Which book is good for learning how to solo???

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pisces7378

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I have been playing guitar for seventeen years. I am in a band and we play only originals. I am a great rhythm guitar player. Solid as a rock, and I can play any riff that you set in front of me. But I have never really tried to tear off and solo. I know that I can. I mean I have the finger speed and the dextarity, along with the drive to sit there and practice for hours a day.

But I have no clue where to start. I want to play bluesey type rocky type country stuff. Basicalyl I want to pattern my soloing style after Angus Young from AC/DC but the rest of the band will be playing more like Wilco and Radiohead. But anyway, I just need to learn more about music theory in general. I have no clue how to tell what key a song is in and where I should be on the neck in order to solo over a riff. I can do it as long as the riff is the three chord (12 bar blues) type stuff. But if you add anything extra like another chord or a minor or something, then I am all screwed up. And even when I am playing a solo it is just a cheesy hack job with no range, because I am afraid to jump anywhere on the neck. Once I find a little sweet spot, I just stick there and play the same thing, in one form or another, over and over again.

I am stuck and need to move to the next level of understanding of how music works and how the guitar fits into a riff as a solo voice.

Anyone know of any great books on that?
 
This may sound funny but I never really undestood the concept of soloing until I started recording myself. It forced me to really listen to my approach. I don't think books are going to help. As a matter of fact you can learn and memorize scales all day but if you have fear of developing your own sound you will never be able to solo good. Try recording a rythym and then record solos after solo, dont' erase any of them and losten to them after you recorded a few. You will propbably hear a vast improvement from one to the other. It all has to do with feel.
 
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first you have to ask if want to learn to read music and if you do ..... well that opens some options,

I would just reccomend getting a scale book. Learn the scales. Practice them to a nice rythym riff. Then, try different progressions to play along to.

you mentioned rock and country, so I am gonna go out on a limb and mention minor pentatonic scale.

Learn those, there are what like five patterns or something?? I don't remember, i'm not a good teacher for this, but something like that, anyway, very attainable, then you just need to play along to stuff, feel it, learn maybe some solos you like a lot. Books don't teach how to solo, only some techniques, which are covered in almost any 'rock scale' book. Don't spend too much you could find the scales on the net! learn how to hammer on bends and stuff hmm, you should try to learn some of jimi hendrix solos. They have a lot techniques that will make you a better "soloer" for rock n roll.

Also, on the records, they are used tastefully to take the song somewhere. So maybe a book on hendrix style, but don't become a nother hendrix wanna be unless you just really like him, but the technique for rock is there on the records, and if you listen and play what the notes say (or tab) you will get it, and then you can play it to whatever if you are in the proper key with the scale (probably minor pentatonic for rock, E in particular on guitar)

good luck with it sorry this's so long :P
 
pisces7378 said:
Any titles someone might recommend me?
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This helped me a lot, mostly vol. 1 & 2. I haven't got the others cause I didn't like them as much.

Fretboard logic

The first one talks about the CAGED system, a series of linked chord shapes up the neck, and their related scales, concentrating on pentatonic scales (dumb guy scales for soloing- my favorite). There are five basic chord shapes, and each has a related pentatonic scale. It's laid out in diagrams with a very clear explanation. Gives a really good base to start playing from without too much theory(just enough). I give lessons and I know instructors around here- we all agree this is a great place to start learning the neck & soloing.

This will get you moving around the neck a bit, give you some different places to go. Try playing your old riff in a new box(once you learn the boxes)
and just playing an old riff in a new place with new notes nearby can open you up a bit.

You'll find that once you get the key, your basic major, minor, and pentatonic scales will cover 99% of what you want to play. A lot of times, you can play in the key of the song, even if it has 5 parts and 8 chords, with out ever changing what scale you use. One thing I have students do is start a lick at each chord change, on the root of that chord. You try to find what notes from the scale sound "better" over what chords. You've probly noticed this soloing blues- at the turnaround, say in E, when you slam back into the beginning of the progression, that high E on the 12th fret sounds great!
I'll stop because i don't want to write all night- and I love giving lessons and teaching.

Great theory book. Easy to understand, very.....practical

Edly's Music Theory for Practical People

A bit more advanced but worth the effort:

Scales Over Chords

There is tab out there for just about anything you could ever want to learn, and these days a lot of instructional books come with cd's.

These guys have tons of tab. Type in a band, see if they have it.

Hal Leonard

Guitar Player mag has some great online lessons- as do some of the others, I'm sure.

Guitar player


Sorry to go on, but I love to teach.

Bixlmalta had great advice- record a rhythm and solo over it, and over it, and over it. What I said about hitting the right notes from the scale over a chord, that's part of what he meant by "feel". It has the right feel cause your note choices get more sophisticated, you "feel" better notes to play. Like rhythm, it gets to be more instinctive- after a lot of practice. Have fun. :D :D :D
 
Do this..... Get Joe Satriani's album Surfing With THe Alien, and get the tab book to go along with it (should be cheap, under 10 bucks). Learning these songs is well worth it.

This will give you technique.

Then buy a scalebook such as Adam Kadmon's scale grimoire and learn your pentatonic, major, minor scales up and down the neck. You will notice that if you learn these patterns up and down the neck, you can form different scales by placing the patterns in different places on the neck.

If you are ok with buying more, then get Steve Vai's passion and warefare album and tab book, and as much as I hate his scalular playing, learn a lot of Yngwie Malmsteen. This will get you to learn the neck.

I'd recommend getting the program powertab ( http://www.powertabs.net/ ), and downloading your favorite soloists or bands with solos, and learning the powertabs.
 
I don't play your kind of music but in my mind the most beneficial thing you can do for yourself is get away from brute memorization in favor of learning some theory.

It's great to memorize scales. I'm not saying it won't help you, but you will never quite be where you want to be if you just learn scales and don't have a way to figure out what scale you should be playing at a given time in the song. You might start soloing in a song and it will sound really good up until *that one part* where for some reason it just doesn't work. What you need is the ability to figure out why that one part is different.

The best thing I ever read was this lesson, which is, surprisingly, geared toward bass players:
http://www.olga.net/dynamic/browse.php?printer=0&local=resources/lessons/bass/basslines_lesson.4.txt

This lesson will help guitar and bass players alike to write better riffs, solos, and lines. It has a lot of helpful tips, but most importantly, it tells you and shows you how to play a song in the song's key (it only uses major keys but you can extrapolate the information to find out minor and other keys for yourself) and how to chords are chosen in key.

My point in posting this lesson here is to show you one easy way to apply theory and create solos, which is to figure out the song's key, then play your solo in that key, while rooting most measures in the current chord.

There are a lot of concepts beyond this that you might run into in various songs, but this lesson is the best starting place I know of for theory, because it gives you immediate application for what you are learning.
 
I can't believe that
learn a lot of Yngwie Malmsteen
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is ever good advice.

Anyway . . .

What you really want to learn is improvisation, and that means inventing a melody and performing it simultaneously. Too many players ignore step A and just runs through scales, licks, and boxes until they find a note they like. Then they realize they are out of time, hit the whammy and get the hell out. Generally that sounds like crap.

The first step is overcoming fear of rejection and failure. So start with inventing melodies. Start with singing them, then figure them out on your guitar. With practice you'll be able to go straight to the fretboard.
 
Check out a book called
The Guitar Lick Factory .. http://truefire.com/list.html?store=instruction_books&item=5385

I was like you last year, but a few lessons to learn about chord progressions (ie the theory of chord progressions), a few specific scales, and this book have all made a massive difference.

Everyone is different, but what I found helped are a few things below:

Scales:

I-II-III-IV-V--VI-VII-R
R-T-T--S- T-T- T- S

(ie root- tone - tone - semitone - tone - tone - tone - semitone)

If you can figure out what scale works (keep trying as you play along to a song, and you will figure out what key it is in)

Once you know the key, then chord progressions work this way:

I------ii------iii-----IV---V(7)--vi----vii
Major-minor-minor-Major-7th-minor-augmented

Know your minor blues pentatonic? It is the (vi) of the progression, so if the song is in C, you use the A minor blues pentatonic scale.

Then: modes (dorian, phyrigian etc)


then harmonizing scales with chords:

I--------ii----iii------IV---V-------vi---vii

Major7-min7--min7--Maj7-Dom7--min7--min7Flat5
 
If you ever watched someone you really respect musicaly play a solo a lot of times their eyes are closed. They aren't just trying to be cool, they are visulizing the guitars neck in their minds. They are using parts of scales, modes, and arpeggios that they found expresses their own musical voice and are listening more intently to what the music is doing rather than to what they are playing. Again, as mentioned previously by someone else, get over the fear. That is why I say record yourself over and over. Maybe the first few sound like shit, but what you will start to hear is that every solo has gotten better. This should tell you that every solo will continue to get better as you master your instrument.
 
really? everytime i close my eyes or look up during a solo....its because i actually like the sound i'm getting from the solo and it looks cool when i do it lol
 
I recommend Troy Stetina's book, Lead Guitar 1 and 2. If you follow everything in both of those books, you will be rocking with the best of them.
 
pisces7378 said:
Any titles someone might recommend me?
Click to expand...
http://www.learntoplaymusic.com/US/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=blues+guitar&osCsid=72ba4bd545a7c05b574766ac30c2ef71

EDIT: Humm, the above link doesn't seem to be working... sorry about that.

Do this... go to http://www.learntoplaymusic.com/US/index.php and on the left side of the page type "Blues Guitar" in the search box and hit enter. The Progressive series books are great... the books have both dots and tab, also fret board drawings... plus the books come with a CD.
 
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mshilarious said:
I can't believe that is ever good advice.
QUOTE]


It is. As much as I hate him, he is very scalular, and learning that stuff can definitely help to get familar with the fretboard.

Worked for me.
Click to expand...
 
pisces7378 said:
I am a great rhythm guitar player. Solid as a rock, and I can play any riff that you set in front of me. But I have never really tried to tear off and solo. I know that I can. I mean I have the finger speed and the dextarity, along with the drive to sit there and practice for hours a day.
Click to expand...

Maybe try starting with this one:

Humility
by C. Peter Wagner (Hardcover )

sorry...I had to...
 
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