Ok I have been playing for less than 5 months now and I am playing Rhythm guitar in a hardrock / metal band. Nothing amazing just a group of friends who do a couple a gigs a month. And I am sick and tired of not being able to solo. I mean I can do some mild power chord riffs. But never a full on scale solo. So what I am asking is some serious help with learning to use a pentatonic or some sort of scale for solo purposes. If someone could link me, or explain to me how to learn and use scales it would be VERY VERY VERY Much appreciated.
Thankyou for your time and reading this... seriously! :D
GN's resident learning sponge, show me a little and I will soak it up.
I posted this in another thread, but it applies here as well:
A couple of tips:
1) chart out the chord progression you're soloing over and keep it in front of you until you know it by heart
2) start with quarter notes. No, it's not sexy, but it will give you the time to think until it starts becoming more natural. Good solo's don't just happen by accident.
3) start or end each measure on the 1 or 5 of the chord or the melody note.
4) know for each measure what scale you're going to be playing on and what accidentals you're ok with.
5) learn what scales sound good with what chords in your style. Jazzers can by with Diminished scales over 7ths, for example, but rockers generally can't.
5) when you can pull off a good sounding solo using quarter notes, start adding one set of eigth notes or one triple per measure.
6) add more eigth notes and triplets until you are playing at tempo and sounding good and still hitting the key tones each measure.
7) Once you have #6 down, forget everything above -- if this doesn't make sense yet, then you don't have #6 down
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
