Ok Guys:
I have been learning my scales in all positions for months, but when it comes to start to practice soloing, I start sweating and i end frustrated when the results are quite bad....any tips in order to practice solos effectively and in a progressive basis?
Hi,
Do you mean you have trouble trying to learn a particular solo from somebody else's song, or you can't get going on improvising your own solos?
Whichever it is, I'd try not to worry too much about not sounding as good as you'd like yet. That will pass soon enough, and being tense about the outcome just delays the time when you start to sound good.
Even though you've got some great tools ready from that scale work, you're still moving along into a new area again, so some time being a bit ordinary at the new aspects of the job are pretty much to be expected.
In general, I find that slowing down, and breaking things into small chunks (like a few bars) works for learning most things, musical or not. But maybe a solo specialist here can give you some better tips.
Cheers,
Chris
KP's 12-step program to learning to improve over anything in any style, for each step don't progress further until you've mastered that step for any piece of music placed in front of you:
1- start by playing the root note of the chord on beats 1 and 3 (or whatever the stressed beats are in your genre and time signature). That's it. Be able to do that for the whole song at a solid tempo.
2- Add the 3 or 5 of the chord on beat 2.
3- add the 3 or 5 of the chord on beat 4. (for time signatures other than 4/4 keepd alternating 3's and 5's until all non-stressed beats are being played)
4- alternate playing the 1 on beats 1 and 3 in one measure with playing the 3 or 5 on beats 1 and 3 in the next measure.
5- add in other chord tones, such as 7ths. Only use chord tones here. Don't just start using 7ths on non-7th chords. Watch out for things like b5 chords!
6- take one beat and divide it up with 8th notes. Still play only chord tones
7- add another beat with 8th notes.
8- keep adding 8th notes until you can play chord tones in 8th notes at tempo for the whole song
9- Start playing around with mixing whole, half, quarter and eighth notes to get a rhythm using chord tones that gives a musically pleasing solo
10- Start adding pull-offs, hammer-on's and bends to create even more punch. Stay with chord tones!!
11- start slowly adding in the other diatonic, non-chord tones, 7s, 6s, 2s and 4ths. Pay attention to how they sound with the harmony. Understand when scale tones clash and try and work out why.
12- start adding in non-diatonic tones. work out what sounds good and why.
"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
Thank you to both of you!!
I will follow your tips..and yes, my problem is mostly improvisation with my own material, rather than soloing over existing songs.
Again Thanks a lot KP !!..you have told me more in this lines that all the instruction DVD's I have seen :))))
KP,
That's a really great 12 step program. I'm gonna print that one out and start working on it now. I've been doing some similar things using double stops to solo.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
