Its not what you play, its how you play it.

There are lots of ways to make guitar solos. Most guitarists focus on what to play versus how to play things. Fact is, the nuances of phrasing (how the notes are played) often matter MORE than the notes we actually play. How many times have you heard someone play a solo without much emotion? Often there was nothing wrong with their choice of notes. The solo lacked emotion and interest because the phrasing was weak.

Guitar Phrasing is the most important aspect to creating great guitar solos, yet very few guitar players learn to develop this key element of their guitar playing.

One of the best things you can do to make better guitar solos is to carefully study your favorite singers. In the late 1990s, I began to study the vocal styles of my favorite singers. I learned to play on guitar every little nuance of their vocal phrasing and vibrato and most importantly, the musical contexts in which they made various phrasing and vibrato choices when singing. Singers cannot do many of things that we can do on the guitar, but they can naturally and effortlessly do things that are not common (but are still possible) to do on the guitar.

Listen to your favorite singers and notice the difference between their vocal phrasing (how they sing notes and phrases) and your guitar phrasing (how you play your notes and phrases). Then listen carefully to how these singers construct their phrases and compare that to how you create your guitar solos. When you really pay attention to this, you will probably make some very cool and powerful observations. This can be one of the best guitar solo lessons you can ever have. It can be a real eye (and ear) opening experience that can lead you to discover MANY new ideas that you can use to make your own great guitar solos.

Here are three things you can learn and implement into your playing immediately so that you can consistently make better guitar solos.

Delayed Vibrato: Listen to how many singers sing a note (without vibrato at first) and then begin to apply vibrato to it a few moments later. The vast majority of guitar players don’t do this when soloing; instead they apply the vibrato immediately to the note. Although this can also sound good, it gets old to always immediately apply vibrato when you use it. So play a note on your guitar, let it ring out naturally (without vibrato) for a moment, then apply vibrato to it. In addition to creating a more vocal style of guitar playing you may also notice that the note you just played sustains longer. (more on this in the video below).

Movement between notes: As you know, when playing notes on a piano there is no ability to bend notes. Singers frequently bend notes in both directions (up or down in pitch), although downward bent notes are more common in most vocal styles. Guitar players frequently bend notes, but 99% of the time they only bend notes up (in pitch).
(more on this in the video below).

Intuitive Emotional Expression: Singers often manipulate tension and dissonance intuitively. They might sing the 9th of a chord because it makes a very specific emotional feeling. Most (non jazz) guitar players would naturally play the root while making a guitar solo (especially at the end of a phrase). This happens because guitar players typically are thinking about patterns and scale positions. And thus the ear is conditioned to find the consonant notes when beginning and ending phrases while creating (or improvising) guitar solos. Singers don’t have patterns and positions to think about. They are only focused on their intuition - the emotion of each note they sing. This results in more natural options for the singer (compared to many inexperienced guitar players) particularly at the beginnings and endings of phrases.

Watch the video below to see exactly what I’m talking about and hear a live demonstration of each.

Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online. To get more help with your guitar playing check out my 10 Free Guitar Solo Tips.

Guitar tablature (tab) is the easiest and most convenient to read and write guitar music. Students taking acoustic or electric guitar lessons are usually introduced to guitar tab within their first few lessons. But some guitar tutors don’t teach tab, and many guitarists don’t take guitar lessons at all. For these guitarists, the quicker they take steps to become literate guitarists, the quicker they can become great guitarists.

But before learning the basics of guitar tab — a word of warning. These days, it’s easy to find the guitar tabs to almost every song imaginable by searching the Internet. That’s great news for guitarists. Unfortunately, many of these guitar tabs are not completely accurate. This is because most guitar tab is tabulated by amateur guitarists. New guitarists should exercise caution and only use guitar tab from trustworthy websites. Better yet, using professional guitar tab books from music stores guarantees accuracy.

How Guitar Tabs Work
A guitar tab is made up of lines and numbers:

• Lines. There are six lines which represent the six strings of the guitar. These are — from the top of the guitar to the bottom — E, A, D, G, B, and e. The “E” is the thickest string on the guitar; the “e” is the thinnest.
• Numbers. The numbers used in guitar tab represent the frets that left-hand fingers (for right-hand guitarists) are pressed down onto to create notes.

Here is an example of a very simple guitar tab:

e——-1———————————————————
B—————————————————————–
G—————————————————————–
D—————————————————————–
A—————————————————————–
E—————————————————————–

One of the first things to notice about guitar tab is that the strings are written upside-down. The “E” string (the thickest string on your guitar) is at the bottom of the guitar tab, while the “e” string is at the top. It might take new guitarists some time to become used to reading guitar music that seems upside-down at first. A good exercise is to find and name the strings of the guitar, and then locate them on the guitar tab.

The number “1″ on the above guitar tab indicates that a left-hand finger should be pressed onto the 1st fret on the “e” string. The “e” string is then picked with one’s right hand to produce a note.

Below is a more complicated guitar tab, which shows a picked melody, and a strummed guitar chord.

D Chord
e–0-1-2-3——2————————————————-
B—————3————————————————-
G—————2————————————————-
D—————0————————————————-
A—————————————————————–
E—————————————————————–

The numbers in this example are written in two different ways: horizontally and vertically. When numbers are written horizontally, this means they are played one after another. So, the “0 - 1 - 2 - 3″ on the “e” string are notes that are to be picked one after another. The “0″ represents an “open string”; in other words, a string which is played without putting a finger down on any fret.

The numbers that are written vertically are to be played all at the same time. This is how guitar chords are written. The guitarist is required to put their fingers onto each of the frets indicated by the numbers and strum these all at once. The name of the chord — in this case “D” — is often written above the tabulated chord.

Besides lines and numbers, there are also several other symbols that can be used to write guitar tab which indicate various guitar techniques, such as hammer-ons and and pull-offs. Good guitar tab and guitar tab books should explain these symbols for the guitarist.

Being able to sight-read guitar tab is a great skill to develop. The above information should provide the guitarist with a good starting point to being able to read any tab. Thankfully, reading guitar tab is quite simple and becomes second nature very quickly.

To do any kind of work we need tools. When it comes to guitarists most people think our tools of the trade are our guitar and amp. This is true and we spend many hours every week making sure our tools are in good order but we often neglect our most important tools, our hands.

New and seasoned guitarists alike need to keep their hands and fingers in good shape in order to develop and maintain dexterity. Having strong and quick fingers is essential for being able to change chords smoothly, play speedy solos, and pick and strum in perfect time. Playing guitar really is a physical activity, and like training for any physical activity, particular muscles need to be developed. If hand and finger muscles aren’t developed, they can become tired or cramped when playing guitar.

To develop strength and speed, guitarists need to do finger strengthening exercises as often as they can. A good finger strengthening exercise should always challenge the fingers and hands. This means that as muscles and skills develop, exercises should be made more and more challenging.

Aids can be used to challenge and track progress, such as a metronome or a stop-watch. Increasing the tempo on a metronome allows a guitarist to increase their playing speed. A good challenge is to set the speed of the metronome faster with each practice. Alternatively, a stop-watch can be used to time how fast a guitarist is playing through a particular pattern or exercise. Times can be recorded, and guitarists can then try to beat their best speeds.

One very important thing to be kept in mind when doing finger strengthening exercises is that sound quality should not be sacrificed for speed. While part of the challenge of finger strengthening exercises may be to play faster and faster, this should not be done at the cost of good tone and timing.

Left Hand Guitar Exercises
One of the most useful exercises for strengthening the left hand is playing variations of the chromatic scale. The basic chromatic scale below can be used as a starting point. Guitarists can play through this scale at a pace they are comfortable with. With each practice, the playing speed should be increased slightly.

e—————————————–1-2-3-4———-
B———————————1-2-3-4——————
G————————-1-2-3-4————————–
D—————–1-2-3-4———————————-
A———1-2-3-4——————————————
E-1-2-3-4————————————————–

Having played the chromatic scale, it can then be played backwards. For example:

e-4-3-2-1———————
B———4-3-2-1————-
G—————————–
D—————————–
A—————————–
E—————————– etc.

From this, alternative patterns can be introduced. Playing the chromatic scale with the below variations helps a guitarist’s hand become accustomed to stretching in different ways:

e———————————————————-
B———————————————————-
G———————————————————-
D———————————————————-
A———————————————————-
E-1-4-3-2—-4-2-3-1—-2-3-1-4—————————- etc.

Right Hand Guitar Exercises
For electric and acoustic guitarists, playing with speed and strength with the right hand means using a guitar pick well. One very useful exercise for developing right hand muscles is to play the above chromatic scale using different patterns of up-strokes and down-strokes.

A down-stroke is when a guitar pick is used to pick a string (or strum strings) in a downward motion. An up-stroke is the opposite; strings are picked from bottom to top. By changing the pattern of up-strokes and down-strokes, the right hand can be trained to move in ways that it may not be used to. This will help strengthen finger muscles as they will be used in new ways.

In the above chromatic scale, four notes are played on each string. This makes it convenient to create picking patterns based on different combinations of four up-strokes and down-strokes. For example, “down, up, down, up” is a very basic picking pattern that can be used to pick the chromatic scale. More complex patterns could be “down, down, up, down”; “up, up, up, down”, “up, down, down, up”, etc.

Once the guitarist practices the basic chromatic scale with different combinations of up-strokes and down-strokes, a greater challenge can be introduced. Using complicated patterns of up-strokes and down-strokes while playing more complicated variations of the chromatic scale with the left hand can provide a real physical and mental workout for the guitarist.

The best part about these guitar finger exercises is that they develop finger muscles, but as they become more complicated, they also train left hand and right hand fingers to play complicated patterns simultaneously. In that sense, these exercises are as much a physical activity as they are a mental activity.

So remember its your hands that do the work. Keep them in good shape and you can make any guitar sound good.

- Axel