Guitar Video Archive

Ever see a guitarist blazing through a guitar solo, and wonder exactly how they do that? Beginner guitarists ask me this sort of question all the time, they wonder how they figure out which notes sound right before they play them.

The Video Archive Includes:

What many novice guitarists don’t realize is that improvising (also referred to as “soloing”) does not involve playing a series of random notes, in the hopes that they will sound great together. Rather, guitarists generally draw their guitar solos from a scale, using it as a template to improvise with. The Blues Scale, despite it’s name, is a scale which is used extensively in all styles of guitar solos.

In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz and fusion bands and some pop contexts as well as others, lead guitar lines often employ alternate picking, sweep picking, economy picking and legato (e.g., hammer ons, pull offs), which are used to maximize the speed of their solos or riffs. We can talk about all of these techniques.

The great guitar solos are perfect musical constructions but they always include memorable licks, small music lines that are impossible to forget and that define the style of the soloist.