And so, it’s possible to play without listening to your musical imagination. It’s… weird, if not impossible.)īut with a guitar or piano, you can just press a ‘button’ and voila, you get a note! It’s possible to play a note without imagining it first. (Fun exercise: try to imagine a note in your mind, but then sing a different note. You need to think of a pitch before you can manipulate your vocal cords to produce that pitch. The reason is that you need to first imagine a note in your mind before you can sing it. Singers, for example, have few problems with sounding 'scale-like' when they improvise. This is a typical guitar and piano problem. You’re simply repeating a bunch of notes you learned, instead of listening to the musical context and responding to what you hear. When you sound like a scale, you’re doing pretty much the same thing. It’s not wrong per se, but it certainly also isn’t right. People will understand what you’re saying because it’s in the correct language, but they’ll still look at you funny because it doesn’t make any sense in the context of your conversation. You answer “Hello, my name is Judith.” You get to your hotel and you’re asked how your flight was. You arrive and get in a cab and the driver asks how you’re doing today. Say you’re visiting Paris and you’ve prepared by learning a bunch of French phrases. And while it’s true that it won’t sound wrong, it usually also won’t sound right. The message is: ‘You can play any of these notes and it won’t sound wrong’. The issue with this is that a scale is often presented as a ‘correct note map’ to the fretboard. And I admit, it will get you up and running fairly quickly and make you sound sort of decent. ![]() It’s pretty easy to learn, memorise and play. The number 1 advice is: learn the minor pentatonic scale. ![]() It might sound a little weird: how can learning scale patterns make your soloing sound worse? To answer this question, let’s consider how most guitarists are taught to play a solo. Villain #5 - Your Theoretical Mind I’m lost in scales, modes, arpeggios and so on… Villain #1 – Scale Patterns “My solos sound like running up and down a scale” Villain #4 – Your Inner Critic This sucks, my playing should be more interesting… Villain #3– The Fretboard My solos sound ‘guitarish’ and I want to sound more melodic Villain #2 – More Scale Patterns I'm Stuck in a box or scale pattern Villain #1 - Scale Patterns My solos sound like running up and down a scale (Spoiler: we'll explore how to tap into your musicality to make your solos sound better.) This is a choose your own adventure-style article, so select the villains of your story and let’s find out what weapons you have at your disposal to beat them! The Five Enemies of Great Guitar Solos We’ll analyse the problem and I’ll give you a number of solutions to overcome these obstacles. In this article, we’ll dig into some of the biggest problems guitarists face when soloing: the ‘enemies’ of great guitar solos.
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