How To Build Tension In Any Lead Guitar Solo To Make Your Listeners Pay Attention To Every Note You Play

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a way to instantly pull your listener’s attention to your lead guitar solo like a magnet even if you don't do anything difficult or fast on your guitar?

One of the simplest (and most effective) ways of doing this is to play phrases that go against your listeners’ ‘musical expectations’. There are MANY ways to achieve this in your guitar solo phrasing.

I will show you how to do it in the lead guitar solo video below and help you create your own ideas using the same method in the rest of the article.

In order for you to correctly do the steps that will follow, you MUST watch the explanation of this guitar solo phrasing concept in this lead guitar playing video. Make sure to do this, because otherwise you won’t get any benefit from reading the rest of this article.

Then continue reading and I will walk you through the steps of creating such cool guitar solo phrasing ideas in your own music.

(Don’t read any further until you have watched the video demo, this is critical for your guitar solo creativity.)

Here are the steps for creating lead guitar solo phrases that will grab your listeners’ attention:

Step 1. Create a repeating phrase in 4/4 time using an even grouping of 8th or 16th notes. Play this phrase over a track with a 4/4 feel. To make this easy for you, I created a drum track in 4/4 time that you can play your phrase over.

The phrase should be a repeating melodic fragment that ‘starts over’ every 2, 4 or 8 beats (depending on the tempo of the music). TIP: to make this lead guitar solo phrasing idea stand out more, I suggest to either use a pedal point style phrase (as shown in the above video) or ‘double pick’ every note in your lead guitar phrase, like this (example):

(of course you can create your own ideas also)

Step 2. Start playing the original lead guitar solo phrase over the 4/4 backing track, repeating it over and over several times. This step of repeating the original guitar phrasing idea is very important for 2 reasons:

1. It establishes a more firm expectation in the ears of your listener about how the phrase will repeat next and also that the music will continue in 4/4 time (just like you saw in the video above).
2. It makes it a lot cooler and more unexpected when you do the next step below.

Step 3. Break away from both of the listener expectations by creating a ‘3 against 4’ feel with your phrase (just like you saw demonstrated in the video above). A simple way to do this is to make the original lead guitar solo phrase shorter so that it now fits into any time signature with ‘3’ beats per measure as you continue to play it over the backing track in 4/4. Here is how this could be done using the simple example in the tab above:

Notice that we keep the SAME note values in this variation as the original idea (just like you saw in the lead guitar solo demonstration). In this example, while the rest of the music will continue in 4/4 time, your shortened phrase will play against that - starting over on a different beat than the rest of the music. This creates MASSIVE musical tension that is guaranteed to grab your listeners’ attention instantly!

Step 4. If you continue repeating the shortened version of the phrase in your lead guitar solo, eventually it will come back to start over on the downbeat with the rest of the music (because we haven't changed the note values) and then you will have to make a choice about whether you want to:

1. Continue playing the modified version of the phrase maintaining the ‘3 against 4’ feel.
2. Return back to playing exactly in time with the music (starting to play the original version of your phrase).
3. Move to a different lead guitar solo phrase.

Note: even though playing in this way will definitely go against your listeners’ expectations (in a cool way), staying on this idea for too long will establish a NEW set of musical patterns (expectations) for your audience. This means that if you want to maintain the same level of musical interest you cannot stay on any one guitar solo phrasing idea for too long (no matter how cool it is).

This concept of playing in 3 against 4 can also be used very effectively not only in lead guitar solo phrases but also in writing rhythm guitar riffs (in the same exact way as you have just learned). There are A LOT of ways to apply this concept into your guitar solo licks to become more creative.

Now that you are familiar with the cool and innovative guitar solo phrasing technique from this article, begin applying it into your playing to become a more creative lead guitar player.

To get more help with lead guitar solo phrasing, get my free tips about guitar soloing.