Lead Guitar Tactics

Posts Tagged ‘Guitar Solo’

The problem is, I’m not creative…

Ok, I have heard this a bunch recently. And I have to tell you, it really bothers me. I’m sure that you have been creative in some way, in some part of your life.

Have you ever planned a family vacation? Or how about writing some kind of a report when you were in school? If you have kids I’m sure you have exercised your creativity a bunch of times. The problem is, you just don’t think of yourself as being creative when it comes to playing the guitar or a guitar solo.

I want to take a look at the definition of creativity again. The dictionary defines it as… the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: creativity in the performing arts.

Now what the heck does that mean? Let me see if I can show you by example. Take a look at the opening lick from Freebird again.

Now how are you going to apply some creativity to this? According to the definition you have transcend patterns, create new ideas, interpretations etc. Suppose you were to take this idea and chop it up into smaller segments. maybe something like this.

Segment 1

Segment 2

Segment 3

I randomly decided to split the lick up where I did. It sorta made sense to my brain to do it in these spots because they felt like natural spots to split it up, but you could do it in other places as well. Can you do this? Sure you can.

Now what? If you think of the original lick being played as segments in the order 1, 2 and 3, what would happen if we changed them around. How about 2, 3 and 1? Or 1,3 and 2? Or how about 3, 1 and then 2?
Starting to get the idea?

There really are no rules when it comes to this. You just have to play around and see what you can come up with. Will everything you try sound great? Not at all. I play plenty of things that just aren’t quite right but that doesn’t stop me. It the good ones that you stumble on that make it wirth the time and effort.

And, the more you do this the easier it gets. This is just an example of taking an idea and seeing how much you can get out of it. Try it and see. Use this lick or one that already know and split it up. Twist it around and see what you can come up with.

And son’t forget about changing up the rhythm. I will show you some examples of that in the next lesson. In the meantime, put these ideas to use immediately. You just never know what you might come up with.

Here’s the backing track for this lesson.

Blues In E

Best Wishes,

Bob

Popularity: 48% [?]

I know that many of you are looking for a few guitar improvising tips. I will get to that in a moment but first I would like to make a couple of points.

1. Mastering lead guitar is an ongoing process. It takes steady daily practice to make it happen. There are no amazing lead guitar secrets to instantly transform you into some sort of guitar hero.

2. You don’t have to be some amazing technical wizard to a nice sounding pentatonic scale based solo. In fact, the video in this lesson is a minor pentatonic solo. And it only uses 4 notes!

Watch the video and then apply what you have learned immediately. I have provided the tab and a backing track as well

Click Here To Download This Video On Guitar Improv Tips

Minor Pentatonic Solo Tab

bonusjamtrack2

Popularity: 61% [?]