Archive for: August 2008

If you know a little bit about playing guitar solos it is possible that you will want to show off all your knowledge every time you take a solo. It is just the way some people are. If you have the urge to show off, listen and watch some solos by Mark Knopfler. With all those Dire Straits numbers, less is more. Even Sultans Of Swing with its two solos, there is no pyrotechnics, just simple elegance.

Take a look at the way you structure your guitar solos. Do they have a beginning, a middle and an end or are they all climax? Loudness and intensity have their places but if you are still learning how to play the guitar, you need to expand your skills and interests. If you love to grab the guitar and improvise a solo, try to improvise a quiet solo. Kill your inner Angus Young, you do not need him for this experiment. Listen to Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, the climax comes at the end. The rest of the piece gets your attention then the fireworks hammer you.

Speaking of hammer-ons, have you thoroughly grounded yourself in the basic guitar solo techniques. Most people have their favorite ways of playing and tend to neglect the guitar solo techniques they do not enjoy practicing. Go through in your head the techniques you have learnt: scales, hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping the fretboard, string skipping, upstrokes, downstrokes, using the index finger to augment your picking. You cannot be excellent at ALL of them.

There are many videos on YouTube and other sites that have excellent advice on playing solos . . . take this one for instance . . .

Technorati Tags: playing guitar solos, guitar solo techniques, YouTube

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A guitar solo pattern brings up dreams of a simple formula for playing guitar solos. That is what pentatonic scales, box patterns, caged chords and all the other nifty systems for learning the guitar are all about. The sting in the tail with learning formulas is that you still need to put in the hours of work. Learning a pattern does not help you to understand the guitar. So I have discovered a blog post which shows you the basic structure of a twelve bar blues song and a great guitar solo pattern - Pentatonic Scales for Guitar - BB King Box Pattern

And here is a video guitar lesson on guitar solo patterns from Jason Parker:

Technorati Tags: guitar solo pattern, guitar lesson

When you practice the guitar there is the practice you do to learn music and there is the practice you do to keep your hands, arms and joints in good playing condition. If you play the guitar alot you may not be doing your body a favor. Most serious musicians suffer from a music injury at some time during their career.

As a general rule you should keep your guitar practice time more or less the same every day. Your body performs well under stress but at the same time it does not like surprises. In fact, our muscles have the mentality of postal workers. Give them a set routine and they will serve you well. So if you usually just play the guitar when you feel like it, you can change that by picking up the guitar and doing some scales or up and down plectrum strokes or something for a while. Have a few exercises ready for such occasions because it is not good to do any exercise for too long.

Technorati Tags: guitar practice