For every song there is a guitar solo. This article is essentially a couple of lessons on playing guitar solos. If you are learning to play the guitar without the benefit of a teacher these lessons playing guitar solos will give you some basic material to work on. The simple act of practicing this stuff every day for half an hour or so will eventually make you a solo guitar player.
Our basic stepping stone for playing solos is the pentatonic scale in A minor:
———————5——
—————–5-8——–
————-5-7————
———5-7—————-
—–5-7——————–
-5-8————————
Picture your left hand making a bar at the fifth fret. Your third finger will be playing the eighth fret and your second finger will be playing the seventh fret. For some variety and so your left hand does not seize up, move your bar finger up and down the fretboard. This changes the key you are playing in so once you are able to play the pattern and you know the names of the notes on the sixth string you can solo in any key just by improvising using the minor pentatonic scale.
How does this help you in playing guitar solos? It looks like boring grunt work. It is but if you practice and practice till it becomes second nature then it becomes part of you. It is yours, you have the power! When the singer stops singing you start playing and the solo seems to come from nowhere.
Of course you cannot just play the scale up and down over and over. Here is where your knowledge of basic guitar techniques comes in. You can play the scale using all down strokes, all upstrokes or a combination of both. You can play it by picking the first note on each string and hammering on the second and pulling off from the second to the first note. You can practice your vibrato and sliding from one note to another. You can also use this scale to practice string skipping and note bending.
Using the techniques I mentioned above means you will be lifting your bar finger. Playing your guitar solos using the bar is like having a safety net. You always know where you are. But as you become more and more familiar with the scale pattern and more excited by the prospect of exploring your own musical possibilities you will find yourself able to let go of the bar and using all your left hand fingers to use the techniques you have learnt.
When you feel that you know your way around the minor pentatonic scale you can start varying the scale for your solo practice. You probably already know that tab I have included in this article represents seven notes but that leaves some frets you do not use. gradually introduce using these notes that are outside of the minor pentatonic scale and see how they sound.
Finally when you get stuck for new ways of approaching playing guitar solos, put on a CD of your favorite guitar player and try imitating what you are hearing. The idea is to not play the notes but to use the phrasing you are hearing to get your juices flowing.
So to continue on, here is a video featuring soloing using the pentatonic minor scale:
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