Want your guitar solos to sound creative while flowing smoothly from one idea to the next?
There is one cool phrasing approach that helps you do it.
What is it?
Making your phrases extend over the barline rather than stopping them right at the end of the measure.
Not sure what this means?
No problem.
Let me show you how to do it!
Make your lead guitar solos sound more creative using the simple approach explained in this video:
Click on the video to begin watching it.
Regarding Learning How To Improve Lead Guitar Online:
Do you spend a lot of time online looking for new guitar lessons, videos or exercises to help you improve your technique or solo better?
You're not alone.
Tons of guitarists do this…
…but making a lot of progress in little time requires an alternative approach.
Namely:
Stop trying to learn everything on your own.
Your lead guitar skills (and musical skills in all areas) improve massively when you get better with an expert guitar educator who recognizes how to quickly get you from where you are now to your highest musical goals ASAP.
Guitarists who take lessons from a teacher improve their weaknesses exceptionally faster than they would on their own.
This is because guitar teachers identify how to help you resolve issues in your playing that you never knew about while taking you down the right track that quickly gets you to your highest guitar playing goals!
If you are still not ready to get started taking guitar lessons with your own teacher, quit holding back and make the correct decision for your playing immediately. The earlier you make this decision, the faster you can at last begin performing on guitar just like you always wanted, while taking care of the troubles in your playing that frustrate you ...
Make the right decision and begin taking lessons today.
Don't just take my word for it though.
Here is what my students have to say about taking guitar lessons:
“I found Tom Hess on the net through articles, and I read quite a few of those before I went to Tom’s website. Even though I’m not a metal player at all, and Tom is obviously a metal player, I could still see that his ideas and way of teaching could really benefit me. So I pretty much signed up for online guitar lessons with Tom straight away once I’d gone through the website, and it’s just been a real eye opener with the way he teaches…”
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... the integration of concepts that he’ll give you and having a really structured strategy… not just week to week lessons, but things that - you can see from one lesson to the next - really develop and continue to work on your technique and your theory and aural skills and those types of things. So I’d played a long time… 20 years before I really caught onto Tom, and I’d had a lot of lessons, and I’d taught and played but I can really see improvements in my technique, sweeping, and picking which weren’t strong parts of my playing.
I feel like Tom has a good gauge of where you’re at as a guitar player and what you need, and there just seemed to be so much more stuff in the lessons week to week than what you’d ever get in an hour or so in a one on one lesson… way more. So yeah I think that and the forum. I think, I’d pay the money just for the forum. That alone would be fine… I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. So that alone is massive!
The price for the lessons, that’s nothing... nothing. You know, I think it’s, pretty cheap to be honest. I don’t mean that in a bad way, cheap. Cheap is not a good word, but I just think it’s great value… awesome value. I mean, you know, you could pay that for one-to-one lessons and you just don’t get the same results and support of the forum and the content and the strategies.
Other teachers I’ve had have been good players, and some have become good friends too. But when I’ve started lessons with Tom I’ve got something to compare that to and a lot of it is just sort of teaching songs from week to week… a lot of the lesson will be left up to you… you’ll go to your lesson and they’ll be like what do you want to do today? At the time I said, oh do this song or that song, but with Tom you start to realize that you know, there’s more to it… the goals and you know he’s sort of more in contact with what you want to be able to do as a player, because he’s asking you the questions and then setting up the strategies, so I find that really good.
Yeah I can see more results in 18 months in a lot of areas in my playing than you know 20 years. So it’s sort of, you know, would’ve been great 20 years ago to have met Tom.
Simon Candy, Melbourne, Australia
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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
“When I first heard about Tom Hess, I saw that he was a teacher that was very dedicated and serious about it, and that drew me in immediately. That this is a guy that has a plan, has a goal and really if you’re serious about learning guitar, this guy is equally as serious in a way. So it resonated with me straight away.”
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I started out just learning by myself and as many others I got stuck. I had a few issues I wanted to get by, but when I met Tom and talked with him and started lessons with him, he opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what guitar playing can be.
I feel very grateful that I found lessons from Tom since I then did what worked from the very beginning. Many guitarists I see that played way longer than I did, they have build up many bad habits. That from the very start, there was clear instruction of how to practice correctly. You build the ability for high speed and whatever you want from the very beginning and you don’t waste time doing inefficient things. So I’m very grateful that I did that, and now I really feel I am able to reach whatever level I want.
The reasons why I think I feel so motivated all the time is because I know that the thing I’m working on is relevant for me and it’s exactly the direct thing I need to get.
The forum just kicks ass. The people in the forum - it’s just like unconditional help all the time. They love to help out, and you also get very inspired by seeing someone just really getting speed really quick and then you say if he can do it, I can do it. It works on the mental side of being a guitarist and that of course that’s the most important thing. Just being around other musicians like that, is just you learn so much faster, is so much less frustration when you can see that all the people are having the same issues that you do, not anything special or anything. It’s just part of learning process, so it kicks ass.
Magnus Gautestad, Norway
Quick Tip For Improving Your Lead Guitar Bends & Vibrato
Some of the most important areas you to work on for better lead guitar playing are bending and vibrato.
One way to do this is to focus on keeping these techniques in tune.
Spend a few minutes each day working on nothing but bending the strings trying to get them in tune every time.
A very good exercise for this is to first play the pitch that you will be bending up to (by picking it as a normal note) and then perform the bend trying to match the sound of the two pitches exactly.
Over time, this will become automatic and you will no longer need to play the target note to prepare yourself for each bend.
Question: “My guitar solos don't seem to sound as passionate as my favorite players’ solos. I think I may need to use more vibrato? Is this important?”
Answer: Yes! You should apply more vibrato on the longer-held/sustained notes.
Guitarists commonly make the mistake of playing awesome guitar solos that become dull and boring because there is no vibrato in them (a very common mistake). They just don't know about this… but fortunately, it doesn’t take long to adjust.
Your vibrato doesn't have to be very wide and dramatic like what you might hear when listening to the pros, but it’s good to have at least some vibrato used on the longer-held notes in your playing for the time being.
Practice doing this by using just a handful of notes and trying to make them sound as expressive as possible with vibrato.
Focus on thinking of many variations too! For example, wide/fast vibrato, narrow/slow vibrato, etc.
Question: “What is another easy way to make my guitar solos sound more interesting and less repetitive?”
Answer: Anytime you have to repeat a phrase or a prominent note several times in a solo, ask yourself “What can I do to make the phrasing more creative in the moment to avoid repeating what I already did?”
This simple question forces you to start thinking and moving in the right direction of creating all kinds of variations on the phrases.
For example, you might start using ornaments on the notes and/or varying the rhythm, bending/sliding into some of the notes, etc.
Keeping this thought always in the back of your mind helps a lot with being aware of this issue in your playing and knowing when to take action to refine the phrasing further.
How To Play Guitar Solos More Melodically
When you play each phrase, it’s important to have some idea of how you will move to the next phrase smoothly. Problem is, most guitarists just play notes up and down the fretboard hoping to run into something cool.
Don't make this mistake!
Try this instead:
Improvise a phrase, and then sing the next half of the phrase with your voice only.
Next, try to play the exact notes of what you sang on your guitar. This makes your phrases connect and flow more smoothly just like a singer’s vocal line.
Eventually, your guitar playing takes on a more melodic and musically expressive quality. Plus, your fast guitar licks begin to feel more musical as well – connected your phrases together and creating tons of drama!
Ready to learn more about playing great guitar solos?
Let me teach you all about playing creatively on guitar. Get started with online guitar lessons with a great guitar teacher.