How To Play Fast Lead Guitar Solo Ideas That Connect Ideas Like Words In A Sentence
Do you have a hard time playing guitar solos that feel like actual music?
Good news:
It doesn’t take a lifetime to learn how to play great guitar solos that sound impressive.
Sound good?
Use these guitar soloing tips to improve your musical expression in no time:
Give Yourself Time To Think
The better you get at thinking about what you want to play in advance, the easier it becomes to play fast guitar solos that flow from one great idea to the next.
Watch this video to learn how to think ahead during guitar solos:
Learn How Different Notes Feel Over Different Chords
Understanding the emotional quality of different notes makes it much easier to quickly decide on which notes you want to end a lick on, which ones you want to hold longer or which ones you want to string together in a flashy technical run.
It all begins by being able to identify the emotional qualities of different notes (or just “how tense or relaxed they feel”).
Check out this video to learn how to do it:
How To Keep Your Guitar Solos From Becoming Boring
Use the other positions of the scale while improvising.
You don’t need to make sudden huge jumps in pitch range, but
the point is to not stay in any one position for too long (making it become
boring) and expand the pitch range gradually.
This also helps you to practice mastering the shapes of the major scales on a deeper level as well by better integrating your technical skills into music.
When practicing scale sequences, focus on making the
picking hand motions more economical.
What to avoid:
Swooping your pick down and away on each note as if you were drawing the letter “U”.
This creates tons of extra motion that slow you down.
Instead, move your pick in a straight line up and down. This
helps you play faster with a whole lot less effort for each note.
Tip: As you practice your picking, watch your picking hand so that you can see what the pick is doing.
Quick Guitar Practice Tip For Cleaner Speed
When you practice technique exercises, such as arpeggios,
use more distortion about 70% of the time.
Distortion makes you more aware of issues with string noise that must be muted. Using a clean tone masks this problem more and makes it harder to hear. You make it easier to hear that your playing isn’t totally clean because other strings were ringing as you are ringing when you are using distortion.
Ready to learn more ways to improve your guitar soloing and play faster?