Advice for creating solos

[Harrison Duncan]

Hello everyone I’m new to site, so basically, I’ve been playing for a good 16 yrs and have created a fair amount of unrecorded riffs, none of them have solos, mostly because I have trouble deciding what I want do, can anyone give any tips or ideas they use when writing a solo? Like keeping it relevant to the riff, or how to build and make it more climactic?

 

[Ed Seith]

Couple of approaches to start the process. You can look at keys and modes that work with your riff, and try to come up with a melody or theme that you like, then go from there. You can take a melody already in the song, and twist and turn the notes and everything around so it’s “in the family” but different. You can loop the solo section and improv over it 8 gajillion times until you find bits you like and build from there… Lots of ways to go.

 

[Harrison Duncan]

I’m trying to like your response but my iPad just won’t let me lol. Thanks man, I just need a laptop and some recording software to loop anything I look forward to uploading some unedited videos of my riffs and see what kind of ideas/feels people come up with.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

The pinned thread has tons of videos to help soloing.

 

[Ed Seith]

And it’s not your iPad – the site’s Russian and Korean gremlins took down post liking in the last Spam War. Techs are still working on it.

 

[idssdi]

I usually this just improvise over the chord progression until I have something that fills up the whole solo section with stuff I like to hear. If you need any tips there is a forum topic called ‘solo trouble’ which has a lot of tips and tricks and things to look at. It is pinned to the top so it should be easy to find.

 

[Dan Shipway]

I often just use a scale and find its positions, sometimes that can include sweeping arpeggios, taping 3 note patterns etc, I don’t have a great fret board knowledge but I just play something and when I hit a note that doesn’t fit I play the same thing trying to change that on note until it is something that fits.

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

there are so many ways to approach this. I am assuming you have tried some. How about taking sections of the riff, convert them into single line phrases and then stylize them?

 

[Jak Angelescu]

Everybody has amazing suggestions here that’s for sure. As Calvin said, check out the pinned form topic at the very top of the 1st page. It’s the one started by Gates. There’s also tons of videos on their from your fellow beloved students to help you along the way by demonstrating what they mean. I would like to cap on all of these things by saying solos don’t need to be difficult. Don’t try to shove every single scale modal position and every single technique into one solo and make it as fast and technically challenging as possible. Let yourself jam and let yourself hear a melody. And don’t get discouraged if something doesn’t come immediately or if you feel that after a week you want to butcher something and change it. It’s all a part of the growing process! Believe me I have a solo that I was working on for 4 years and I finally was ready to record it lol! Looking forward to hearing your stuff!

 

[Calvin Phillips]

I’ve rewritten the same songs over and over for 10 years until i was happy. I’m also proud to say the newer stuff is coming along much easier without much changes.