Planning Your Guitar Solos

So you want to shred but you don’t understand just how your favorite guitarists are able to come up such mind bending compositions?

That’s okay; it just means there are a few things that you have yet to learn. 

First off, there is a large difference between a guitar solo and an improvisation. Guitar solos take a lot of planning whereas improvisations are spur of the moment lapses into previously ingrained techniques.

The first step to planning you guitar solos is to learn your scales. If you know you scales, you can easily identify which scale the riff you need to play over is in, which makes constructing a guitar solo that much easier. If you don’t know your scales then it is crucial that you learn them, as nearly all music writing and composition is based around the knowledge of scales and keys.

Once you know what scale the music is in, the next step is to choose which techniques you would like to highlight. If you want to perform a legato run, then keep in mind that your picking hand will be doing very little work and the positioning of the picking hand is very crucial. On the contrary, if you want to play a trill run, your picking hand will be doing a lot of work.

The most important thing to keep in mind when planning your guitar solo is to not get too carried away. The last thing you want to do is use all of your hard learned skills in one solo. The reason for this is because once you exhaust your bag of tricks, your solos will find themselves following the same courses time and time again.

As important is it may seem to impress the listener, modesty plays a large part in planning your guitar solo. If you want to play an ultra fast legato run, keep to legato, with maybe a few taps or some added alternate or economy picking. Don’t then turn your solo into a sweep-a-thon. Keep to your few chosen techniques no matter what.

When you play, be sure to diversify your licks. If you play an entire solo on three notes, even if you aren’t bored, the listener will be. Pick a range --whether it be an octave or more-- that you wish to cover. When playing your guitar solo, make sure you not only keep to this range, but do your best to make full use of it. If you use the octave of A, but only play three of the half notes between, then you are going to be basically running in circles with your playing.

Finally, and most importantly, use a metronome. All of our guitar gods know the importance of timing. If your solo is off, it will sound sloppy and poorly constructed even if it is of Beethoven-level brilliance.

Properly fitting the music is more important than impressing your listener. Know your audience, because let’s face it; if you are playing in a jazz band, your pentatonic trill run will not only sound out of place, but will come off as distasteful as well.

Practice hard, take your time, and have fun!

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