Improving soloing technique

[SamusChief]

I'm a self-taught guitarist, and a pretty good one if I do say so myself. Been playing maybe two years, and I can already play the rhythms to some difficult stuff, like Master of Puppets. I have endurance, and stamina, but I really want to be a LEAD guitarist. My techhnique isn't very clean. My fretting hand misses sometimes and so does my picking hand. Any tips on how I can improve soloing technique?

PS DO NOT SAY PRACTICE. I play for about an hour and a half every day because Guitar is my favorite thing ever.

[Petrovsk Mizinski]

Re: Improving soloing technique

Just slow down man.
If you can't play something at a certain speed, slow it down first, and work up to the speed.
How's your vibrato and bending, do they need work too?

[formula73]

Re: Improving soloing technique

Work on vibrato. I can see you're a Metallica fan, but please, try to have more feel and power than Kirk. His is weak and fast, IMHO, where say, Zakk Wylde's is horrifically overstated. Dime had some pretty tasty vibrato: medium speed, wide, and powerful. Also, people will tell you to hold your pick this way/that way and classical left hand position, blah, blah. Do what is comfortable for you and just stick with it. When you're trying to play cleaner and faster, there's no sense in trying to relearn to walk when you've already got that covered and you want to run. How much difference can left hand placement matter when Django could play lightning fast leads with 2 fingers of a gnarled claw?

Also: what kind of practice? As boring as it sounds, a lot of repetitive finger exercises help with muscle memory, as does doing boring runs with a metronome. I can't tell you how frustrating it is when the other guitarist can't get the feel of a solo right because he just learns the notes and not the rhythm...but as a rhythm player, you probably have a good bit of that already.

[GuitarStv]

Re: Improving soloing technique

Whenever I start missing notes and fretting the wrong spot there are two causes:
1. I'm not sure of what note to choose next.
2. I'm trying to play too fast.

In the case of #1 you can fix it by either thinking melodically (try humming what you want to play on the guitar, and then find the fretting positions for that part), or by learning whatever scale/arpeggio that I'm playing a little better (if you're trying to do a run in an Am7 arpeggio but can't remember exactly where the notes are when you need them, then you'll likely flub it).

In the case of #2 (as mentioned above) you just have to slow things down. Play them at half speed until your fingers are moving properly and the piece sounds fluid. SLOWLY increase the speed and keep playing. Once it starts to get choppy/crappy sounding again, reduce the speed a bit and play the part over and over again. Focusing on your left hand position (is there any tension when you're playing, is your wrist bent at a funny angle, etc.) and right hand picking (is your hand pushing too hard on the bridge, are you anchoring your hand with your pinky, is your pick moving across the strings at a slight angle, or flat on, etc.) can also help you fix bad habits that you've fallen into.

[SamusChief]

Re: Improving soloing technique

My vibrato is a little worse than Angus Young's. I love Metallica, but I don't like Kirk's soloing style. It fits the music most of the time, but nowadays he's really lost his melodic side. ANYWAY...

I can play melodic stuff really well. Slower stuff is great, Medium is ok, but whenever I try faster stuff it goes downhill. What kind of finger exercises do I need to do? I know the blues one where it goes 5-4-7-4-7-4-7-4. I can alternate pick that.

[Andrew Lamprecht]

Re: Improving soloing technique

My vibrato is a little worse than Angus Young's. I love Metallica, but I don't like Kirk's soloing style. It fits the music most of the time, but nowadays he's really lost his melodic side. ANYWAY...

I can play melodic stuff really well. Slower stuff is great, Medium is ok, but whenever I try faster stuff it goes downhill. What kind of finger exercises do I need to do? I know the blues one where it goes 5-4-7-4-7-4-7-4. I can alternate pick that.

Kirk had a melodic side???? When did that happen!!?!?

[Andrew Lamprecht]

Re: Improving soloing technique

In all honesty. Just playing different styles of music and slowly starting off is good.

Look at early Deep Purple and play sme stuff. It's super simple but sounds good and will help your speed.

[Andrew Lamprecht]

Re: Improving soloing technique

[SamusChief]

Re: Improving soloing technique

I'm so stupid. I'm sitting here trying to learn all these fast solos and it never occured to me that slow ones can help you progress more.

[StillLearnin']

Re: Improving soloing technique

It's like anything else in life you want to be good at - you figure out what it is you want to do and then figure out how to get there - everyone learns differently. For guitar, it's more about knowing where you are going or where you want to go on the fretboard, then focus on getting things ingrained into your hands concentrating on how it "feels" when you play things correctly - remember how it feels and focus on making it comfortable to play. If your hands start to hurt , walk away from it for awhile. Keep your picking hand relaxed - that's huge. Some days I'll work on one stupid thing for hours and *never* get it where I want it. I walk away from it for a few days and come back to it - and play it effortlessly. The brain and muscle memory is a wonderful thing :-)

Try to avoid being a riff monster - A lot of guys learn cool riffs but fall short because a riff in itself is like a single word in a sentence. Sure you can build a sentence with a bunch of words, but will it make sense? Maybe, but probably not. I hear so many players with not much to say so they say everything they know in every song - those are the riff guys. Learn how to structure sentences musically - the more you concentrate on the musical part and melodic content, the easier the technical part falls into place. Your hands will find it a lot easier to do what they are supposed to if your brain knows what your hands are supposed to do...

No matter what, have fun cuz that's all that really matters in the end.

My 2 cents.

[Left_Hand_Strat]

Re: Improving soloing technique

something my Tutors have taught me well.

Practice isn't playing the things you do know

Practice IS trying to play the stuff you DON'T know.

I dare say you know this, but its a basic thing to always remember.

Noodling around on your guitar isn't practice, that's just you noddling around, Now If you structure your practices too, so for example, 5 minute solid warmup, then 20 minutes on A then 20 on B and so forth, that can help an awful lot too. I find it very useful