Learn How To Creatively Improvise Guitar Licks That Sound Great

Does it not sound very good when you improvise guitar licks compared to the licks played by your favorite players or even your friends?

Playing creatively when you improvise on guitar feels amazing and is actually a lot easier than you think. Even if you aren't very good now, you can quickly begin improvising great guitar licks when you use the right approach.

How do you know if you're using the right approach?

Answer:

You don't have to guess whether you are using the right approach or not, simply let me show you what to do!

Start creatively improvising guitar licks that sound great today by using the easy-to-apply advice in this video:

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Now you know how to creatively improvise on guitar, it's time to learn more ways to improve your guitar playing and creativity.

Use these tips to play guitar licks that sound great every time you pick up your instrument:

How To Easily Make Your Fast Guitar Licks Sound Better

1. Master Muting With Both Hands

To keep your guitar licks sounding perfectly clean, use the index finger of the fretting hand to mute the thinner strings above the one you are currently playing on. Use your picking hand thumb to mute strings below the one you are playing on.

2. Pay Close Attention To Your Rhythmic Timing

Playing fast guitar licks without great rhythmic timing is an easy way to ruin the cool sound of playing with speed.

Unfortunately, many guitar players play slightly out of time and don't even know it by playing notes on the beat some of the time but ahead of the beat at other times.

Here is how to fix this and make your guitar licks sound much more high-quality:

Choose any guitar lick you want to play better and play just a few notes of it to a metronome. Make it your goal to line up the first note you play perfectly with the first beat so that the click of the metronome disappears underneath it.

If you have recording software, this is even easier.

Use the software to record what you are playing, then listen back to it and look on your screen to see precisely how lined up you were with the beat.

3. Improve Your Tone

It's easy to quickly improve your guitar tone using your tone knobs.

Here's how:

While playing note that are above the 12th fret or so, use the neck pick up. This means flip the pickup selector up (towards the ceiling). This instantly makes your tone sound smoother.

Then, use the bridge pick up while playing notes in the lower fretboard range and while playing rhythm guitar licks.

4. Don't Practice Using Only Chromatic Guitar Licks

Practicing chromatic exercises for speed is common, but not very effective for improving your guitar playing.

Why?

These types of licks don't have much actual musical application.

You rarely have to play extended chromatic licks like this in actual music, so practicing them frequently makes little sense.

Instead, practice guitar licks that actually have good transferability to music and other aspects of your musical skills.

For example: Practicing a guitar lick that combines scales with arpeggios. This has potential to improve your playing in multiple areas, such as sweep picking, general picking, arpeggios, scales, skill integration or musical phrasing.

Additional Exercises To Help You Creatively Improvise Guitar Licks

Being creative while improvising guitar licks is one of the most fun things you can do on guitar. Good news is, anyone can get better at this fairly quickly.

Here are a few simple exercises to help you develop musical creativity so your guitar licks sound great:

Creative Guitar Lick Exercise #1:

Step 1 – Improvise a short guitar lick of 3-5 notes max.

Step 2 – Play through this lick several times to make it effortless.

Step 3 – Repeat this lick several times while changing the rhythm of the notes during each repetition. Do this for several minutes.

This exercise helps you focus on thinking more creatively with the rhythm of your guitar licks.

Creative Guitar Lick Exercise #2:

Step 1 - Choose a short guitar lick that you like to play.

Step 2 – Play through the lick until you can do so without any mistakes.

Step 3 – Keep playing this guitar lick, except change how you play the notes to make it sound unique. Do this by using things like vibrato, legato, tremolo picking or string bending. This helps you develop better phrasing over time so you are able to play creative guitar licks with ease.

Note: Make sure to primarily change how you play the notes, don't add any more notes yet.

Creative Guitar Lick Exercise #3:

Step 1 - Think of a simple rhythm by clapping it with your hands.

Step 2 – Improvise a guitar lick using the note rhythm you chose. Use any notes or techniques you like, but keep the rhythm the same.

This exercise focuses more on the notes you choose to help you create better guitar licks more easily.

Practice these guitar lick exercises to become more creative very quickly. Then think of more ways to challenge yourself by creating your own exercises that narrow your focus on a different musical element or aspect of guitar playing.

How To Play Guitar Licks All Over The Fretboard

Ever feel like your guitar licks kind of stay in one spot and you feel like you're just adding new notes outside of the range hoping for something to sound cool?

Not ideal.

Try this instead:

Work on improving your fretboard visualization. You want to know what scale shape you are going to move to with your fingers before you even move into position to play it.

Practice using scale shapes that are in adjacent positions at first.

For example:

Learn how to play an A natural minor scale starting on the 5th fret of the low E string. Just learn the first octave to begin with. Then, learn how to play a G Mixolydian scale starting on the 3rd fret of that string. This scale uses the exact same notes as the A natural minor scale, it just starts on the 3rd fret rather than the 5th.

After this, spend a few minutes playing through each scale both separately and together in a variety of different ways. Play freely and use different techniques or rhythms to make it sound more musical.

Use this same approach to learn new positions and increase your command of the fretboard over time.

When you apply the ideas on this page, you will quickly find that they work well to improve your guitar licks and creativity.

Check out reviews from students who take guitar lessons with me and applied some of these same ideas from this page into their lead guitar playing to play much more creatively:

“I just love guitar lessons with Tom, he literally takes the time to make a specific lesson plan and sends you lessons as you need it.”

My last lesson I took with a local guitar teacher before joining Tom, I was struggling with a sweep picking pattern, which was the 5 string root major, I was really struggling to get the rolling technique down. I took it to my guitar teacher and I was like “Help me with this, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” This is his exact phrase: “At high speeds, it doesn’t really matter if you can play it clean or not, no one can hear it anyway.” At that point, I was just like, “Ah man.” But thankfully, in that same message, he mentioned Tom’s name. Then the doors opened. That very night, I went home and looked at every single lesson Tom had, had my guitar in hand, every YouTube lesson on you know “correct motions”, “play this over chords”... just applied it instantly, and it was instant results within an hour... just from his free stuff. I was like, oh man, I’ve got to do lessons with this guy.

I remember when I first started out with lessons, I instantly jumped on the forum to greet myself, and it’s amazing how there’s like 30 responses. Just like, “Hi welcome.” and stuff... “Hi Dan, great musical tastes”. That made me feel really at home and welcomed into Tom’s forum and community. Every time I’ve had an issue when I was first starting out be it like theory or technique, there’s always been someone there who’s helped. Otherwise it could’ve been this potentially awkward process where I’d have to wait a whole week to get an answer from my teacher, who even then may not have answered it correctly and may have never solved it. Whereas there are guys on there who have been with Tom and have been through exactly what I’ve been through. They know exactly how to help, in what order, what information you need... it’s just a friendly atmosphere really.

Dan Mayhew, Stowmarket, UK

"When I came to Tom for online guitar lessons, I already had a decent overall level of technique and understood the basics of music theory pretty well. I had taken lessons with other teachers before, and went through several guitar method books that promised to teach me how to become a great lead guitar player. I learned all the materials in these books and courses and picked up some useful tips and knowledge along the way. Yet for some reason I still wasn't feeling like a musician. I struggled very much with writing my own songs, creating my own solos and pushing my guitar technique and speed to a higher level (especially sweep picking, alternate picking, and playing clean at high speeds).

When I started learning from Tom, the main thing that made him different from other teachers was that he was showing me how to excel in all aspects of my guitar playing by applying the skills that I already knew together with the new material that I was learning from him.

He made me aware of both strengths and weaknesses in my playing that I did not even know I had. From there he gave me the knowledge, tools and guidance to literally transform my guitar playing by enabling me to overcome things that were preventing me from becoming a truly creative and self-expressive guitar player. These were the kinds of things that none of my previous guitar teachers and books I studied were able to do for me.

After Tom made me aware of all the things I was missing in my guitar playing and provided me with the strategy and tools for solving them, I began to make very fast progress in all areas of my guitar playing.

I can now write my own music and can create lead guitar solos that I am happy and fulfilled with. I also have the technical skills to confidently and easily play anything that I want to express. I have overcome all of the lead guitar challenges that I struggled with before, and increased my guitar speed to virtuoso levels. More importantly, I have the knowledge and understanding of how to continually improve my guitar playing and musical skills to higher and higher levels to continue expressing myself with my music. Overall, I have definitely transformed in a huge way as a musician and as a person through my lessons with Tom Hess. I am grateful to him for guiding me towards becoming the guitarist I always wanted to be!"

Mike Philippov, Indiana, USA

“I had problems with physical playing. I couldn’t hold the pick, I was struggling a lot, there was frustration for like years. I started out looking for a YouTube solution, maybe someone knows how to angle the pick or build up speed and accidentally ran into Tom.”

The video wasn’t about playing, he only had a conversation. I listened up to him. I saw that Tom made a lot of sense in his speech, and I got interested. I went to his site, started looking at what he offered, got very interested, filled out the form, got my first lesson, started building up myself and started getting more results than I was getting before when I was self taught. It was an amazing experience that opened up so many doors, and still there are so many doors to open.

The material is specifically done for your individual needs, to reach your goals. You can always put up new goals. You can have feedback on your playing, see your weak areas and strong areas. Tom cares a lot about his students. He always reviews and watches how I am progressing so we can review material, step by step. Not skipping the steps. He is paying attention to it, and that’s what I like about it. I last felt this kind of motivation when I was 13 and starting out with a band, now I’m feeling the same fire and passion. There are students who are more advanced, more knowledgeable and have more experience. Instead of feeling jealous, I feel much more motivated to push myself further.

Freddy Kuiva, Estonia

Now you know how to play better guitar solos... it's time to raise all your overall guitar skills to the next level. How? Find out by getting started with online guitar lessons.

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