by Tom Hess
Good news:
You don't need to be “naturally gifted” in order to play guitar solos that are creative and expressive.
Lead guitar creativity isn't some mysterious intangible talent, it’s something that gets better with practice just like every other guitar skill.
It’s also both fun and easy to work on improving your creativity. Practicing for just a few minutes each day has the potential to give you big results
So how do you begin?
Answer:
Start focusing more on how you play notes instead of looking for tons new scales or arpeggios to add to what you already know. This general approach is the foundation of guitar phrasing.
Getting better at phrasing is how you start turning notes from just “notes in a scale” into expressive music.
Sound cool? Thought so!
Improve your lead guitar soloing creativity by practicing these practice approaches daily for just a few minutes each:
Variations: Choose any guitar lick you already know how to play. Then create as many variations of this lick by only changing the rhythm of the notes (not the pitch).
Scale Phrasing: Choose any scale you know how to play. Playing only the first note of the scale, use vibrato, slides or bends to make the note sound as amazing as possible, like shown in this video:
Once the first note sounds great, try to make the second note in the scale sound great. Then continue from here to make all the notes of the first octave of the scale sound great in the same manner.
Phrase Altering: Choose any guitar lick you can already play. Play everything the same except for the first and last notes. Create as many variations as you can by playing these notes with different rhythms or techniques. Change additional notes in the scale as this becomes easier.
Limitation Training: Improvise using a lick, scale or arpeggio that you are familiar with using only your pinky to play the notes. This forces you to think more about how you are playing notes and which notes you decide to play.
Practicing any of these approaches every day quickly improves your creative lead guitar soloing skills. In just a couple of weeks, you’ll look back and be shocked by the progress you made using just these drills alone.
However, there are MANY more fun and effective ways to improve your lead guitar licks and solos.
Learn 4 new ways to improve any guitar lick and sound more creative and expressive using this guitar lick improvement guide.