How To Easily Play Guitar Fast Using Solos In Close Positions
“Every journey begins with a single step.”
In this case, learning how to play fast guitar solos begins with playing great phrases in close fretboard positions.
This is fun, simple to do and motivating (because you quickly begin developing better solos phrases and learning how to use speed creatively).
Sound good?
Excellent.
Let’s discuss two major concepts that help you integrate patterns together to make playing fast guitar solo phrases easier and more smooth:
Stick Within A Single Octave & Develop Killer Melody
One key mistake people make while trying to shred through scales is playing quickly through really large patterns without making every note count.
This commonly leads to boring solos that sound more like exercises than true solos.
Let’s fix this.
Staying within a single octave helps you focus on a smaller number of notes. This keeps you from getting overwhelmed, so you make less mistakes while playing fast.
This means you are able to:
·
Get a better feel for the tension and release of
each note.
·
Focus more easily on improving your guitar
phrasing.
· Create tons of melodic ideas/phrases in a short period of time without sacrificing speed.
Use the exercise below to quickly become a more melodic and expressive lead guitarist while playing fast too.
Playing only through a single octave of a scale, improvise freely while doing the following:
*Record a drone track of just the root note of the scale played continuously, then play slowly through the scale listening to the tension or relaxation created by each note.
*Create a short guitar phrase that is simple and easy to repeat. Then, for 5 minutes, use the octave of the scale to come up with as many variations of it as you can think of. Do this using different techniques, rhythms and notes.
See how many you can find within 5 minutes, then take a short break and repeat this process two more times. This helps you combine scales and arpeggios together in a smooth and musical manner.
Combine Two Adjacent Scale Patterns For Smooth Shredding
You massively open up your guitar soloing options by moving up two frets and combining two patterns together.
This keeps you from getting stuck playing the same phrases over and over (in pattern 1).
It also gives you more space to work and the chance to play with a wider variety of note sequences.
Here, two scale patterns are combined that are two frets apart: D Aeolian/Minor and E Locrian.
These scales have the exact same notes because they come from the same parent mode (F major).
This simply means that D Aeolian/Minor uses the notes of F major, only it starts from (is centered around) the note D, and E Locrian the note E.
What does this mean for soloing?
It means you can memorize these two close patterns and think of tons of creative ways to play the same notes.
This is the key to overcoming the problem of getting stuck playing the same ideas over and over in the same location on the guitar.
Try this:
1.
Improvise freely using the first scale in the
tab for 2 minutes.
2.
Improvise freely using the second scale in the
tab for 2 minutes.
3.
Improvise freely by combining both scales for 2
minutes. Do this at first, by only playing the first 5-6 notes of each one.
4.
Next, freely improvise with both scales using
any note for 2 minutes.
5. Finally, look for arpeggio patterns using any of the notes from each pattern (as you did earlier in this article) for 2 minutes.
Practicing this exercise for just 10 minutes a day helps you massively improve your guitar phrasing, soloing and fretboard memorization.
Add more scales by looking for other close by patterns on the fretboard and use this exercise to improve your ability to solo smoothly with them.
Using the exercises in this article help you take advantage of the speed you have and even solo faster because you are frequently working with just a few notes. This also trains you to use your speed more musically because you end up using speed to connect notes together rather than just to quickly move across the fretboard.
Eventually you will be able to use your speed smoothly and musically all across the fretboard once you’ve applied the exercises in this article into your playing for a while!
Good news: There’s much more to learn to make your guitar soloing sound amazing.