - the right hand is the ski-boat and the left hand is the skier.

More Common-Note Chord Progressions!

I will include 4 more common-note chord progression in the remaining guitar friendly keys of E, A, G, and C. Try superimposing them over standard chord charts and you will have some nice harmonization within the key and some musical glue in the chord progression.

There are a couple of chords in some keys that will cause minor problems but in general we can find 2 to 3 common notes to use within a given chord progression, and it really creates a unique sound for guitarist of all styles to create with. Have some fun with your playing.