How To Improvise Fearless Guitar Solos

How To Improvise Fearless Guitar Solos

How To Improvise Fearless Guitar Solos

A big part of being able to whip out that giant flashy guitar solo you're dreaming of is getting out of your own head and letting your fingers do what they need to do. Here's a few tips on how to let your fingers do their job without your brain getting in the way.

1. Nobody has ever died from a bad note. Music is one of the safest activities around because you can't kill anyone unless you physically beat them about the head with your instrument. So, punk rock aside, it's a safe game. It's human nature to want to avoid and fix our mistakes. In music you have to train yourself not to worry about mistakes for two reasons.

First, if you start to second guess what you're playing it will slow down the process until you eventually give up on the solo. Second, many great musical discoveries are made in mistakes. I remember one time I was trying to recreate a drum loop I'd heard on a CD, to see how it was put together. I made a mistake that created a very different loop. That inspired me to write a song that's now been in five movies. All from a little mistake.

So if a bad note happens, see if there's some value in it, or just forget about it and keep going.

2. Start playing anything. One of the biggest barriers to learning how to create guitar solos is just starting to play and keeping at it. Do this. Set a timer for two minutes. Start playing any notes you want, without stopping, for the whole two minutes. Do not stop to think. Just keep playing. Even if it sounds terrible. You'll be learning how to break through those little mental roadblocks.

3. Set constraints on what you can play. This is totally the opposite of the last tip, but it's for a different reason. For example, set the constraints of a two chord groove, one bar each. And you can only play the top three strings of a pentatonic minor scale. Or it's a one chord groove and you can only play major scales on the top string. This will get you used to using small groups of notes to create concise melodies. It will also help you really mine an area for every melodic and rhythmic idea you can find. One of my favorites is to play a whole 12-bar blues chorus using only one note.

In the end, you can play any note you want if it sounds good to you. You could even find a music theory reason to explain away even the weirdest notes. But going in with that mindset is too general to help as a beginner. That would be like saying "Go walk somewhere." It's more helpful to say, "Walk to the 7-11 on the corner of 3rd and Walker."

4. One of my best real world tips... I've pulled my self out of more onstage improv scrape with this trick than I can count. If you hit a note that sounds weird, but it's still in the scale pattern you're supposed to be using, go one scale degree in either direction. You'll end up on a note that fits the chord better.

If you hit a weird note because you slipped outside your scale pattern accidentally, go one fret in either direction and you'll hit something that works better. Not only will you get yourself back on track, it'll sound like you pulled of a cool "outside" move that impresses people. I've done it in front of audiences full of guitar players who thought I'd played something really great instead of making a mistake.

5. So if that's the case, why not start making those mistakes on purpose? Exactly. See number 1.

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