Guitar Solos and knowing How To Play Guitar Solos is a very powerful tool. It took more forever how to learn how to formulate solos that sound good and now I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on things. I’m still learning and will continue learning about guitar solos throughout my life. The thing that I love about guitar solos is that even the simplest solo can give you chills and move you. Just a few notes in a solo are enough to make or break the song. Soloing is definitely one of the most complicated parts of learning the guitar. It takes great patience, lots of practice, constant jamming with others, soul behind the music, a little knowledge of theory and an open mind. I’ll share with you everything that I’ve learned about guitar soloing and what I’m currently learning.
Guitar Solos to Learn – How To Play Guitar Solos
A great guitarist that I used to jam with told me that “a great solo takes you on a journey and brings you home again”. Overall what that statement means is that a guitar solo revolves around a particular idea, riff, feeling or melody and that the guitar solo will take you away from that idea, riff, feeling or melody and then “bring you home” with that idea, riff, feeling or melody. A great example of a solo that takes you on a journey and that brings you back home again is the solo from the well-known song, “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann. The solo in that song isn’t very complicated and it is basically just a couple of notes played in a certain key that deviate away from the key that the song is in and then brings you back to the song’s key or root or home. Listen to the solo and you’ll see what I mean.
Great guitar soloing also takes timing. Allot of people will throw in as many notes as possible and if the notes don’t fall within the beat of the song, then the solo will sound awful. This happens allot with shredding solo’s. If you want to throw in some crazy shredding licks, make sure that you are playing them in time with the music. This is also a great reason to practice with a metronome as much as you can.
Great guitar soloing also involves not playing too many notes. When I first started to mess around with guitar soloing, I played as many notes as I could aimlessly for about one minute and called that a solo. The best way to fix this problem is to stop yourself, and limit yourself and focus on where you’re going with the solo and actually “feel” the direction of the soloing along with the chord progression. Soloing is about quality and not quantity.
An interesting thing about how to play guitar solos…
A very interesting thing that I’ve come across having to do with guitar playing and guitar soloing is definitely the fact that guitarists who play with “soul” go farther than guitarists who base everything on theory. For example listen to a guitar solo by Slash from Guns and Roses. One solo that I really enjoy from Slash is the Godfather theme solo. If you’ve never seen Slash play the Godfather theme solo, I strongly recommend going to www.youtube.com and watching it. Slash plays with so much emotion when he plays, you can hear it in his music. You should always play with passion. Playing with passion is the difference between playing something that you want to and playing something that you are forced to. On the other hand, guitarists who play based on theory like Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen and other theory driven guitarists, it seems their career never takes off. Think about it…. I could listen to a whole Guns and Roses album or a whole Van Halen album and love every song; however I can only get through about one or two Yngwie Malmsteen songs before I get bored or a headache. Eddie Van Halen is a theory based guitarist who plays with lots of soul that you can hear in his music. That’s probably because he’s a musical genius. He first started playing piano when he was really young and learned about theory then and then later applied it to guitar. He’s also an amazing song writer. I guess the point that I’m trying to get to is that I’m telling you to “Play with Passion!” when you play the guitar. You will sound like a better musician if you “put Love” into every little note. I can’t really define what playing with soul is but all I can say is you’ll be able to feel it when you play.
“Alright I’m ready to bust out a solo!…… where do I start?”
When people solo, they have a few things in mind…. Their primarily thinking about the key of the song that their playing in. The key of the song is the overall note that the song is in. Here’s a little trick that works most of the time when determining the key of the song: the chord that the chord progression of a song usually (9 times out of ten) starts with or ends in, is usually the key of the song. For example if a song is in the key of G, that means that I can develop melodies within the G scales, or I know that I could use the G major scale, G mixolydian scale, G pentatonic scale, etc. So remember that the key of the song is “key”.
Here’s another thing to keep in mind when you’re soloing: Keep in mind that when someone solos, they’re not hitting as many random notes within the scale as possible, however they are using a couple notes to create melodies and taking breaks between the phrases. Remember that a solo is also composed of the notes that you don’t play. So take a deep breath and focus on little tiny melodies that you can make within a particular scale of a song. Don’t focus on huge long runs and millions of notes during a given phrase!! Just focus on small, few note, runs. You can throw in more notes as you get better.
Refer back to the Arpeggio for the key of the song. If I’m playing many different style scales over the key of the song, if I refer back to the arpeggio of the key of the song, then I will hit notes that will interest the listener’s ear. What’s an arpeggio you ask? Make a G Chord. You know, 3rd fret of the 6th string, 2nd fret of the 5th string, open 4th, open 3rd, 2nd on the 3rd fret, 1st on the 3rd fret… a regular G chord. Then play the 6th string, play the 5th, the 4th, the 3rd, all the way down to the 1st (in other words just strum the chord super slow). You’ve just played the arpeggio for the G chord! That’s all an arpeggio is. If you throw in notes from a given arpeggio, then you can make the listeners ear perk up and keep their attention. Try it!
Another thing you can throw in when soloing (this is really cool) is when you take the same melody that the person has been singing in the song, and play it on the guitar. This has been done in many songs. Great examples of this are Van Halen’s “Higher”, The Beatles “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, Mr. Big “To be with you” and many others. It sounds really cool when you through it in.
Performing cool runs and patterns in scales is another cool thing you can mess around with while soloing. For example take the G major scale and play the 1st note, then the 3rd, then the second note in the scale, then the 4th then the 3rd, then the 5th and all the way up… see the pattern? You can also start on the 1st, go to the 4th, 2nd, then 5th, 3rd, then 6th, ya see?, there’s a million of these patterns out there. Be creative come up with some. Patterns really make it more interesting instead of climbing up and down the scale… that gets boring to the ear.
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Guitar Solos For Beginners – What Can I practice, or what do I need to do to get good at soloing?
Learn the major scale
- Learn the pentatonic scale (both major and minor)
- Lean the blues scale (pentatonic with added notes)
- Learn arpeggios
- Learn whatever other modes you want
- Start jamming over backing tracks
- Fun exercise that helps improve guitar soloing, find a rap song with a beat and jam over it
- Jam over a metronome
- Learn some blues licks
- “Soloing isn’t about the quantity of notes in a lick, but the quality”
