THIS Is Why Your Guitar Solos SUCK
Do you want to improvise better guitar solos, but you’re stuck in the rut of just repeating the same old licks that you’ve memorized?
Should you just learn more licks? Is that the answer?
Well, let's see... think about improvising as having a conversation.
But instead of conversing with another person, you’re conversing with the music. Listening and responding to the music, the same way you would with a conversation.
When you have a conversation with someone, do you use entire sentences that you’ve memorized to respond to them?
Or do you come up with every sentence you say, on the spot, by combining different words so you can communicate your exact point?
Think of a guitar lick, or even a piece of a melody, as a complete sentence. You cannot have an effective conversation by just reciting preset sentences that you know.
You need to create sentences on the spot. And you do - it's not even that hard.
So, to effectively improvise, we need to be listening to the music, and creating responses (melodies) in real time, that are relevant to the music you are playing over.
But how do you do this? How do you come up with good melodies on the spot?
In the video below, I’ll explain exactly this. Watch it you don't want to play disjointed, directionless solos anymore.
Another great way to improve your ability to come up with create melodies, is to understand scales and modes. If you want to expand your knowledge of scales on the guitar, check out my Master of the Modes guitar course.
Video Transcription
Hello Internet, so nice to see you! When you play a solo, whether you improvise it or compose it, you find that your solos just sound like you are playing a lick after another, because that's exactly what you are doing.
You are playing one lick after another. But that doesn't sound good, does it? You would like instead to create a melody in real time, to make something that has some sense, to create something that has some meaning, okay, so that when people listen to you, they're like, oh, that sounds good.
It's not just filling up space and time, okay? To do that, to create a melody in real time, you need to pay attention to just one little thing, okay? And I'm going to show it to you in a second. A student asked me exactly how to create a melody in real time, and that's my answer.
Okay, I'd like to know probably how you think about creating a memorable melody, because as you know, you hear guitarists, and they're doing all their fun stuff and things, but there's nothing that really stands out in terms of something to listen to that your mind can grab onto.
I know exactly what you're talking about. That happens especially when they're improvising or soloing. They have a cool idea, and this idea is forgotten. They have another cool idea, and that's forgotten, and it's a lot of cool ideas.
I didn't remember any of them, because they're not connected to each other. So let's write a melody, all right? Yeah, no, seriously. Writing a melody, people think writing a melody is complicated. It's the hardest thing you can do.
There is definitely very little out there written on how to write a melody that you find today, but there are a lot of things you can think about while you write a melody, and they are not so hard, and even just a couple of those will make a good melody.
So here's the thing. Pick three notes, pick a key before everything, C major, A minor, A minor, F, pick three notes in A minor, to any three notes That's great, not too complex, G, A, C, right? So we have those three notes, G, A, C, now those notes have specific intervals between them, there is a second between G and A, and there is a third between A and C Now I want to move this through the scale,
this idea of up a second, up a third Okay, so and I want to do it on the natural minor scale more than just the pentatonic Okay, so again, I can start up a second, up a third But then I can do up a second, up a third here So I have A, B, D, or I can do C, D, E, sorry, C, D, F What am I doing?
Yeah, C, D, F D, E, G, and so on and so forth, okay? Now you get the beginning of a melody. Okay, so first we're good. Yeah. Good. So I just took something and sequenced it up and down. Yeah. Now we're gonna give you some rhythm.
Okay, because if you just play, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, it's really not a great melody, okay? So take only the G, A, and C. Yeah. But change the rhythm, hold one longer and maybe make another one shorter, whatever you want.
You can also put some phrasing element. And then you can join the two parts. You can put some extra notes in between, okay? Because you can have a... Or if you prefer, okay? But you see, I started by taking two of the same thing.
Okay? The two of the same thing could be just the rhythm, the intervals like we're doing right now. Makes sense, huh? Yeah. So what's the point here? The melody should not be a complete undifferentiated stream of notes.
Yeah. There should be some structure inside. We call those motifs, okay? And the motifs should appear ideally more than once. If it's only once, you don't know it's a motif, okay? There should be at least once.
Dries would be good too, okay? Four could be too much depending on how long in the melody. But there's something that reminds you of the rest of the melody. There's some structure inside, okay? If I have this structure of...
Now I have a melody. Now this sounds like a melody. As opposed to just three notes. As I played G, A, C with this tempo. And then I just... thing until I get to the other place and I play it with the same time, so maybe I can continue...
Makes sense, and that's taking the same thing and reapplying reapplying so I do something different but then the same, something different and then the same Okay? So, you call something a melody when there is this kind of balance between something different but then the same.
If there is not this kind of balance, it's like it's all different, different, you tend to call it guitar solo, okay, yes, actually. Do you hear the melody in your head before you play it? Absolutely, but it's a learned skill.
I was certainly not able to do that a few years ago, okay? But let me first give you an exercise to get started with this idea of writing melody. One exercise I'm giving you is this. I'm giving you two exercises.
One for creating melody, one for your ear. They work for everybody, so take note. Exercise number one, to create a melody. You improvise, but everything you improvise, you have to play it again. So you lie up.
And then... Okay, you can make your freaks as long as you want, as long as you can play them again. Okay? Put on a backing track and do that. Everything needs to be played twice. Develop your attention and memory, okay?
And then you try to push for longer and longer and longer for it. So if you lose it, okay, too bad. You just know, okay? But that's a great exercise. You can keep doing it forever. Yep. The more you do it, the better you're later at writing melody.
Because you start developing this idea of remembering stuff, okay? Yep. And the first key you need to do. Four. Here in the melody in your head, there's another one. So you do this. Play something on the A minor pentatonic.
Anything, on the A minor pentatonic. On the E minor. A minor, sorry. One you were playing before. Very good, now. Play three notes. And sing them. That does. Sing that. La, la, la, la. Very good, do it again.
La, la, la, la, la, la, la. Or whatever you're doing. Play them and sing them. La, la, la, la, la. Very good, play the other three notes. First play them. Okay. Now sing them. La, la, la, la, la. Very good, play out the three notes.
La, la, la. Pretty good. Da, da, da. Close. I'm sorry, I'm not asking that. No, it's okay, it's okay. There are no singers. The idea is that eventually. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
Okay, I may not be perfectly in tune on the chromatic stuff, but the idea is you start to develop kind of a connection with your instrument. So if you first start with play something, sing it, and then you try to do it at the same time, only on the pentatonic, then you can add the other notes later.
In the meantime, you can develop a connection with that. Okay, this is not as hard as the same if you're willing to do a bit of trial and error, essentially. But after that, you have the connection. Yeah, no, that's good.
That's a lot to work with. Take those things and run with this. Thank you, Michael. Thanks a lot.