Originally posted by chris mood
Did you ever notice that in just about every Van Halen song the solo section is different then the rest of the song? He hardly ever solos over the verse or chorus format but instead creates a seperate section for the guitar solo. It makes for a more interesting composition.

Chris That is an EXCELLENT Point. You hit upon an important issue. The beauty of the solo is that it should tell a "story within a Story". And That doesn't happen when the solo is "genericized" (i.e. soloing over the same chord progression as the verse or chorus). In my original compositions, I always solo in a different Key/mode than the rest of the song. A trick I heard from Satch,Eddie,Vai. It's almost like artists today are Afraid to change keys at all because they'll lose the listener, the "fast-food", flash-card, 0 attention span listeners that our culture is mass producing.