GUITARMADEEZ.COM - A helpful overview and explanation of guitar soloing and how it works

Guitar Solos are 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.

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.

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.

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.

The following information was provided by Golden Ears/Ron Horton, www.ronaldhorton.com. The following is a copy of the thread on Guitars101.com where Golden Ears is teaching Del Preston about soloing.

Hi guys,

I've had a wild epiphany, so please tell me if im on the right track? After messing around with every scale/mode out there I think I've finally figured out something HUGE in my guitar playing and improvising.

I've been trying to figure out notes that cause tension and notes that cause resolution forever and people tell me that I've been on the right track. Here's my questions:

1. It seems to me that only the arpeggio of a key when you hit particular notes within that arpeggio when composing a solo causes tension and relief, Ex. The 7th and the 3rd cause tension, Ex. 2, the 5th resolves the tension and brings closure to a soloing phrase. Is it only the notes in the arpeggio that cause tension and relief? Do only the notes within the chords arpeggio cause tension and relief, or are there different notes within every scale (pentatonic, Lydian, mixolydian, Phrygian, etc.) of a given key that cause tension and resolution?

2. If that's the case what notes cause tension and which notes resolve the tension in a given scale such as the major scale, pentatonic major and minor scales and mixolydian, etc?

3. Are there any exercises that I can practice to help me get better at formulating these phrases?

Thanks guys, I'm having such a hard time with learning how to formulate solos and improvising with scales, I've bought guitar videos, done hours of research online, hours of practice, and I ask questions on these message boards, and little by little their helping. Any help at all would be appreciated, thanks!!

-Del

The thing that seems to be missed by a lot of theoreticians, is that it totally depends on what chords are being played or suggested in some cases. Sometimes when we play a chord that is missing a note.... another chord will often be suggested to the listener, sometimes the listener naturally fills in the gaps with his mind or the singer or bass player completes a chord or suggests a change with the notes they are singing or playing. Its a beautiful almost magical thing that can happen and will often build and relieve tension.
Very basic example:
When we play what we call bar chords and we only use two or three fingers, we are often playing 2 notes and an octave of the first note and that is not a chord and yet we hear a minor or major chord depending on what chord comes next or what the singer or bass player etc. are doing once again.

If you imagine the beginning of (Sounds like Teen Spirit from Nirvana), there are no chords but only 2 notes played in harmony and with every one of those chords a note can be added to make them minor or major, yet we hear them as both minor and major and everyone hears them the same way with the same order of minor and major chords, when there are no chords only 2 notes in harmony with an octave, without any notes being suggested by other instruments. If you sit down and play that song with full chords you will figure out naturally which are minor and which are major. And we would all come to the same conclusion.

The same thing applies to soloing, if you are to play A harmonic minor in A minor for example, it will work but it doesn't sound all that pleasing. Now if you play the same harmonic minor run over E major you will find it totally kicks ass and sounding very pleasant. The reason this example works in this way is because the same note that you raise in A harmonic minor to make it harmonic minor instead of natural minor ( G# ) is the same note that makes E major, Major.
Try a riff based on E major.... say pivoting off the E string, then solo in A harmonic minor and its magic time. That is one example of the infinite possiblities that there are.

Anyways in conclusion, what will build tension and give resolution will very alot depending on the accompaniment to your soloing. The same combinations of notes that you are using that fit over one chord change will fit over many and with every chord change the notes of your solo will interact differently creating many different feels.

Music theory is great to get started or to advance your playing, if you are an advanced player but the most important thing is to use your ears.
A great quote I heard from Sigovia (The creator of the classical guitar and a god like player who died at 95 or something in the eighties)
He said when asked if he could read well and if he new his theory:
"Well and then he smilied, not enough to hurt my playing any" lol
I saw him say this live on TV and it always stuck with me, that is when I realized that most music came before the explanation and of course some of it came based on the explanations of past music and mathematics.

Try and think of soloing as singing and you don't see alot of rock or pop singers writing down what they are coming up with and also they are usually not getting it from theory but rather from natural god given talent. Not to say that understanding theory or your neck, will not help your playing but it can also hinder it.
Before I understood much of what I was doing, when I was starting out with the guitar, I didn't know when I was playing something that was cleshae and I came up with alot of cool stuff. If I were writing those same solos now, I might right them off before I got started because the basis of those solos were not that original. Yet when I listen back to my old recordings I hear alot of stuff that kicks butt because even though I was starting form a place where many others had been before, the solos I came up with were quite original and very musical. So when I play, I try and forget the theory and just play what comes to me naturally and keep it in many cases something that could be sung and only bring the theory into it when I hit a brick wall lol.

Signed Golden Ears

Here is some more advice. Ironically, I was talking to one of my online students yesterday about the same subject and he has always been into theory and has acheived a decent grasp of it. I have taught him about many things like the basics of song writing, sound enginneering, what songs to cover at a gig etc etc etc. but most of all stuff about playing lead.

He has a tremendous amount of respect for me but yesterday he was on a high created by some of his most recent theory studies and decided to get a little ****y with me and got straightened out really fast, when he found that his little challenges with theory verses natural talent, led him to getting smoked in a debate and then to top it off, he sent me a sound file with a very strange semi complex chord change and challenged me to tell him the key it was in. The change included many chords and suggested several resolutions and without an instrument in my hand, or any use of theory, I was able to tell him the key in about 20 seconds, while taking into account that he was not tuned to 440 all based on "perfect pitch" (which means that I can name a note or frequency without reference to an instrument in most cases) and natural talent combined with some common sense.

Anyways I mention this conversation because it really got me thinking about how to explain how I look at soloing and also reminded me of a very important Mark Twain quote, while thinking about how we grow as musicians...."Education is the road from ****y ignorance to worried uncertainty". Now I am guessing that Mark Twain was referring to all forms of education, not just formal and as we age if we live as thinkers, we are learning many new things each and everyday and with everything we learn, wether it be about music or any subject, it opens up an expodential amount of doors to things that we do not know.

This way of thinking once understood, will increase a persons confidence because they will then be living consiously and become realistic about what they know and don't know and with music this allows us to grasp onto what we do know and use it to the max, while we are continuously developing what we don't know.
It is very liberating to take this approach because it takes the pressure off and lets us enjoy each stage of our progression. And I don't care how advanced the player is and this includes all the greats, in the scheme of what their is to know and considering what each player already knows, we all know very little. Now this is a wonderful thing because if music was finite instead of infinite, there would be an end to an experts learning and that would be a very sad and lonely place to be. Each player from the beginner to expert has just as much potential learning to do in relation to the infinite world of music!

That being said I really enjoyed what MJK said about working with one note then expanding outwards, what he is saying runs in parallel to my education expanation, he is demonstrating and by the way I do this all the time myself, that you can play a great solo with the most basic things, using only a tiny piece of the knowledge that you already have attained about music.

K I will stop philosophing and get on with some direct soloing tips lol.

Melodie is Melodie whether it is played on a guitar, violin, piano or sung by a great singer. A great solo should be based on Melodie as much as possible and of course scales, combinations of scales, modes, triads, arpegios etc etc etc. can be used in a beautiful way to connect the dots, by dots I mean connecting the melodic sections of the solo.

Whether I am improvising or composing a solo, I break the parts down naturally into various categories, the same way I do while composing a song because if composed correctly, they should be able to stand alone as a composition onto themselves.
Here is one example of the way my mind composes a solo and this is not something that I often think about consiously or something that I base on theory consciously unless once again I hit a brick wall.

In this example and there are endless examples, I would start a solo with a great hook like the beginning of a song, then get into the body of the solo which could be compared to a verse of a song, then there is usually the part that is building to a climax section, which could be compared to the bridge of a song or the middle eight and then there is the climax which is like the choros of a song, then finally there is the carry over, meaning the part that brings you back into the vocal and could be compared to the fade out or ending of a song, even though you may not be fading out the notes, it could suggest a fade out feel as the solo merges with the vocal.

Now just like song writing there is no set formula but your instincts should take you in a direction that creates a feel whether it be one of longing which is one of my favorites and means to create notes that make you feel like you are waiting for something to happen, then finally you give it to them. Or it could be an uplifting exciting feel that carries you away right off the bat and leads to an almost orgasmic feel from beginning to end. There are endless ways to approach this but just like MJK made reference to sex, I also with very few exceptions play my guitar as though I am having sex with a girl, unless I am playing an "Open Solo", where I am the entire orchastra within myself with my guitar as my conduit, I still make sure that I have a great compostition but I will get alot more wild and expressive and usually do this through alot of melodic flash because with an open solo your goal is often to excite people and in order to do this you don't have to follow the same rules that you would while playing during a song and of course there are no boundries if there are no other instruments to control your key or rythm.

I had said earlier that Melodie is Melodie whether it is played on a guitar, violin, piano or sung by a person. This is the most essential thing to focus on!
While a singer is writing a melodie, unless they are writing opera or something that is restrictive in its nature, and they don't have a fret board or keyboard to look at, they only have there imagination and there vocal chords and vocal chords do not have little dots or white and black keys to tell them what notes they are preforming lol, so they have to rely on inspiration and feel.
There is very little difference in my opinion between this and playing a great solo. When Jazz players and old 50,s rock players played a solo, it was almost always an extension of the songs melodie, this is for the most part a lost art but is a technique that should be a huge player in our bag of tricks.
When you listen to a Melodie of a great Beatles song, you are not listening to a mode or scale, even though it can be dedused to that on paper, you are listening to a beautiful melodie that harnesses the use of many notes that relate to various scales and cannot be pinned down to just one pattern in most cases. And I highly doubt that the Beatles were masters of theory, yet they created music that will go down in history along with Mozzart, Beethoven and the other classical greats. Birds sing beautful melodies every day and you don't see little glasses on them with a music stand in front of them lol.

Now when you sing or hum you can get out any note that you imagine because you know your voice box in side out, even if you are not a great singer with magical tone, you can find the notes you imagine.

With a guitar it is important and this is something that I have achieved and that is to be able to play your guitar with the ease of whistling or singing a melodie. Once you can do this, you can toss the theory aside and just play away in key and melodically at your leasure! Now of course some things that you come up with won't work and sometimes even when we know it won't work, we keep pounding our heads off that "brick wall" instead of being honest with ourselves and saying you know what this sucks!!!! and changing directions.

Here are some tips on how to learn your fretboard like you know your own vocal chords:
First of all, listen to a song that you want to solo over and hum a great melodie then translate it onto the guitar. This will not only help you to come up with great parts but it will also help you to learn how to translate what you are thinking to your fret board and each time this will become easier and easier until you can just "humm" on the guitar without the vocal step.

Scatting is a great way to learn how to do this. Scatting for those of you who are not familiar with it, is when a guitar player sings along to his solo in what seems to be real time but in fact it often is not. If you take a pattern, run or what have you and sing along with it just milliseconds behind the guitar, you will sound as though you know every note on your neck as you sing and play them at seemingly the same time, when in fact you are just repeating with your voice what you hear so quickly that no one will know!
In time you will not need this slight hesitation because after months or years depending on your talent level of doing this, you will know longer need the delay and you will actually be scatting.
Scatting will get you to know your neck so well that once again, you will be able to "humm" or "sing with your guitar. This will remove so many boundries that you will be astounded at the results. I started doing this as a young boy and it has been a great asset.

Another cool thing that I do and I have also hear Strat78 mention this, is to every once in a while limit yourself to a blues box and with those very few notes, you force yourself to create a great solo using things like great combinations of those few notes in all the octaives available, along with nice bends of every type imaginable and of course with great varying vibratos

When using vibrato people tend to just do the same one over and over again and they start to sound like a bad singer on the guitar lol. and this gets very very boring. A great singer like Robert Plant, seldom uses the same vibrato twice. With the completion of each section of a solo, the feel is different and so is what the backing music is doing which calls for a different vibrato. Use these varying vibratos well and let the feel of the song dictate what you play not some technique that you have developed, use the various vibrato techniqes that you have learned to allow you to vary your vibrato naturally, rather than basing your vibrato on a technique.

Now there is another variable that cannot be controlled in terms of what it has to offer and can be a wonderful asset and this variable is the one that a guitar dictates based on its tuning and the open string notes that it provides.
Many incredible runs like the first run in Van Halens "I AM THE ONE" are based on open strings. Eddie was playing in the A position and likely had an inspiration perhaps based on the triplet feel of the run and he then likely proceeded to jam out that run which includes the use of open strings. I doubt that he new exactly what was going to come out of it, until it happened but got lucky and stubbled into a really cool fill. Chicken picking is something that I do quite a bit of and that incorporates alot of open strings and when you are improvising like that, many cool melodies pop up by accident because when improvising and combining open strings at the same time at a high speed, you are not always going to know what something will sound like until it happens.

So there is the accidental creation aspect that is a part of every players bag of tricks and it happens to the best of us and the worse of us lol. And it happens for many reasons beyond my open string example.
After you play long enough you will accidentally bump into fills that have already been done by someone else as you doddle on your guitar. This happens to me every once and a while and its a pretty fun thing to have happen. You are not trying to do it but the next thing you know you are playing some classic fill by accident, one that you have never played before. This same concept helps us to accidentally create original stuff as well and should be taken seriously because in the end it does not matter how you come up with a great fill or solo, it just matters that it is great!

Starting from any position,
Another thing that I do and it has really helped me to develop my ability to improvise over the years, is to not ask or pay attention to what key I am in when I start soloing. If you think about it, it really doesn't matter as long as you can play along. Say that a guitar player is dropped tuned three semi tones and he says that he is playing in the key of E, it is not really E it is now D and if you were trying to play along based on finding a D position you would have to know this. The Key of E by any other name is still the same frequency, so we should not get to rapped up in the names of things but more into what they really are.

So this is how I do it.....I hear a chord change and because I have perfect pitch I can hear a note immediately that will work, so I start with that note and begin a solo without paying attention to the key I am in, for those of you that do not have perfect pitch slide up the neck until you land on a note that works then continue. This will be musical and work just as well as the perfect pitch way. Now this is where I combine the scatting behind the music thing (we are talking milliseconds) with what my ear tells me should come next. This is something that can be done without knowing what chords are to come next because you are playing ever so slightly behind the music to assist you with this, just like the how to learn how to scatt explanation. Now just close your eyes and let your hands wander around creating there magic, your ears will tell you if you need to make the next note a whole step or a half step or what have you and if you make a mistake you turn it around with the phraze conclusion by using a combination of notes that resolves your mistake and therefor the mistake will not be perceived as one. Quite often mistakes are the beginning of the best things we have ever come up with!
The whole idea of playing without knowing what key you are in will help you in many ways two of which are: If you are playing live and a song comes up that you do not know you will be able to get by and also if you are playing over a complex chord change, where the key may not give you enough information for you to be able to improvise without these natural abilities that I have described.

Remember there is no such thing as a mistake in improvising if you know how to resolve your mistake through relaxing and coming up with a resolve!
Another tip in this area is to remember that a chromatic scale can get you through just about any jack pot. Its a Jazz players best friend.

If you have the option to choose your chord change try and make it one that is begging for a great solo. I never understand why guys like Satch who I am not a big fan of, will solo over the same chord for so many bars without any changes to suggest nice melodies. He does this in Satch Boogie for example.

We also must not forget the rythm part of a solo, the rythm is as important as the choice of notes and this is something that I have not even touched on in this long post lol. Most guys are learing stuff from tab nowadays and I think this is an injustice to themselves because they are learning stuff that is far to advanced for there level of musicianship and in doing so they seldom get the rythms, feels, accents, vibratos or any other small nuances which make up a great solo!

In conclusion I hope this post has been helpful and I hope that its length is informative and not irritating lol.
With all that I have said, it is still important to remember that theory is another great tool that will assist you in many ways in your endeavors as guitar players, so learn it a little at a time, lets face it, it can be boring but if learned in small doses and then applied to expand your playing it can be fun. Like a parent teaching you how to tie your shoe laces then how to tell time etc. They do not try and teach you all the worlds knowledge before you start living.
You live and you learn, so I think its just as important to play and learn as well. So just like with learning about life, learn parts of theory as it becomes important to you and apply it as you need it.

And never forget that guitarists like Eddie have only touched on a few small areas of music in terms of scales, modes etc. but guys like Eddie took these areas and developed them so well, that they are now legends without learning the endless things that there are to know about music. And a guy like Eddie is far better than alot of virtuosos. He certainly is better than the ones that do not understand the things I am touching on here.

Sometimes knowing to much can prevent a player from having a style. We cannot master every style, we are lucky if we master a few.

I am a session player who has a huge interest in most styles, so I get into anything that I am cabable of playing but I try to play for the song and not let the song be there to play for me and I even apply this to open solos by sticking to things that fit in the frame work of that particular solo. So no matter what it is you are playing you have to show restraint or you will just sound like you are trying to squeese in every trick that you have. If that makes any sense lol.
For example, when I am making a record I try and restrain and contain myself to a certain area in order to have repetition and things that the listener can grab onto. This applies not only to soloing but to all areas of music.
One last thought, if you pay attention to what you are doing, you will learn alot of theory by observation, you will not likely have the same names for things you learn but you will understand the concepts and then later be able to cross reference these discoveries with your theory studies.
When I started off in the studio 15 years or so ago I use to read manuals front to back and alot of it sounded like alkdfkladsfadf lol, then I learned to scan the manual use the gear and then go back and forth.
The same thing applies to the quest of understanding music and ITS EXPLANATION which = theory and lets never forget that in most cases the music came before its explanation!

Thanks and I hope that this tiny piece of my learnings over the years will be of help to you guys and once again I apologize for its length but this was not something that I could cover in one paragraph haha
Golden Ears

In the end you cannot critisise any approach that has a great outcome, so whatever ends up working for you is the best way for you to go! In my last post I was just giving a lengthy (sorry lol) explanation of the main way I approach lead playing. There are times when I get pretty heavey into the theory, just not that often and once again I seldom focus on theory unless that is my only choice.

I remember a time when I was a young teen and I had only been playing for 10 years or so and music was so misterious ....... I must say that those were probably the most fun years that I have had with music. As much as I love music still, there is no solo or song or piece of orchestration that mistifies me and I miss that! This is another reason why I try to block out thinking to much about what I am doing and just enjoy it instead.

As far as session work goes its all about building a rep. If you have been in a popular band or played on a successful record or sometimes just played very well infront of the right people you can land studio work. Don't forget that there is sometimes alot of work with not so good beginner bands who just want that certain edge that a professional can give them and this can happen with an indie band that has not even played a show and are working on there first self financed record.
The key to being a session player is to decide what it is that you will be able to acheive with guitar. If you are just a great country player there can be work for you, if you are a very well rounded player who can do it all there will be a much wider potential cliental for you, it totally depends on what you can do, what you have done and how willing you are to practise and work with musicians that you might not even like.

There can be alot of money in working on a record with a song writer who has a dream and a big pocket book and no talent. You have to be able to find the good in the most terrible projects at times and bring them to life.

You have to be able to sit down with amazing pro recording acts and pull of the right parts in 2 or 3 takes because studio time is money and famous artists are demanding and not often very patient.

I have watched the eagles scream at a pro orchistra lol.

Some of my best experiences have been with the older, self financed writers who have a ton of great songs and alot of natural talent but can't quite preform there songs up to there standards, it is very satisfying to bring there great ideas to life.
And I have also had fun with recording acts who appreciate what I have done. I remember one Canadian band who listened to my one take improvised solos and fills for three of there tunes and said its a rap!!! I was like nooooooooooooooooooooooo because I am a perfectionist and I did not want anyone keeping a one taker, unless it was for a song that I was atleast familiar with which is usually only my own stuff or famous covers of already released material.
In the end if you can play well under pressure and you know how to network and fit in well with a variety of musicians and bands and find the good in there at first listen not so good work, you can be a successful session player.

But if you have not played live in bands or in studios alot and you are not a generally experienced player then you need to do this first before trying to become a session player or you will likely fail unless you are the next Hendrix!

Most musicians that make a GOOD living totally off of music myself included for almost all of my life, have one thing in common, they diversify their income through a combination of live gigging, studio session work, lessons, producing, enginneering, working in music stores, doing live audio for bands etc.
I don't care if you are carrying amps into a club for a band for cash, if you are working in the music industry in anyway and making a go of it you have a lot of heart and sticktoitiveness and you can call yourself a professional musician!

Signed Golden Ears