Melodic phrasing in improvised solos

[MUSIKRICKARD]

Has anyone got any tips about how to improvise melodically while soloing? Sometimes i feel like I'm just playing what my fingers wants and making sure I'm sticking to the right tonality.. Any tips about how I can learn how to play what I hear in my head?

Sometimes it works, and sometimes not, i guess it has to do with the inspiration.

[A String]

Learn your scales and modes, and practice them a lot.

 

As your brain memorizes the sounds and locations of the notes in a scale or mode, your fingers will know where to go, automatically. In your head, you'll hear some funky stuff that you want to play and your fingers will just follow along.

 

Another thing you can do is start learning guitar solos that you find interesting. Dissect them and find the riffs that appeal to your style. Then, figure out what is going on and see if you can come up with similar riffs.

 

It's all about getting to know the modes and scales and having them in your arsenal for when you are playing.

[SEHpicker]

1+ What A String said.

I would add that experimenting with the blending of different modes and scales can lead you to some very cool and very unique riffs. It will take time, but eventually this is what will give you your own sound/style.

[Dr. Ellwood]

If you don't read and your scales are not developed then nodes or the use of intervals in your solo's will not make sense to you yet. Try this, if you are hearing or feeling a interesting solo in your head, try to sing it! If you multi track, lay down a rhythm progression on one track and on playback sing the solo track over it. Then by rote playing, learn, note for note what you sang with voice, transpose the sung note back to guitar. This is a cumbersome technique but it does work and it is good ear training.

[skipclone 1]

I think in addition to the good advice so far, you should ask youself-and it wouldn`t hurt to answer this right now-soloing over what? if you just play scales and modes it`s going to come out sounding jazzy. Is that what you want? you`re talking about phrasing. Take a phrase and play it as many ways as you can, bend and stretch, go way out there, start in weird places and see where you end up.

[p90jr]

Ear training, develop a good sense of relative pitch, and listen to everything you can... and listen to other instruments besides guitar for inspiration for solos. You'll get to where you can play what you hear, then you concentrate on hearing in your head what you want to play.

[desertbluesman]

Scales are the alphabet, from them you make musical words and phrases.

[p90jr]

Yes, and we learn to speak by building a vocabulary of phrases and learning to assemble them in a way that makes sense.

 

When I was a kid learning to play and learning tons of songs I had a couple of friends who decided to be punk rock about the entire thing and refuse to learn to play "other people's songs" so that they'd be "original." The people who say original things don't make up their own words and sentence structure, no one would understand them, so I thought the same thing applied to music. Those buddies of mine ended up playing guitar the way the character in the Jodie Foster movie Nell spoke.

[picker]

Listen to melodies and melodic players, and learn their solos and other melodies. It sounds simplistic, but it will help you more than all the scales you can learn. If you put melody in, melody comes out.

[A String]

Listen to melodies and melodic players, and learn their solos and other melodies. It sounds simplistic, but it will help you more than all the scales you can learn.

 

I'd have to humbly disagree with that advice, Picker. While it is a good way to pick up notes you can stitch together and is part of the advice I offered, suggesting that it is superior to learning the scales that go with it, is detrimental.

 

A player needs to know why certain notes were played, in a solo. They need to know what scale was being played and how they can utilize it to build their own solos.

 

I think that both, dissecting interesting solos and learning scales, are required to become a better soloist. Of the two, learning the scales is the most important, otherwise you are crippling your ability to become better.

[Eric Iverson]

I think most of us have to use BOTH sides of our brain, so singing along with solos and learning scales and theory are both important!

 

And I DON'T think that learning scales will necessarily make you sound jazzy..... your bluegrass and classical guys certainly know their scales. Rock and blues guys know scales, too, of course, though maybe not ACADEMICALLY.

 

What makes you sound jazzy is at least much about rhythm as chords and scales, anyway. You can apply that knowledge in a rock tune sometimes, and if the tone and rhythm are rock, no one will accuse you of being a closet jazzer. Though there are WORSE things to be accused of..... LOL

[A String]

I think most of us have to use BOTH sides of our brain, so singing along with solos and learning scales and theory are both important!

 

And I DON'T think that learning scales will necessarily make you sound jazzy..... your bluegrass and classical guys certainly know their scales. Rock and blues guys know scales, too, of course, though maybe not ACADEMICALLY.

 

What makes you sound jazzy is at least much about rhythm as chords and scales, anyway. You can apply that knowledge in a rock tune sometimes, and if the tone and rhythm are rock, no one will accuse you of being a closet jazzer. Though there are WORSE things to be accused of..... LOL

 

+1

 

There are TONS of modes and scales. Even if a person learned just the ones that are relevant to the style they play (and maybe a few extra ones just for fun), in no way does that make the person "jazzy". You only sound "jazzy" if you want to sound jazzy. What it does it help you understand why you are playing the notes you are playing and can aid in figuring out where to go.

[Larryz]

Has anyone got any tips about how to improvise melodically while soloing? Sometimes i feel like I'm just playing what my fingers wants and making sure I'm sticking to the right tonality.. Any tips about how I can learn how to play what I hear in my head?

Sometimes it works, and sometimes not, i guess it has to do with the inspiration.

 

Sounds like you already have a grasp on the scales and you let your fingers do the talking while sticking to the correct mode for tonality...try sticking in some melody lines instead of just winging it freestyle...buy some backing band CD's in the genre that you like playing the best which are made up of songs you already know the lyrics to (if you can't find backup CD's like Karoke) then pick up the same songs for real and play along with them...inject a melody line while using the scales...your brain will start to pick up on the melody lines and you can go back to winging it anytime you want to while improvising over the song...now you will start playing what you hear in your head...if your "melodic phrasing" is more involved with chord tones, then you may want to go at this differently...have fun with it

[Caevan O’Shite]

A lot of very good advice on this thread, some of which I need to work a little harder on, myself!

 

All around, develop your sense of melody, as well- absorb and digest a lot of melodic music of all styles. To further develop your melodic sensibilities, play various chord progressions up and down the fretboard on the lowest three or four strings, leaving room on the top strings to try various notes in the 'soprano' voice on top of each chord, until your chord progression has a melody outlined by the highest notes of each chord as you play through. Additional notes can be played in passing between some chords if needed, connecting the chords and detailing your melody. This is called voice-leading and is a big part of chord-melody playing. This will also have an impact on your melodic lead playing, not only influencing your sense of melody, but also your ear for relating melodic note choices to chords- the mechanics of how melody and harmony are tied together.

 

...if you are hearing or feeling a interesting solo in your head, try to sing it! If you multi track, lay down a rhythm progression on one track and on playback sing the solo track over it. Then by rote playing, learn, note for note what you sang with voice, transpose the sung note back to guitar. This is a cumbersome technique but it does work and it is good ear training.

 

EXCELLENT advice!

 

I'll add that I often tell other players, if you can't sing it, you don't know it, and you damn sure won't be able to play it.

[Billster]

Play a note. Literally sing what note you want to hear next, and then play that note. Now, bringing that up to tempo will be a challenge, and that's where knowing your scales and arpeggios comes in. By practicing scales and arpeggios, you learn note relationships and get your ear in tune with what notes are expected, what notes disrupt those expectations, and how to play off variations of the expected/unexpected.

[picker]

I'd have to humbly disagree with that advice, Picker. While it is a good way to pick up notes you can stitch together and is part of the advice I offered, suggesting that it is superior to learning the scales that go with it, is detrimental.

 

A player needs to know why certain notes were played, in a solo. They need to know what scale was being played and how they can utilize it to build their own solos.

 

I think that both, dissecting interesting solos and learning scales, are required to become a better soloist. Of the two, learning the scales is the most important, otherwise you are crippling your ability to become better.

 

I agree with you, to a point, and I don't think any learning is really wasted. The more you know, the better off you are when it's time to play. But how many shred-monster players have you heard whip through scales like a buzz saw on meth, but with no feeling or real melody to it? Learning scales doesn't necessarily connote knowledge of harmony or composition, and it sure doesn't automatically give a player good taste. The only way I know to develop that is to listen to the masters of whatever style you want to pursue, and learn how they do it.

[skipclone 1]

I think most of us have to use BOTH sides of our brain, so singing along with solos and learning scales and theory are both important!

 

And I DON'T think that learning scales will necessarily make you sound jazzy..... your bluegrass and classical guys certainly know their scales. Rock and blues guys know scales, too, of course, though maybe not ACADEMICALLY.

 

What makes you sound jazzy is at least much about rhythm as chords and scales, anyway. You can apply that knowledge in a rock tune sometimes, and if the tone and rhythm are rock, no one will accuse you of being a closet jazzer. Though there are WORSE things to be accused of..... LOL

 

I`ll explain my point further-as I said, in addition to having a good foundation on what notes to apply, it`s also important to know where to apply them-that is, to develop your own voice and not just run through a bunch of notes like a metronome. Elongate, abbreviate- being good at that makes your expressions more memorable no matter what notes you choose.

It`s a matter of context-I`m sure you`ve also seen guys who are all over the place where a clean, elegant choice of notes and timing would be much better.

[Sharkman]

Dr. Ellwood gave some pretty good advice about singing out what you have in your head, recording it, then transposing the notes. The problem is, what if you're like me, and have a truly awful singing voice in a very small note range? One answer is to hum or whistle whatever tune you're thinking of, recording it, and then transposing it. I can't sing, but I can both hum and whistle, and that can work for me.

[Dr. Ellwood]

Play a note. Literally sing what note you want to hear next, and then play that note. Now, bringing that up to tempo will be a challenge, and that's where knowing your scales and arpeggios comes in. By practicing scales and arpeggios, you learn note relationships and get your ear in tune with what notes are expected, what notes disrupt those expectations, and how to play off variations of the expected/unexpected.

 

Absolutely and exactly right!

[Gruupi]

I kind of believe in an "all of the above" approach. The key to being able to write or improvise solos is being able to hear something in your head and have your fingers be able to translate it. The hearing part is very important, I can't sing but the advice on singing the part makes sense. Either way if you just follow a pattern that your fingers know then you will be limited melodically.

 

This isn't saying that you shouldn't learn scales. The more theory that you learn, the easier it will be able to figure out what you are hearing. I think a big roadblock to learning to play your own solos is relying too much on reading music or tab. Of course there are benefits to learning to read, but not at the expense of developing your ear.

 

The best improvisers have great ears, and they also know the theory behind what they play.

[Guitarzan]

an understanding of what you are playing sure does help a lot.

i see all kinds of cool stuff on the fretboard. if i have an E minor thing happening i see all the chord shapes and fragments as pieces to grab and exploit. chord tones are easy ways to inject melody on top of scales.

 

if a riff is busy and repeats try laying some simple octaves over it, maybe there is a common tone in the chords you can weld all the chords together with or maybe if the section is not very busy you can throw a pile of notes down .

 

if playing a song from tab it is cool to read the tab description of the song with the transcribers notes, it gives some good insight to why some things sound cool. i have learned lots from what the transcriber wrote as well as the visual of the actual tab.

 

you can get a lot out of chords themselves, a different inversion can suggest things you wouldn't think of normally.

 

bends add a nice vocal quality.

 

everyone has mentioned great stuff, and yeah, dissecting melodies from others music is a great way to see different approaches. especially if the song was written with piano. i have learned cool stuff from tv jingles, theme songs and video game music that i would not get if i only looked at stuff written on guitar.

 

[p90jr]

A neat little thing I get to do often is play with a great classically-trained upright bass player and a drummer who does a lot of jazz - good friends who are more advanced than me but thankfully like playing with me for whatever reason - and though we're usually hired to play "jazz," within about a half-hour of standards people get that glazed over look in their eyes like someone is trying to have a conversation with them in a technical language they don't fully understand, so we play pop, new wave, disco, soul, whatever hits as instrumentals and improvise over the changes once we've done the main part of the songs a few times. Adding to this is the fact that it isn't really anything we've rehearsed so we're winging it... and having to come up with a chord and melody approach to a 4/5 swing version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or whatever on the spot is a fun challenge, and people start making oddball requests... like "play the Sanford and Son theme!" So, being able to think of what mode the vocal melody to a song is in comes in handy as an exercise and a point for improvisation.

[picker]

Gotta love doing that kind of thing, p90jr. And if you can play stuff like that on the fly, I think the reason for them liking to play with you is pretty obvious.

[Caevan O’Shite]

A neat little thing I get to do often is play with a great classically-trained upright bass player and a drummer who does a lot of jazz - good friends who are more advanced than me but thankfully like playing with me for whatever reason - and though we're usually hired to play "jazz," within about a half-hour of standards people get that glazed over look in their eyes like someone is trying to have a conversation with them in a technical language they don't fully understand, so we play pop, new wave, disco, soul, whatever hits as instrumentals and improvise over the changes once we've done the main part of the songs a few times. Adding to this is the fact that it isn't really anything we've rehearsed so we're winging it... and having to come up with a chord and melody approach to a 4/5 swing version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or whatever on the spot is a fun challenge, and people start making oddball requests... like "play the Sanford and Son theme!" So, being able to think of what mode the vocal melody to a song is in comes in handy as an exercise and a point for improvisation.

 

 

Gotta love doing that kind of thing, p90jr. And if you can play stuff like that on the fly, I think the reason for them liking to play with you is pretty obvious.

 

Yeah!