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MarcusWiesner
Registered User
Joined: 04/10/11
Posts: 34
MarcusWiesner
Registered User
Joined: 04/10/11
Posts: 34
05/03/2011 6:58 pm
SlipinLizard hit the nail right on the head with that post. What do you want to play? forget about all of your technical skills and all of the riffs you've learned, you know, it's great to have those things down and you can even reinvent them constantly in new contexts if that is what you feel like at that moment in your playing, but the most important thing is your EXPRESSION.

Try making solos like this, get a backing track and sing over it, make a melody that sounds good to you. I don't care if you are a good singer or not, that's not the point. Then, pick up your guitar and try to make that solo on your guitar. This does take some practice if you've never done it before, but when you start making melodies that you think are totally rad, you'll have an epiphany and go "duh, I should do this while I'm soloing" you gotta play what your heart really wants to play, not just what your fingers know how to play.

One more very important lesson you need to learn: silence is golden. Arrange your solos in phrases that are at most 4 measures long (half of that or even less is good, too), make that phrase sound like a musical idea that has it's own character, and then stop for a second, think maybe what will the next phrase be like, will it go down, up or will I play with these notes for a minute and end somewhere on this note. Take a conscious approach to soloing and don't regurgitate your licks anymore, it's obviously becoming depressing.

Your solos should be, like slipin lizard said, a speech. You have all of the tools you need to make a great speech, but you haven't taken the time to sit down and practice formulating the ideas you'd like to express yet. Take that time for yourself and for the people who will listen to you music, so that your music will be meaningful. All of your solos will have your style throughout, but they should not all say the same thing, if that makes sense.