Guitar Rock Improvisation Thoughts, Tricks, Concepts and Techniques, 8th Episode | Los Angeles or Skype Guitar Lessons with Vreny

Guitar Rock Improvisation Thoughts, Tricks, Concepts and Techniques, 8th Episode.

Did you already see great improvements in your soloing in the past 7 blogs?
I hope it is making a fantastic impact on your improvisations.
Here’s what we covered in the past couple of months.

Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 1
Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 2
Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 3
Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 4
Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 5
Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 6
Rock Guitar Soloing Episode 7

On to the new topics for today.

Cool thing to do: jumping 12 fret distances back and forth

This is so simple, it makes you wonder why it is not used more.
Especially since it sounds so cool.

This works best with pentatonic shapes. It is probably really more of a pentatonic soloing concept anyway.

Like I said: the idea is simple.
Let’s say that you’re in the key of A minor.
You play something in the root position Am pentatonic shape on the 5th fret, then quickly jump up an octave to the 17th fret to play exactly the same thing.

This doesn’t work as well with long phrases.
Keep it short, and jump around 12 fret distances.
You’ll love how this sounds.

Avoid playing too many phrases in a row in the bass range.

This is usually done by students who feel insecure about their fingerings.
So I guess this might be more of a piece of advice for students who are getting into soloing, and who don’t have their scale shapes well memorized yet.

The human ear is not as sensitive to lower frequencies.
The result of that is that it takes our brains more effort to hear/identify/grasp melodies played in a low range.
Staying in that range for too many phrases in a row shuts off the listener’s attention span pretty quickly.

Move around a lot. Spend more time on the treble strings in your solos.

Being more melodic, means… lesser 2-note phrases.

My guess is, that this too is probably more common with guitar students who are still struggling with their scale, fingering, and fretboard knowledge.
You don’t want to play too many 2-note phrases in a row.

2-note phrases are cool.
Too many of them in a row makes the solo lack direction.

Using the analogy that playing a solo is communication, imagine being in a conversation with someone who speaks in 2-3 word sentences. 🙂

“Hey, Mike! What’s up? It’s warm. Right?”

You need more words in a sentence to really say something of value.
The ideal, most phrases in most solos tend to be centered around…

3-4 note phrases

This is of course not set in stone.
Music is an art form, not a science.

It’s totally fine to have long lines.
As we already discussed in for example string skip soloing: sometimes you want to have long lines with lots of notes to create certain sounds and textures.
It’s also totally fine to have 2-note phrases, as discussed above.

There are many different types of soloing.
In shredding, for example, the scalar aspect of this particular soloing style means that the lines are going to be longer.
You can’t really play neo-classical shred metal with 4 note phrases. 🙂

Focusing on 3-4 note phrases, however, is going to bring out different sides to your soloing, and is going to create different types of melody lines.

Vibrato.

Vibrato makes your notes come to life. You want a vibrant sound, not a sound that flat lines.
Vibrato is the effect, created by “gently” rubbing your string up and down, moving your fretting finger in a vertical motion.

The 2 main rules of a good vibrato:

Gently “rub” the string up and down: don’t “shake it” or “quiver it”.
Slow down? A good vibrato blends in with the tempo and feel of the song.
A good way to go about this: move your fretting finger up and down in quarter or 8th notes. (16th notes possible if the song is at a slow tempo).

In rock styles or on electric guitar, the more common technique is to gently move the string up and down (vertical).
Classical string players use an entirely different technique. They move their fretting finger sideways (horizontally) on the string.
The sideways horizontal vibrato doesn’t come out as well on electric guitar.

On an interesting side note: jazz guitarists, in general, tend to use less or no vibrato in their solos.

Conclusion

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.