How to improve your solo writing ability

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.

Guitar Solo Inspiration

One of the key fundamentals with any music and any instrument is timing and it doesn’t matter what you’re playing, if it’s not in perfect time then it sounds amateur and somewhat annoying for the listener. If you have ever struggled in the past with guitar timing then you may find these ‘guitar solo in time tips’ useful, and hopefully instantly applicable to your playing.

There are two main avenues we can look at in terms of timing, and they are external and internal influences. External influences focus on what is outside of you; things like your guitar setup and the picking action itself, the things that physically go into making the sound. Internal influences come into the category of how you think, hear and structure the notes before they are played. With these two areas in mind, here are some things to think about to get ‘machine like’ timing in everything you play!

Thinking about the Beat – Internally, how you process what you hear makes all the difference. I can guarantee you that you and I could be hearing the same beat but creating different tunes in our mind to play over it, and this matters with timing because you need to hear the accents and where the main notes need to land. If you have a basic 4:4 beat and you are playing a scale over it, the scale will consist of notes in between the beats as well as notes that land dead on the beat. Even if you don’t hear a physical beat you need to learn how to imagine it’s there, as this is what timing is all about – picking where the beat should be and landing dead on it (this is how a solo guitarist can play with no accompaniment and sound good, because the beat is in his/her mind).

Following a specific beat – There are two main ways to physically create a beat to play to; use a metronome and get an instant timing you can play to, or take a little longer and set up a drum machine or drum software. Either way is fine and will do the immediate job at hand, but the advantages of the drum machine are that you feel more inspired because it’s playing real music, and you can have snare accents for example to help create odd timings and different feels. On the other hand metronomes are cheap to buy (there are even free ones online). Also, if you do get a chance to play with a drummer do it. There’s something that happens with your playing when playing with a real drummer, you become more accountable and are almost forced to become better, especially with your timing.

Pick Attack and Timing – This is the third area to control after the external and internal timing. Pick attack simply means the speed and consistency that the pick strikes the string. If you are playing a basic chord progression and are ‘strumming’ to just get a relaxed feel then you can have a very loose hand while playing the notes as timing will be a bit more forgiving. If you’re playing a guitar solo or anything with single notes or with more speed, then this needs to sharpen up and as a general rule – the faster you play the tighter your picking action needs to become. When playing guitar solos there is a focus on picking the note fast (even if the sequence is slow) to get an immediate and clean sound from the note, and only then can you add your chosen technique to it.

It’s a very handy thing for guitarists who want to learn lead or solo work to first think about the rhythm and groove of the song. Only when you get the feel from that side of things can you add to it with a solo because solos are not usually stand alone pieces, they are enhanced and structured by what’s underneath them (even if it’s not physically played).

As you can see from these guitar solo in time tips, timing comes from a few aspects of the sound, and if you learn to first hear it and then play exactly to it (practicing slowly and evenly at first) then your timing will improve dramatically in a short space of time, and just imagine what happens when you speed it all up?