How to craft the perfect guitar solo?

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to give you guys a little guitar lesson.

Let’s get into it.

It starts with improvising

So making a guitar solo actually starts with something random. 

It starts with the ability to improvise. 

Because in all reality, making a solo in a way is improvising except with a solo you have an advantage. 

In a solo, you write down your notes before you perform them, also you are able to rehearse the solo first so that it can sound good. 

And how are you even supposed to start writing a solo? It starts with improvising. 

So today, let’s talk about how to improvise along with some techniques on how to write the actual solo.

You need to have your scales down

When I say that you need to be able to play your scales, I mean you should be able to play your scales all over the guitar, in every key.

So you should be able to play the entire F-Sharp minor scale all over the guitar and if you have a 24 fret guitar, it should include those notes as well. 

Not only should you be able to play your scales vertically, but also horizontally.

What many guitarists, including myself do when they first start practicing their scales for improvising will only practice vertically and if they do practice horizontally, it will be with minimal effort. 

However, to make more intricate solos that incorporate a wide variety of tones and positions, you should be able to identify each note on the string that corresponds to the key that you’re playing in. 

So if you want to make a big slide on the guitar that goes from the second fret of the F-sharp minor key and jump up to the 12th position, You could do it with a slide but you would need to know where the notes land. 

And knowing your guitar horizontally is what’s going to be able to get you there. 

Second, you should be able to identify at least the major, minor, minor 7, and dominant 7 chords all over the guitar

I know this sounds difficult, but you need to learn how to play E major, E Minor, E minor7, and E7 all over the guitar in ever position.

and you need to do that for every other pitch too. 

So all 13 pitches root. 

That’s a lot of combinations of chords that you need to learn, but it’s needed. 

What happens is that when you’re improvising you can actually go to chords to play in your solo. 

And using those chords creates a very strong solo. 

So if your supporting instruments were playing a 4/4 time signature with a I-IV-V-IV chord progression, then you could use the chords that are in that chord progression to your advantage when those chords are played. 

So in the above example if you’re in the key of C and the chords are C- F- G-F then if you were soloing over that, you could use an F Chord played in 12th position if you knew how to play a F Chord in the 12th position. 

Or if you knew how to play it in the 7th position, you could use it then too. 

Next is that you need to have spent a whole lot of time improvising as practice

It’s actually a practice improvising. 

You have to actively practice improvising in order to get better at improvising. 

And How do you do that? 

Back in the day, the practice was literally just to pick up the guitar and start making solos with the guitar knowledge that you had. 

However, nowadays we can improve upon that by adding backing tracks. 

A simple YouTube search and you look up 12 bar blues backing track in G and you will get a 4 minute backing track that you can solo over it. 

Use this to your advantage because this way, you can practice soloing while hearing an actual instrumentation supporting your riff. 

Now some general tips on soloing

When you solo, you need to use everything to your advantage. 

So if you are a really fast player, use that to your advantage, if you can make great phrases, use that to your advantage.

But it goes more in depth than that.

Use everything at your guitar skills disposal. 

Use hammer-ons, pull-offs, sweeps, tremolo, whammy bar if you have one, use slides, chords, staccato, legato, speed, slowness yes even using slow phrases can be powerful (as a matter of fact it’s one of the most powerful), use the entire fretboard, use double stops, use the chromatic scale, use pentatonic scales, modes, etc. etc. There are literally a ton of other things you could use, but I’m just mentioning the most common here. 

Also, there is are a couple of general directions that you should go when making a solo

Direction 1 Start high and end low. So say for example you are playing notes on the high e of the 12th fret at the beginning and then you end at open e or playing on the first to 3rd fret to end the solo

Direction 2 Start high, go low, and end high This is very impactful and takes the listener on a journey 

Direction 3 start low and end high. You hear this one a lot and a lot of runs follow this pattern. 

All in all, have fun with your solos and don’t forget your boy German when you’re shredding the years away. 

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!