I know several scale patterns for the whole fretboard. Now w

Fair question. I'll be interested in the answers.

I'm sure someone will tell you the one string trick though for writing a lead riff/solo.

(Whereby you write the whole riff on one string, in an attempt to force you to play by ear instead of following scale patterns.)

Crafting a solo can be a tough thing to pull off... it's a combination of ears, fingers, and mind. Scale patterns are great for working the fingers into shape, but you've got to have the other two in play to make it sound good consistently.

On the mind end of things, you should have a plan. You want a solo to bulid in intensity, but release the tension at the end. Really good solos build tension more than once; if you chart out the tension/release cycles they're building tension, releasing a bit.... building more tension, releasing a bit... building LOTS of tension, and releasing it all.

So how do you build tension? Lots of ways!

Dynamics - lines that get louder as they move along are building tension; electric guitarists often overlook this
Rhythmic variation - "jerky" rhythms induce tension
Melodic direction - moving higher as you go builds tension
Melodic variation - using tones outside the scale builds tension (as in passing tones, neighbor tones, etc)
Intervallic leaps - sudden jumps of a sixth or more
Harmonic dissonance - using tones outside the chord builds tension; using tones outside the key builds it even more
Repetition, especially when combined with dynamics or changes in range
Moving to the extremes builds tension - sudden shifts to the low or high end of the guitar's range

And you let it go by doing the opposite things...

Anyway, this is where the ears come in. None of us are perfect in our playing, so your general plan won't always work out as planned. You need to be listening critically to what's coming out of your guitar, and adjusting your plan to what just happened - if you're thinking you'll land on an F, because it's a chord tone... and you end up with F# instead... how can you adjust? (One of my favorite quotes is from pianist Thelonious Monk, who said "if a note ain't right when I start with it, it's right when I'm done with it")

That's the crux of things: a good soloist is NOT thinking in terms of fingering patterns, they're thinking in terms of the melody that results.

So I think you're dead on in your self-assessment - you're probably thinking too much about the fingerings, and not enough about the way they sound. Make sure your ears are fully engaged when you practice.

It's also very important to be aware of where you are in a tune. I'll often stop my improv students halfway through a chorus and ask them what chord is playing under them right now, or what the chord tones are. That fits in with the head part.

If you use only one part of your musicianship (ears, fingering, mind), you'll sometimes get astounding results simply by chance. That ends up misleading some beginning improvisors; they think they've stumbled onto the right track. More often your results will be so-so... not bad, but "uninspired". If you get all three parts working together, you'll get consistently better results overall, and you'll still have the magic moments - we don't plan those, they're just given to us somehow :)

Thanks Noteboat, I really appreciate the help. Still I don't know what to practice. I will try to "play more by ear" but I still don't know how I should go about doing this. Do I memorize the fretboard and know each note I play. I don't know how to get unstuck from these patterns... I don't have any idea what it's going to sound like when I play each note. And yet when I try to slow it down my playing loses it's flow. How and what should I practice to improve my ear to finger to melody connections.

I don't have any idea what it's going to sound like when I play each note.

That's really the crux of the problem.

Get a melody in your head and play it - it doesn't matter what the melody is, as long as you can remember it... use familiar stuff like "Happy Birthday" or Christmas carols, favorite songs (that you don't already play by rote memory), church hymns, whatever. It'll probably come out wrong - that's ok; notice what parts were wrong, and try to fix them. Get to know how the sounds match up with the fingering you're using.

Over time you'll get better at it. I used to play along to Saturday morning cartoons as a kid, trying to mimic the theme music. Even today, if I have a student cancel I'll sit in the hall outside a piano studio and try to mimic the lines the pianist is playing.

It's a great way to get to know what your instrument can do :)

Thanks again Noteboat. I tryed that today and it undoubtedly focused my ear in a different way. I will be practicing with it... I just wonder how important is it that I know the notes I am playing and where does this work itself in with reading music. How would you advise me about working sight reading into my practice schedule.

I know people are sharply divided on sight reading, but I think it's a vital skill. You get a comprehensive view of the fretboard (what sounds are identical in other places, what notes go in each key or with each chord, etc), and you get exposed to more music, faster. The downside is that it takes time to learn.

But knowing the notes is really essential. You're trying to blend in with, or depart from, the chords that are backing you - so if you don't know what note you're playing (or the notes in the chord at the moment), you're playing entirely by chance.

As far as how to work reading - or any other skill - in to what you're doing, that's a tough thing to advise... everybody's got different skills, goals, and habits. But here's what I currently do in my daily practice (currently, because I revise my practice routine 2-3 times per year - there are too many facets to the guitar, and not enough hours in my day!):

- warm up. I keep a practice log, and every day I do a new key... today was the key of B. I play scales (major, natural minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, "jazz" minor, dorian, diminished, whole tone, etc), and I often name the notes as I play them. I do the same with arpeggios on some major, minor, and dominant chord types, play a bunch of different inversions of each chord after each arpeggio, and do some finger exercises. This takes about 10-15 minutes. I rotate keys through the circle of fifths, so I'm doing each key once every couple of weeks.

Then comes the meat of things... the order varies, but currently I'm doing this:

- speed drills with a metronome
- sight reading... I use transcriptions of piano or orchestral music, mostly, and try to find stuff with difficult keys, lots of accidentals, time changes, etc.
- chord comping... using standard (jazz) charts, I'll play one or two pieces, and do each one three different ways
- technical studies. This takes 1/3 to 1/2 of my practice time currently; right now I'm working on different position shifts and finger placements than I usually use.
- new music. I have to keep up with my students, and on any given day I'm teaching a wide variety of styles. Today's lessons covered John Lee Hooker, Led Zeppelin, Django Reinhardt, Metallica, Chirstmas carols, and charts for a school jazz band. The new stuff I worked on today was all metal, since I have several students interested in bands like Dragonforce, and it's not the stuff I'm listening to every day.
- improvisation. I've been on a slide kick lately, so I finish up with a bit of slide blues in standard tuning. Then I switch to an acoustic tuned to open E and do a bit more.

After that I practice classical guitar, which is about 2/3 technical drills and 1/3 repertoire. I do about 1/2 to 1/3 of the repertoire work with a metronome.

My practice routines vary, but they basically follow the advice I give my students: a good practice routine has five parts:

1. Warm up
2. Review. You didn't learn to ready by looking up every word in the dictionary; you learned to read by going through a Dr. Seuss book 100 times. Repetition lets you start recognizing whole shapes in music, rather than "sounding out" things one note at a time.
3. New stuff to build skills.
4. A "study piece" - something you can already play, but you're trying to perfect.
5. Fun stuff. This could be jamming with backing tapes, working on a new arrangement... whatever turns you on. But leave this for last - if you do it first, it eats up your practice time, and you won't spend enough time on the other four - they're all important!

She taught me about the modes (Ionian through Locrian) and alot of other useful stuff. When she showed me the scale patterns and how to use them (C-A-G-F-D repeat) I was very excited... I could solo and pretty fast at that.

However, I now feel as if I have nothing at my disposal but these patterns. I am currently trying to memorize the fretboard to step up my guitar playing but everytime I start to practice I fall back to thinking that it is way to slow to try and figure out the scales this way and that experienced guitarists must just use the patterns.

Good guitarists are aware of patterns, but don't use them per se. They use the note/tone they need and know how to find it in relationship to where they are on the fretboard at that time. Very often the easiest place to find that note or tone is within the shape of some known pattern.

Patterns are, in my mind, one of several ideas that are seriously detrimental to a guitarists development.

My suggestions: start playing only major, minor, diminshed an augmented scales. Ignore modes for now. Play them in every key through the circle of fourths, with every instancce of a root on the guitar, for as many octaves or partial octaves up and down as you have room for depending on the note position. Consciously say the name of the note and/or the interval in relationship to the root. Play as many ways from each root as you can think of -- which does not conform to any pattern you know!!!!!

Now, once you've done that for a few weeks as part of your practice routine (do plenty of other fun stuff, this can get tedious!) you'll really know your scales and the fretboard.

At this point you'll want to do something a bit different. Get some backing tracks. Now start playing simple patterns over them using a new scale and position for each chord change. So if the track is the blues in C, you'll do something like:

| pattern in C major | pattern in F | pattern in A minor | pattern in E minor |
| pattern in D minor | pattern in F | pattern in C major | pattern in A minor |

etc.

Learn what major, minor, diminshed and augmented scales will fit with the simple patter of the 12 bar blues. Learn to hear consonance and disonance in your playing and to appreciate the usefullness of both. Using Em over a C7 chord does work, for example, used correctly it can be really interesting! Learn what parts of the scale you need to modify to make it work (not flattening the 7th on the IV may or may not work depending on what sound you're going for and how you resolve it, for example).

Don't think in terms of modes, but of alterations to teh basic scales to get the tones you need. What you're trying to do is to break out of the "scales and modes by pattern" mentality and start thinking in terms of intervals and melody's relationship to harmony.

After you can do the above reliably in all keys, then start adding in chromatic passing tones, and even strongly disonant notes to intentionally create tension outside of the scale. Figure out how to resolve that tension you create.

It might take a few months, but at the end you'll be freed from thinking in terms of patterns, and you'll be thinking in terms of the melody you want to create.