3 Ways To Make Your Guitar Licks Sound Better & More Creative
by Tom Hess
Tired of playing the same recycled guitar licks over and over?
Want to add creativity into your playing?
No problem!
Here are three powerful ways to do it:
1. Raise The Quality Of Your Guitar Licks By Learning How To Make Just One Note Sound Amazing
Relying on the same licks and ideas often keeps guitarists from stepping outside of their comfort zone.
It’s okay to use this approach, but limiting yourself to this keeps you from being able to play killer guitar licks at a whim.
So, how do you do this?
Focus on squeezing every ounce of musical expression from just one note.
Training yourself to master playing just one amazing note helps you to stop wasting notes and start making every note have a purpose in your guitar licks.
After you know how to make one note sound amazing, you have the power to make two, three… one hundred notes sound amazing too!
Watch this video to learn how to do it:
2. Make Your Guitar Licks Flow Seamlessly By Combining Your Skills Together
We’ve all been there…
Practicing every guitar technique in total isolation from every other technique.
This has its benefits, but if you're not careful – it’ll make your guitar licks sound more like robotic exercises than cool licks.
You don't want your scales to sound like scales and your arpeggios to sound like arpeggios… you want them to sound like music!
When you practice combining your skills together, everything starts to flow seamlessly and your guitar licks sound like awesome musical ideas.
This video shows you a demonstration of what this sounds like:
3. Add Drama & Intensity To Your Guitar Licks With Creative Bending
Bending technique is extremely powerful for giving your guitar a voice to express intense emotion.
Yet, so many guitarists don't take the time to practice and master this skill to make their playing sound more creative.
Here are just a few things to work to make your bends sound killer:
- Bending at different speeds (fast, slow, really slow, etc.)
- Using pre-bends, whole step bends, hand step bends or any combination
- Bending from a note outside of the key to one in the key
- Finding the most dramatic notes in a scale and emphasizing them with bends
The last two points above are so effective for making guitar licks sound emotionally expressive, that I wrote an article about how to use them together with “the Devil in music” (a.k.a. the tritone).
Learn how to use these creative bending techniques to play incredibly dramatic and expressive music by reading this creative guitar licks article.
About Tom Hess: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher, music career mentor and guitar teacher trainer. He teaches rock guitar lessons online to students from all over the world and conducts instructional live guitar training events attended by musicians from over 50 countries.
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