Guitar Solos and Solo Guitar
Did you begin playing guitar by learning a set of chords and then using them to play songs? If so, you probably went on to learn more chords, more accompaniment patterns, and more songs. (*Not your approach? Here’s an article for you!)
As much fun as it is to play songs this way, at some point you’re likely to get a little bored, or just hungry for some way to expand your musicianship. There are two great ways do that, and I think every guitarist should explore them both, regardless of the kind of music he or she wants to play.
Guitar Soloing
The first thing you can do is try your hand at playing lead guitar. Even if lead playing is not something you want to do in the long run, you’ll benefit from spending a little time copying or creating guitar solos. Playing lead will help you improve your knowledge of the fretboard, develop your ear, cultivate your melodic sense, expand your creativity, and generally increase your confidence and comfort on the guitar.
Although you’ll need one or more musicians to play with, you don’t have to have them live in your living room to learn, create, and have a good time. Backing tracks will do the trick and you can easily make your own or use any of the many tracks available online or in the Virtual Studio.
If you’ve never soloed on guitar, it may seem daunting at first. The key is to start slowly and keep it short and simple. If you haven’t already practiced scales, you’ll want to learn at least one major scale pattern to get the feel of playing single notes and to learn to move around within a key.
Once you’ve gotten comfortable with single notes within a scale, you’re ready to play small musical statements. You can either copy a solo that you like or make one up yourself by choosing notes from the key that’s defined by the chords. From there it’s a matter of building your skills and stamina.
You can learn the basic skills that you need to play solos in Moving On and use Learning to Play Lead Guitar to gather more tools and more fully understand the art.
Solo Guitar
The second way to expand both your guitar knowledge and pleasure is to learn to play one or more solo guitar pieces. Solo guitar playing is so much fun because you play the melody, the chords, and often the bass line, all at the same time. You get to be your own one-person band any time, anywhere!
As complicated as it sounds, with a little instruction you’ll play simple chord melody in short time. I included a few solo arrangements in various styles in Moving On and if you choose to work with those, you’ll have the instruction that leads into playing them. Here’s an audio sample of the last song in the book: https://limitless-guitar.com/oh-susannah/ As you can tell, it’s only the melody and bass, but it holds together well for a short but catchy solo performance.
In solo guitar playing as in soloing or lead playing with one or more instruments, you can take inspiration from a lot of great players in any genre. There’s no limit to what you can create!
Want to learn how to figure out things like this for yourself? Check out the tutorials in the Virtual Studio!
