By Tom Hess

The biggest mistake you can make for your musical creativity when trying to improve the sound of your guitar solos is to use the same approaches every time. Most guitar players exclusively use these approaches:

Approach 1:They add notes onto the existing ideas in the solo.

Approach 2:They replace old notes or licks in the solo with totally new ones.

You can experience ‘some’ success while using these approaches in isolation… However, to massively improve the quality of your guitar solos, you must also do this:

Approach 3:Dissect your guitar solo lick by lick and enhance it by changing HOW every note is played. Truth is, by simply changing the way the notes in a lick are played (without actually changing the notes themselves) you can easily end up with a much higher quality guitar solo. On the other hand, if you never invest time into improving the way you play the notes, you will only be able to add new notes to the solo that are just as ‘average’ sounding as the ones you began with.

Watch the video below to see how I enhanced one of my student’s solos using this idea. By making just a few small changes to the way he played the notes in the licks of his solo, we were able to make the overall solo sound A LOT better:

Here is how YOU are going to learn how to do this… Pick a solo that you want to improve and use the techniques below to slightly alter the licks that make up that solo. There are three options to choose from while doing this:

Option 1: If you have written your own guitar solos, use it.

Option 2: If you know how to play the guitar solo(s) of your favorite band/guitarist, choose one of them.

Option 3: If none of the above options apply for you, think of several guitar licks (in the same key) that you can play consecutively. This will allow you to play through the exercise even if you don’t know how to play an entire solo yet.

Here are a few ideas for some licks you can use in the key of C major/A minor:

Lick 1- Hear It	Lick 2- Hear It	Lick 3- Hear It

Previously, I explained in an article the different ways you can learn how to improve any guitar lick with various lead guitar techniques. You will now learn how to use bends in highly creative and unique ways to play better solos than you’ve ever played before. Note: Yes, bends are not an extremely complicated technique, but there is A LOT more to the nuances of bending strings than most guitarists realize. If you struggle to make your guitar solos sound awesome, then you haven’t yet mastered the creative bending variations I will have you practice below. So DO the exercise and watch it improve your lead guitar skills:

Guitar Soloing Technique #1: Using Bends To Add Depth To Your Licks

Step 1: Select any guitar lick within your guitar solo.

Step 2: Look for ways to connect the notes in this lick together using bends. In general, the beginning and ending notes are the easiest ones to enhance with bends. Note: Remember to keep your bends in tune at all times.

Step 3 (optional): After bending up to the desired note, increase the intensity and aggression of the lick by using wide vibrato. The following is an example of how steps 2 and 3 would sound like together:

Example– This small guitar lick uses bends and vibrato on the third note and the last note. You will hear two variations: one with vibrato on the third note and one without it: Hear It

(See how this is used in the context of an actual solo by watching the video above.)

Step 4: Play the new variation of your lick several times.

Step 5: Go back and repeat steps two through four by bending up to a different note in the lick. Observe the difference in sound between the variations you made. Go through this same process for every note in the phrase.

Step 6: Once you’ve done this for every note, decide which variation of the lick you like the best and use it in the place of the original lick.

Step 7: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #2 (and #3) below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #2: Using Bends Of Varying Speeds

Guitar players will often use bends in the following manner: First, they will strike the note, then they will instantly bend up to the desired pitch. Here’s how it sounds: Hear It

Your guitar solos will sound much more creative when you use bends at varying speeds rather than always ‘immediately’ bending to the target note. Here is how to do this:

Step 1: Take a single lick within your guitar solo and select a couple of notes within it (that are a half step apart).

Step 2: Strike the string and ‘slowly’ begin bending the string from the original note to the higher one. This will move the lower note up in pitch just a little bit (this will make it feel out of tune for the moment).

Step 3: As you get closer to hitting the target note of your bend (after you began the bend slowly), ‘immediately’ speed up the bend to reach the target pitch. Then you can either return the string to the original pitch or follow the next step:

Step 4 (optional): Apply wide and aggressive vibrato to the note before you continue finishing the rest of the lick.

Example– Using a bend with a slow beginning and quick ending: Hear It

(Check out the video above to see exactly how this is used in the context of a solo.)

Step 5: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #3 below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #3: Using A Pre-Bend

A pre-bend occurs when you bend the string without actually picking it, then strike the string in order to sound the ‘release’ of the bend. Here is an example: Hear It

Choose any note within your guitar lick and enhance it using a pre-bend. Begin by bending the string up (without picking it) by either a half or whole step, THEN picking it and finally releasing it. Experiment with different notes in the lick to see which one sounds best when played with a pre-bend.

Example: Hear It Observe the slow pre-bend on the first note of this guitar lick (it’s a variation of Lick 1 shown at the beginning of the article)

Keep going through this process for the rest of your solo in order to build tons of innovative variations for each individual lick. Then determine which licks you like best and record the new (slightly changed) solo. Once you’ve done this, observe the creative difference between the original lick you began with and the newer version… you’ll be totally surprised by how much better the new one sounds than the original!

String bends are just a single tool you can use to enhance your guitar solos/licks. The main idea of this exercise is to demonstrate how many great ideas you can squeeze out of a single technique. You can also apply the same approaches in this article using other techniques, such as slides, vibrato, string muting, sweep picking, etc (as well as other types of string bending).

The simple techniques above can be used to make any of your guitar solos sound MASSIVELY better! That said, there are a lot of alternate concepts you must learn about being more creative and playing innovative guitar solos. Get started right now learning how to improve your lead guitar playing.

 

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, songwriter and a pro guitarist. He uses the best online guitar lessons to train guitar players to reach their musical goals. Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources, guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.