basic tips on how to improve solos

[clarky]

guys..... this is Claire's question

"Any tips for beginners/improvers on how to structure solos?"

hmmm.....
I think the real killer thing here is - especially at first - not technique centric, not theory centric or books or studies.....

the way to learn to solo is to learn by example...
learn the solos of others...
nice simple ones at first...

by doing this you'll not just learn a collection of licks and techniques..
but you'll also learn how they work over specific chords in a specific setting...

learn lots of solos by lots of different players...

all the technique, theory and additional studies and exercises studies after will augment what you've learned and how you understand / visualise it..

in the opposite direction, the same is simply not true...
learning collections of licks and techniques with a bit of theory without learning complete solos will teach you little about the art of soloing...
all you'll have is a pile of notes and no idea how to make them sing..

[Rocker]

Clarky, you make good points in your post, as do others!, but could you give a few songs as examples. Something rock, blues & country to illustrate your points. What I am hoping is that you will say 'listen and learn the outro to ####', it is in A and the notes are position 2 and 3.

Learning to 'solo' I find is very hard to get started, especially when I am not sure what I want to play. Playing up and down a scale is not very exciting to listen to. I think that knowing a scale position or two is akin to knowing the alphabet. You use the letters to make words which then can be used in a book or a letter or an e-mail. The creation of words [music phrases] is where I fall down. Hence the request for specific songs that we can listen to, attempt or discuss here.

Apologies to Clare_Bear for hijacking your post. This is something that I really must stop doing.

[clarky]

no probs....

if I were teaching someone to solo for the first time...
I'd look at Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here

the solo has lots of great big gaps so there's no pressure imposed between licks..
so you have bags of time to compose yourself...
the solo is a great big catalogue of blues/rock licks that can be used in almost any song...
you'll get to pactice timing, phrasing, bending and vabrato - which is where the 'polish' is found in all pro level players..
the solo grows and develops nice and slowly... so you have time...
time is the killer thing with beginners.. everything happens too soon for them.. they're just cracking the first lick and the next is bearing down on them...
it also unlocks a lot of other Floyd music..
so from there you can take on the rest of the album and a lot of The Wall...

having cracked this....
maybe try taking on something a bit tougher but still do-able..
Still in Love with You by Thin Lizzy: Live and Dangerous
the licks are closer together and a little more technical...
so this will pile on a bit more pressure...
but it's not insanely technical...
and most of all.. these solos are meaningful is a lyrcal sense...
so they'll set a nice foundation upon with to biuld

[noisepolluter]

Learning to 'solo' I find is very hard to get started, especially when I am not sure what I want to play. Playing up and down a scale is not very exciting to listen to. I think that knowing a scale position or two is akin to knowing the alphabet. You use the letters to make words which then can be used in a book or a letter or an e-mail. The creation of words [music phrases] is where I fall down. Hence the request for specific songs that we can listen to, attempt or discuss here.

Try finding a book/cd/dvd/web page of licks in a particular style - that should furnish you with a few "words" to jumble around. Quite often they'll have backing tracks included, but if not, then record yourself playing a fairly simple chord progression for a few minutes, then see how these licks sound on top. Then, muck around with them a bit - change notes, timings etc.

[timmyo]

One of my christmas pressies was this book:



It's pretty good, in that it breaks things down in to discrete areas to tackle, expects you to put work in both learning and listening to what you are doing in context of the backing tracks for each section. So a chapter would take (say) just the lower half of 2 of the 5 major scale shapes, and make you use them in a context, and listen to what you are doing and note any nice things you notice. So before you move on you can basically do some meaningful noodling using that part of a scale over basic changes. That's chapter one. :lol: I can see this being very useful to me when I have a bit more time to spend with it. then there's a follow-on book for the advanced stuff :shock:

[clare_bear2]

Apologies to Clare_Bear for hijacking your post. This is something that I really must stop doing.

Not at all, that's a great question.

And thanks, Clarky, for your posts, they make perfect sense really - learning the whole solo is the way forward, then. I'll try to learn the Shine On You Crazy Diamond solo at some stage, and I've got another guitar lesson tomorrow and I'm hoping my teech will help to develop my soloing abilities over time.

[Rocker]

Thanks Clarky, Timmyo and others who replied. I will look again at some work I put in trying to understand 'Wish you were here' also listen to 'Shine on you crazy diamond' and the Thin Lizzy song. Great replies and exactly what I needed.

[clarky]

following on from that....

once you've crakced the solo and can play along reasonably well roughly note for note...

experiment with what you've learnt..
goof around with the licks..
small alterations here and there...
and then "go your own way" and try playing your own solo over the CD..

this is how I learned to solo:

- learn the solo "as is" - this develops aural perception, gives you problems to solve [fingering, technique, tone, finding the key etc], timing, phrasing, discipline and focus

- experiment alone without the CD playing. Noodle around with each lick until the licks so they become the birthing place for new licks. There is no reason why "Shine On..." can't give birth to at least another 10 licks to at to your vocabulary..

- "go your own way" - play over the CD again several times using the licks you learned from the original, the licks you've newly created, anything else you knew already. Also you should know a few fingering for the pentatonic and minor scale in that key..
be sure to not only play but also to listen.. what sounds sweet, what sucked, try to work out why it sucked [what note did you play over what chord]...
simple "cause and effect" experiments...

so just put on the CD and noodle the day away....