Why your guitar solos suck and what to do about it!

(Due to people emailing me, angry that I’ve told them their soloing sucks, telling me MY soloing sucks, etc., I actually have to dig into this archived blog and stress that the title is JUST A JOKE designed to get your attention so you’ll read my blog! Jeez…if you’re going to blow a gasket over one of the billions of guitar teachers online then you need a therapist! Moving on…)

I get to teach a lot of people how to solo and improvise for the very first time. I’ve picked up on a few general patterns:

–They play the scale back & forth like an exercise, the same way over and over.

–They ignore the scale completely, busting out whatever random notes emerge through the slop…punk style, I guess.

–They’ve developed solid lead techniques and have to show them in EVERY MEASURE! Metal fans are often guilty of this. They want to play a million notes a second and put every technique they’ve worked on to use.

The tough thing about scales is that you’ll never actually master one. Oh, you’ll think you have when you’ve hit plateaus in your playing, but then you’ll come across a new idea and POW…you’re energized to new levels. And that’s the cool thing about scales, you technically should never get bored because there’s always something new to learn. But we all have our moments when we hear the players we admire and feel deflated, thinking something along the lines of, “When will I get to play like THAT?” It still happens to me too, but being the guitar teacher extraordinaire I’ve developed ideas, tools & things to put you on the path to being a real guitar hero.

I’ve got a cheesy analogy for you (all my students suffer through it). You’ve got a carpenter about to build a house. On his open lot he puts all the home stuff in one area (wood, carpets, toilet, shingles, home theater system, bar, etc.) and all of his tools in another pile. Hammer, screwdrivers, the thing with the bubble in it so you can draw a straight line. So he has a bunch of tools and a bunch of stuff, but no house, right? He has to know what tool does what job so he can build the home up into something he can live in or sell it–though in the market as of this writing he’s better off keeping it.

Music is similar. The completed song is your house, a scale is one of your important tools for building that song. If all you do is play the scale back & forth (which unfortunately is what most school bands do) and goof off on other stuff then it’s sort of like picking up the hammer and saying, “Yup, that’s a hammer.” and putting it down to watch television. You gotta figure out how the hammer works and how to put it to use!

Heck yeah, Guitar Yoda is in the house!

(Friggin’ dork…)

So first things first, learn a major scale, at least one octave in one position, but preferably in one key across the entire neck if you’re logging in lots of practice time. If you want to learn the modes with the fancy names (Dorian, Lydian, etc.) then you have to understand how this scale works and how it sounds, bathe in it, take it out to dinner, whatever–learn it. Seriously, you’ll save a lot of wasted hours trying to figure out those “lydian scales” if you know your major scale first.

(It’s not a lydian “scale”, it’s a mode of the major scale!)

Beyond that I’d say the pentatonic scales are the most popular ones to learn on guitar–minor pentatonic if you’re into blues and rock, major pentatonic if you’re into country and southern rock (though without getting theory heavy, they’re the same thing, so pick one and go). The pentatonic scale is somewhat the skeleton version of the major scale, so it’s not a bad idea to learn it first, not to mention it sounds more hip out of the box for jamming than the major scale. Then when you get to the major scale you see it’s just pentatonic with a few notes added. So that’s a cool way to approach it or simply start with the major scale first. I think either one is worthwhile.

At this point I see two types of students: Those who have the first shape of a scale and want to learn the coolest jam riffs in that shape and those who want to learn every shape the first day. While there’s nothing wrong with being motivated to learn the entire scale in a day, I’m not a huge fan of it. That’s a lot of information to absorb all at once. It takes time to not only learn a shape, but dig into its’ nuances, learning all the hammer ons, sequences & stuff that make it musical. I’ve had students go off and learn all the shapes in the first week after I’ve given them the first one and cool, they’re motivated. But then I try to get them doing stuff in one position and they’re frustrated because they think they’ve “learned the scale” when all they’ve done is memorize a few shapes. Basically, I have the opinion (others may disagree) that you’re better off exploring the possibilities of one shape than quickly running through all of them. This stuff takes time. Wouldn’t you rather know one shape really well and be able to bust out cool riffs over just having a whole scale memorized and not know what to do with it? Take your time, build on your knowledge.

So you’ve learned a scale shape or taken in the entire thing across the neck. Now what? Obviously we’re talking about countless ideas here, from raw technique to theoretical concepts, all things beyond the scope of a blog post. There are lots of internet sites & videos that will teach you the nuts & bolts. But say you’ve already learned a bunch of techniques and you’re still not happy with the way your lead playing is going. Some pointers…

1. Learn rhythm. This connects to my other article on rhythm guitar, which basically says you need to study quarter notes, eighths, etc. More stuff to learn! How can you possibly get bored? A common cause of lead playing boredom is doing everything with the same rhythm. Why do you think so many 80s metal bands sucked? They were all shredding the exact same patterns in every song, for the most part. Singers don’t sing like that (and it’s not a bad idea to study vocalists for riff ideas) and neither should you. Ever had a conversation with someone who wouldn’t shut up or let you get a word in? Annoying! Don’t let your solos be like that…let a note ring out, play a couple slow notes, then a couple fast ones. Put SILENCE into your solos, as in a few notes, silence, then a few more notes.

2. Practice to jam tracks: Playing to quality backing tracks will make your scale practice infinitely more enjoyable. Lots of websites have these, including my website and there are many book/CD packages that do the same thing. One of my favorites is the Stand Alone Tracks series that Alfred puts out. They have CDs devoted to rock, blues, metal, country, around twenty of them. Some sound a little dated now, but they’re still useful. My favorite of theirs is the Urban Blues collection. Many of today’s drum machines also include cool rhythm sections, bass, synth & stuff. You’ll really hear whether your riffs work or not when applied to a jam track.

3. Practice playing less: This technique can get creativity flowing. I sometimes find myself running through my scales full speed, fingers moving well, but nothing sounds inspired. Playing as few notes as possible gets me more selective about which notes I want. Sometimes practicing ONE NOTE can be inspiring. You can hammer to a note, pull off to it, bend to it, slide to it. One note solo is possible!

4. Steal from other players: You can’t invent new riffs, it’s all been done. The creativity is what you do in that moment in response to the music around you. So technically you’re not stealing a Jimmy Page riff if you put it into a jazz song, catch my drift? Or as I tell students, steal from one person it’s plageurism, steal from lots of people and it’s research! Sometimes I’ll take, say, two measures of a Satriani solo and learn two or three cool riffs I can apply to other scales. Because Joe’s cool like that.

You should do that with anything you learn, by the way…be able to apply a riff anywhere in the scale or in any key. If you can only play it in the first place you’ve learned it you’re limiting yourself.

Alright, fingers are tired from all this typing. I’m taking a break, then I’m picking up the Strat.