Can anyone give some tips on writing a guitar solo?

[Garin Miller]

I’m having troubles writing guitar solos, I want to create something that really grabs people. I’m not educated on music theory or any of that, but what I’m having trouble with is how to structure a solo instead of just useless shredding

 

[Matt Wildman]

Well the penatonic scale is a good place to start. You can create a lot of cool riffs with just that structure. Just make sure your doing it in the key that your playing in

 

[idssdi]

If you listen to most good guitar solos it has a melodic overtone with shredding around that melody. Another thing you want to pay attention to is to when to climax in the guitar solo (I think most people do it near the end of the guitar solo) like don’t show all your cards at the start. If you really want to stay away from mindless shredding try to get a theme going and write your solo around that one.
Just as an example. Here are some songa/solos I wrote a couple years back.
Raven met de Rechtszaak

Arpeggio hell

Vault Of Heaven

Knight VS Dragon

Gangsta bikers

Is dit funky

I think the solo in Vault of Heaven Is the one which is the best example of a theme with shredding around it.

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

I will just add one thing. Find out which guitarist’s solo you can really relate to. Listen to those solos. It will help you in structuring solos. Usually it’s a nice mix of slow melodies and fast shredding. But that’s too too broad.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

The solo is basically the same idea as the song itself. Trying to tell a story within a story. You want a starting and ending point. It usually takes me sosme time myself to get the solo part of a song down. Its definitely the most tike consuming.

 

[Dan Shipway]

To start a basic solo I try and take the vocal line in the chorus and do what kurt cobain did in smells like teen spirit and then add some stuff on the end

 

[Jak Angelescu]

When you said, “I want to structure a solo instead of just mindless shredding” the first thing I thought of was the word “structure” and that dinged to me you may be thinking too much about it. What helps me the most is think of the melody you’re trying to go for. Hum it, sing it, do whatever it takes. Find a melody hook you like and build off of that. You don’t need to be a theory guru to write a beautiful solo. I actually have a video for an original solo on here of mine that was one of the first solos (it was my second one actually!) that I play and it doesn’t shred at all. But it’s soooo melodic. And I knew ZERO theory at the time of when I wrote it. But it goes along slightly with the main melody of the song. Think of the emotion you want to convey. And just start. Lay down the first few notes and let your art build over the span of a few weeks. You’ll hear stuff and get ideas the more you play around!
My biggest advice? Don’t be afraid! Just find a melody you like and work around it I hope this helps

 

[Dan Shipway]

Another bit of advice is to not think of it as a solo but as you just playing lead over chords, I will create a backing track soon with the challenge of playing something oriental/asian based and its all about capturing the mood of the song, I believe it was the guitar player from maroon 5 that said something that resonated me and has made me think of solos or lead in general in a much better way and that is “serve the song”. Those 3 words are some of the most, if not the most important words for a musician and as long as you can do that you are well on your way to creating the solos you want.

 

[sally smith]

It might be helpful to decide on a central theme for the solo that you really like (it could be a melody, lick, whatever you want, usually something that relates to the rest of the song) and then base the solo off of that. You can kind of build around that central theme and keep coming back to it so that the solo sounds like one connected idea instead of a bunch of random shredding. You just have to make sure it doesn’t get too repetitive.

 

[Daniel Bernard]

I think that you should try to sing the solo. Most people think that when they will learn theory they’ll write killer solos, but it’s not true… it just makes it faster to transfer the melody in your head to the guitar. Alot of people fall in the trap of playing solos that only involve what their muscle memory learned. That is why I think a solo that comes from somewhere else than the guitar is always good.
Of course, your fingers can come up with something cool too.. put on the backing track and play over it for an hour straight for a couple of days while recording and then listen to your recording… anything that is different or sounds good to you, write down the time on the recording and try to reproduce it on the guitar and then polish/perfect/make it better.

 

[Dan Shipway]

Try and play to melodic backing tracks, it will help with getting the feel and creating small lead lines that can be transferred into the solo