How To Play A Fast & Interesting Guitar Solo Whenever You Pick Up Your Instrument

Being able to play fast guitar solos that get people’s attention feels great.

But you know what’s even better?

Being able to do it anytime you want!

No, this doesn’t mean memorizing a bunch of stock guitar licks or guitar solos that someone else made.

Instead:

This skill comes from developing the ability to play guitar with good phrasing.

It’s fun and easy to work on guitar phrasing.

Doing it consistently helps you play killer guitar solos at any speed in no time.

Get As Much As You Can From As Little As Possible

Getting better at guitar phrasing means making every note you play worthwhile.

Most guitar players suffer from the mistake of using as many notes as possible in their solos in order to run into a cool lick or two.

Problem is: Great guitar soloing comes from knowing HOW to use the notes you’ve got, not just the notes themselves.

In fact…

You don’t need to learn tons of scales or intricate patterns to play great guitar solos.

The better you get at squeezing as much expressive power as you can from a single note, the better you get at doing this with a few notes… then an entire lick… then an entire solo.

Here are some excellent ways to improve your guitar phrasing and play kickass solos:

Take Any 3 Notes And Train Yourself To Milk Them For All They’re Worth

Starting small helps you master the ability to make a few notes sound great, so that later entire solos sound great.

Choose any guitar scale or lick and select just 3 notes from it.

Set a timer for 5 minutes.

Then spend that 5 minutes playing those 3 notes in as many different ways as possible.

-Use vibrato or bends to make the notes more expressive like in this video:

-Play with different note rhythms

-Use slides, pull offs or legato

Try to create as many musical phrases as you can think of in this 5-minute time period.

Practicing this simple exercise for just 5-10 minutes per day is extremely powerful for improving your creativity while soloing or improvising.

Learn To Use Tremolo Picking To Spice Up Any Phrase

Tremolo picking is an easy way to add intensity and interest to any guitar solo you play. It’s requires much less complicated movement than playing sweep picking arpeggios or long scale runs – yet, still sounds awesome!

Use it at the end of a run to build intensity:

Play through the lick above and tremolo pick the last note as shown. While doing this, keep tremolo picking for several seconds. The longer you continue this, the more intense it feels!

Palm mute it then play the strings open

Palm mute several notes in a lick or phrase, then use tremolo picking while not muting on the remaining notes. This makes the tremolo picked notes contrast greatly with the others, exaggerating them to make them feel more intense.

Experiment with adding tremolo picking to repeated phrases

Adding tremolo picked notes to a repeating phrase creates more variety and intensity without changing/adding new notes.

Learn How To Improvise Well Over A Single Chord

Learning how to play great guitar solos over a backing track begins by playing over a single, repeating chord (or note).

This is a great, simple way to start playing musically expressive ideas of your own.

Pay attention to feelings created over different chords using the ideas here:

Learn How To Improvise Well Over Chord Changes

After learning how to solo over a single chord, learning how to play over chord changes is next.

Remember, the way a note feels over one chord may feel completely different over another.

Without getting deep into theory, use this simple approach to get started:

Create a backing track with two chords in the same key and play over them with one scale.

For example: Solo with the A minor scale over an A minor and D minor chord.

Adding one more chord increases the challenge because you have to think about and feel which notes sound tense or relaxed. This means paying attention to how long you hold notes and how they sound over each chord.

Start this by using just 3-5 notes of the scale. Later, once you have become used to this, add more notes.

From here, increase the challenge and expand your ability to improvise/solo by:

Creating a backing track that uses two chords from different keys.

Here are some examples:

A Major – F# Major

E minor – A major

C minor – Db Major

While soloing over chords from different keys, you may need to use more than one scale to begin with. Learn which scales to use by asking your guitar teacher.

Note: This is just the beginning for transforming you into a killer lead guitar player. There is much more to learn in order to become very musically expressive. Get more free advice to do it by signing up for these guitar soloing tips.